Thrillist.com has put Grand Rapids on the short list of the best cities for creatives to live in. Who are creatives? Oh, you know, artists, musicians, people with very little money and a whole lot of talent.

Thrillist.com has listed Grand Rapids on a list of 'Best Places For Creatives (Outside of LA, NY and SF)'. The article says if you're a young up and coming creative type, you can live in GR and actually afford a place to live.

Fact is, whether or not they admit it, most writers, musicians, painters, and tinkerers of every stripe aspire to remove the “struggling” from the “struggling artist” way of life. No matter what rom-coms suggest, the country is full of cities where you can find a vibrant life, in a home with room to sprawl, where you can cook or play music or just get friends together to conspire and collaborate.

The list takes considrered what Thrillist calls "the full livability spectrum: artistic communities (check), a good dose of nature (check), a food, craft beer/cocktail, or music scene, or all of the above (check), and a level of affordability that actually allows you to partake therein."

Matt Milhouse, Townsquare Media
Matt Milhouse, Townsquare Media
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When describing GR, Thrillist writer Bison Messink (Is that really his first name??) says THIS:

Chicago has more glitz, Detroit has more grit, but overlooked in between the two, Grand Rapids has emerged as one of the coolest cities in the Midwest. In the past decade or two, Grand Rapids has undergone an impressive transformation from a rather dull town best known for making office furniture to a place young people are actually drawn to. It's one of America's first-class craft beer cities, and boasts a revived Downtown with a lively array of bars and restaurants, classic housing stock, and art spaces like the gallery/theater/party place, UICA (Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts). Plus, you can actually afford to live there, unlike Chicago or Downtown Detroit. Along with the low rents, Grand Rapids has still maintained most of its smaller town trappings: great farm stands and farmers markets, hardly any traffic, and approximately one million Protestant churches.

Grand Rapids had long been one of the largest cities in America without a major university, but that has gradually changed as nearby Grand Valley State -- now the third biggest school in Michigan -- has steadily built more of its campus in Downtown Grand Rapids. And those students now have more reason to stick around GR upon graduating, thanks to centrally located hangouts like Founders Brewing Co., Stella's Lounge, and Brewery Vivant. ArtPrize, an annual art spectacle that takes over the city for a couple weeks every year since 2009, has only added to the energy that Grand Rapids has been building for a couple decades as its Downtown and core neighborhoods steadily developed into more exciting places to live. Plus, it's less than 45 minutes to the beach on Lake Michigan.

One of these days someone is going to describe our city without that last qualifying line. I love the Lake, but it's not essential to our well being.

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