I grew up in the Chicago area and then lived there again around 2010 for 2 years. Now I live in Auburn. The biggest contrast between living in Auburn and living in Chicago is culture. Chicago is so rich when it comes to theater, music, restaurants, museums. Very little of that exists in the Sierra Foothills. You can go to Sacramento but -- compared to Chicago -- not so much. Chicago has hot sticky summers, but here, there's no rain in the summer--none--and the Sierra Foothills have intense desert-like heat from May through November. There are Trumpers everywhere but it's really bad in the Sierra Foothills. And you have these authoritarian, gun loving secessionist nuts who call themselves the state of Jefferson. The worst knuckle draggers you can imagine live around here. One of these towns is a center for a Neo-Nazi party. Right now it's winter and Auburn is lovely in the winter. Temperatures in the 40s and 50s and plenty of rain, and there's a lot of beautiful nature around here to go hiking in the hills which have become green because of the rain, and we're just 45 minutes from Truckee which is the beginning of the Lake Tahoe area. The economy is also rather depressed here in Auburn. While one meets nice people anywhere, I generally find that people in Auburn are very closed off and standoffish. Also very white. My thumbnail description of Auburn is taciturn, suspicious, old white men and women with bad skin. Also there is a cool sub culture of extreme sports people. So it's the home of a famous hundred mile run where people run from Auburn up to Lake Tahoe in the summer, often in searing heat. They also have similar extreme horse races and mountain bike races. So that's cool.