Originally Posted by
ElJamoquio
What I'm looking for is what I have right now.
1. I live in what resembles a small (~5000) person downtown - Campbell, CA. I have ~20 restaurants/bars within walking distance, that's enough for me. So that's what I'm looking for...
2. Five miles away is pretty pain-free, low-stop riding.
3. Downtown San Jose (moderately built-up) is ten miles away, Downtown San Fran is 40 miles or so away.
I don't want to live in suburbs, per se, but if there's suburbs around me, and I'm a block or two off of downtown, that's OK. As a cyclist I obviously hate lights, etc., etc.
If you gave me a map blindly, I'd look at Reston, Fairfax Station... something around there?
if suburb was pictured in the dictionary, those are places that would be shown.
in Maryland, you're looking at montgomery county
silver spring, forest glenn, or takoma park, md - pretty diverse places accessible to rock creek and beyond are good, lithuania and bitterken are SS residents there and can speak more knowlegeable than me,
bethesda, md - expensive, but nice
if you go east of takoma park, you're getting into prince georges county, which I wouldnt live in for various reasons (higher crime rates, schools dont have proper resources and dont test as well, etc.)
further north along I-270 into rockville, gaithersburg, germantown, darnestown, poolesville are fantastic for cycling, but are very much suburban and getting into DC becomes a "commute" for sure.
VA - frankly, it kind of sucks for bicycling. more congested, lanes in roadways are narrower, everyone trains on a bikepath.
arlington, ballston, clarendon are great for anything but riding a bike, everything else is just an amorphous blob of suburbs.
to directly answer your question, I'd live right where I do now, germantown, or where I moved from recently, gaithersburg. great for a family, exceptional bicycling in farm/horsecountry 5 minutes from my front door, and I work in rockville so not too much of a commute, but traffic sucks in all of the WDC area so you've got to accept it.