Seattle-dweller here as of 2006. I mostly agree with this, but the gloomy weather is pretty bad if you're light-sensitive or have seasonal affect. I love the place and my friends here, and the hiking and mountaineering and running opportunities. The air is fresh, there's water, and lots of little islands to explore nearby. And yeah, tons of nerdy types, but it's getting a little homogeneous with Amazon's constantly-increasing masses that have been moving into the SLU area. So. Many. Middle class white dudes without much to say. It's not really helping with Seattle's image as 'progressive' because Seattle is really self-conscious about its lack of diversity--we are still less white than Portland, but I can't imagine it being that way in another 5 years at this rate. Sure, I'm white, but it doesn't mean I want to live in an ethnically homogeneous city. People often complain about the 'Seattle Freeze'--how Seattle peeps are hard to meet, don't want to be your friend, etc.--but I think that's mostly just whining. I have a group of about 150 friends here that are mostly 30's/40's, highly educated, pretty weird, mostly burners, mostly working in science and tech, sometimes art, largely non-monogamous (it's not a bunch of swingers or anything, just fairly sex-positive). I don't know about Seattle being 'humble' (per the article) either--people wear a lot of clothing from REI, but you can still drop 500 on a down jacket. Also, I pass at least one Tesla and usually a Ferrari on my 2-mile commute to work--there is so much dough here that Teslas are out and what appear to be concept cars are apparently in these days. Housing isn't cheap--a modest one bedroom apartment goes for about 1200, and the average apartment price is only about $20 behind that of New York. Lots of pros and cons, but I see where the author is coming from.

Overall it's probably an INTJ dream here.