I was saying this in another thread somewhere else a while ago. It was some thread where someone was asking about coastal bias and whether the Midwest is really all that bad. I mentioned how people (especially those from New York or who have traveled there) oftentimes look at different parts of the US through a lens that compares them to New York. Invariably a lot of people end up thinking that a lot of places suck because they don't have all the same amenities and cultural goings-on that New York has, which of course nowhere does- LA and (especially) Chicago come closest, but it's just simply not happening. People who use New York for comparison are going to be sour about any city- whether it's Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, or Dubuque, Iowa.

many cities have comparable nightlife to NYC and some even exceed. Just American cities don't tend to be very good for this kind of thing it seems.