The 15 Hippest Places to Live

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1. Lower Garden District 
(New Orleans)

The reason New Orleans is home to some of the hippest neighborhoods in America is that it’s the least American city in the United States. It's Latin not Anglo-Saxon, sensuous instead of puritanical, with a culture shaped as much by Africa and the Caribbean as by Europe. New Orleans has always been a lodestone for restless folks who have trouble fitting into the Middle American dreamscape. The Lower Garden District, a racially mixed stretch of 19th century streets, is now blossoming with galleries, experimental theatres, and music joints where New Orleans' piquant homegrown aesthetic mingles with cutting-edge influences from around the world.

Soon-to-be-hot: The Faubourg Marigny and Bywater districts, next-door to the French Quarter on the east, attract the city's younger hipsters, lured by the classic "shotgun" cottages and cheaper rents. Parts of the area are still pretty rough, but music is everywhere, spilling onto the sidewalks from clubs like Cafe Brasil and Vaughn's.

2. Inner Mission
(San Francisco)

In this lively district south of Market Street, Mexican grandmothers on their way to Sunday mass at Mission Dolores pass Web-page designers and bicycle messengers returning from Saturday night raves. Vibrant, messy, and noisy like a Third World capital, this area is home to panhandlers and poets, twenty-something seekers and established immigrant families.

Soon-to-be-hot: Artists and cyberians are trickling into the hard-edged Hunters Point/Bayview area near Candlestick Park. Notorious parties, but auto body shops still outnumber coffee shops.

3. Williamsburg
(Brooklyn)

Only one subway stop from Manhattan, Williamsburg combines accessibility and affordability. Abundant vacant warehouse space first attracted artists here 10 years ago, and since then it has gently inched toward gentrification. But this is no SoHo, with through-the-roof rents and throngs of gallery go-ers. Old Italian and Polish couples still stroll the streets, and resident artists are more likely to show their work across the river.

Soon-to-be-hot: Just south of Williamsburg, Red Hook is poised to become the next hip 'hood as machine shops are retrofitted into studio space. Less convenient than Williamsburg or nearby Park Slope, this area, which doesn't even have a subway stop, seems hundreds of miles from the manufactured fashion-world cool of Gotham City.

4. The Plateau
(Montreal)

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