The 15 Hippest Places to Live

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11. Los Feliz
(Los Angeles)

In a city defined by the production of cultural commodities, the hip set tend to segregate themselves by industry. The more literary, swanky wing of the film industry mixes it up with writers in Los Feliz, situated just east of Hollywood. Vermont Avenue is the strip where the action is, and predictably it became the location for the super-hipster movie Swingers.

Soon-to-be-hot: Sitting between Los Feliz and downtown, Echo Park is a Chicano neighborhood that’s accommodated Anglo bohos for years without losing its own identity.

12. Hamtramck
(Detroit)

An independent township a few miles northwest of downtown, Hamtramck is an island in Detroit. It boasts narrow streets, compact development, and a pedestrian scale—the very things that the Motor City's chief product destroyed nearly everywhere else. Strongly Polish, the town was the seat of Detroit's famous '70s and '80s punk subculture and is still home to a Buddhist temple. The club scene has branched out, embracing other musical styles (although Lili's 21 remains an Iggy Pop shrine), and little coffee shops are popping up everywhere

Soon-to-be-hot: Graphic designers, techno music producers, underground art entrepreneurs, and filmmakers are busy at work behind the rundown facades of old factories in the Lower Woodward Corridor, an emerging hot spot between two European-style squares on the edge of downtown.

13. U District
(Washington, D.C.)

The recently opened U Street subway stop on the long-delayed Green Line sparked a critical mass of cool restaurants, clubs, and shops in this area near Howard University. In a still mostly segregated city, the U District stands out; young blacks and whites convene at hip-hop shows and go-go clubs.

Soon-to-be-hot: Up the hill from the well-established Adams-Morgan nightlife strip, another multicultural scene is gelling in the middle of a Latin barrio. Mt. Pleasant can't support a full menu of hip commerce yet, but politically progressive kids are starting to frequent its Salvadoran restaurants and old-time dive bars.

14. Davis Square
(Boston)

Out in Somerville, a blue-collar suburb of Boston awash in artistic-energy spillover from Cambridge, something is happening. Two of the 20 young writers in Granta’s fiction issue last year hail from here, and a lively cultural milieu has popped up around Davis Square. With its bookstores, Irish pubs, and adventuresome Somerville Theater, it's an alternative to franchise-filled Harvard Square.

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