Yeah, got your PMs, but figured I should post here too. Filtersweep might take a little longer to get back to you - he's living in Norway now

St. Paul is nice, but I've only really gone through there on late night rec rides, looking for hills. They have been re-doing a lot of their roads, new asphalt, bike lanes, etc, but I don't know the extent of it. They also don't have as much of a bike community, or at least it's not as visible.

NE has a ton of biker kids. When you're here, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the drunken bike tours - they are nuts! Literally hundreds of bikers rolling from bar to bar to bar to bar... Behind Bars (new[er] shop up there) usually has the details. I'm not sure how it is for housing/whatever, and a lot of the roads are pretty much crap. They also don't have much for a trail system, at least not anything that you can use for transportation.

Uptown, well, it's uptown. It gets closer to my neighborhood in the ghetto every day. They're putting in condos a few blocks away now, and the army and navy recruiters pulled up stakes and left the first floor of my building. I figured that was a good sign that gentrification was on the way, though I do still get to see crack dealers get busted every now and again.

Chicago/Lake is also an area that's about to go the same way. They are putting the finishing touches on converting the old Sears Tower or whatever that place was into Condos and Offices. So a nice good stretch of Lake is all new asphalt as well.

But the thing is, it's kind of hard to really give advice without actually knowing what you consider hip. Pretty much anywhere in the city can give you a good commute, provided that you're not way out in the middle of nowhere. Even then it's do-able. I convinced a coworker to start commuting to downtown from Blaine or Richfeild or some suburb somewhere that's way out of my 20-30 mile circle that I actually ride in. She can ride to a park and ride, but put her bike on the bus, then get off at the MOA and catch the light rail all the way into downtown (again taking the bike.) So pretty much anywhere is at least partially doable.

As far as bike shops, the ones I usually go to are the Hub and Freewheel. I go to the hub if I need a part right away, but I don't think that I'd really trust them to work on my bikes. Freewheel has been getting more and more of my business lately. Part of that has to do with riding with a couple of the wrenches on the Sat night drunk ride (Dinkytown McDonalds parking lot 9-9:30pm Sat take off - no agenda, often fire) and getting good deals. But mostly I use LBSs for parts and tools that I don't own, not often for much else...

I hope that helps some.

Oh, and when you get here, remember that the cars are almost frustratingly nice, and almost always yeild. It kind of sucks sometimes...