move to baltimore : Buzz

Whoever thought that a neighborhood in Baltimore would be featured alongside Williamsburg, New York City, Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and Chicago's tony Wicker Park?

Forbes has done the favor to Hampden, ranking it No. 15 on its list of hippest hoods. 

"Bars, restaurants and independent coffee houses co-mingle with two-story rowhouses harking back to the neighborhood's days of mills and factories," Forbes writes of this "retro cool" neighborhood. 

Silver Lake took the top spot, followed by San Francisco's Mission District and Brooklyn's Williamsburg. 

San Francisco's Nextdoor.com helped Forbes compile the data, assessing each neighborhoods walkability, number of food trucks, locally owned eateries, art galleries and other hipness factors. You can see the entire list here. 

Baltimore is one of the nation's coolest cities, according to Forbes. 

The magazine ranked 65 largest cities according to their "coolness," using seven measures. Cities were graded on the number of recreational activities, entertainment options, restaurants and bars per capita, as well as cultural composition, median age, unemployment rate and net migration. It used the help of Sperling's Best Places to assess the entertainment options. 
 
“Baltimore is in transition because it has been down and out for a long time but it’s beginning to come back because it’s affordable,” says Sperling’s Best Places in Forbes.
 
Houston, Texas took the top honor because it enjoyed a 2.6 percent job growth last year, which drew plenty of young professionals to the sprawling metropolis. Really. 

Our neighbor to the South, Washington, D.C., took the No. 2 spot. 

You can read the entire story and a slideshow here. 

Forget Silicon Valley. There are loads of other cities throughout the U.S. that have a promising tech scene. 

That's according to Fast Company, which says Baltimore is of "15 Tech Scenes in Places You'd Never Think to Look."

Phoenix, Charleston, S.C., Salt Lake City and Cleveland are some of the other towns on its list. 

"Baltimore has a startup market pumped full of youthful energy," Fast Company writes. "These burgeoning entrepreneurs can tap into a slew of resources, such as Accelerate Baltimore, a business accelerator, and Innovate Maryland, which forges partnerships between schools and tech companies."

You can read more about Baltimore's tech scene here. 

The photo includes a picture of Baltimore Sun Tech Reporter Gus Sentementes, who was featured last month in Fast Company for creating a home renovation app. 

Lesbian and gay singles living in Baltimore need look no further than their own home city to find their mate.
 
Baltimore ranked second in a poll conducted by Chemistry.com of cities with the most lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender singles looking for marriage and kids, beating out cities better known for their LGBT populations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
 
Richmond, Va. tops the list in first place. Los Angeles, Rochester, N.Y., and Harford, Conn., round out the top five.

You can see the rest of the list here. 

Sending your kid to Johns Hopkins University will set you back $55,742 a year in room, board, fees and tuition.

That makes the Charles Village school the 7th most expensive university in the country, according to Business Insider. Sarah Lawrence College, New York University and Columbia University are the three most expensive colleges. You can see the complete ranking here.

U.S. News & World Report has come out with its ranking of the best high schools in the nation and Maryland schools made the grade. 

High schools in Potomac, Bethesda and Rockville made the top 100. A total of 62 high schools in Maryland made the list, writes the Washington Post.

Schools were assessed on how well they meet state proficiency standards and prepared students for college. You can see the complete ranking here. 

Baltimore isn't a bad place to be if you're a woman in America. 

That's according to a report from the Measure of America, a project that analyzes the distribution of opportunity in the U.S.

The report ranks Baltimore No. 8 on a list of the top places for females. Women's Well Being: Ranking America's Top 25 Metro Areas measures life expectancy, education and earnings. 

Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston are listed in the top three. You can see the full report here. 

Baltimore doesn't always score points for offering low taxes to city dwellers. 

But a report from KPMG says the city's low commercial property taxes and relatively cheap office space makes it the sixth best city for business. The report was featured in 24/7 Wall St. Wire. 

Median income increased 1.7 percent in Baltimore between 2007 and 2010, making it the ninth-wealthiest major city in the U.S., 24/7 Wall St. writes. 

Cincinnati, Atlanta and Orlando, Fla., were the top three business-friendly cities. You can read the rest of the report here. 

There was a lot of buzz this month about U.S. News & World Report's ranking Johns Hopkins University ranking No. 2 on its list of top medical schools. 

But another Baltimore school has also made the grade. In its list of top fine arts schools in the nation, U.S. News ranks the Maryland Institute College of Art No. 7. It tied with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. for the No. 7 spot. 

Yale University took the No. 1 spot. You can see the rest of the ranking here. 

It may not be the fountain of youth, but folks who live in cities that are less stressful tend to remain more healthful and active. 

That is according to RealAge.com, which produces a test that asks individuals a number of questions to determine if they act younger or older than their numerical age.

And their data from 50 American cities shows that Baltimore ranks No. 9 on its list of top towns for staying forever young. Baltimore tied with Washington, D.C., for ninth place. San Francisco, Salt Lake City and San Diego were the top three cities in its ranking.

Cholesterol, employment levels, eating habits and smoking were all factors that RealAge.com considered. 

A Federal Hill rowhome has made the cut in the New York Times "What you get for..." section. The part of the real estate section highlights properties in three different cities that are all listed for the same price. 

The Times features three homes for $900,000 in Baltimore, New Orleans and Bellevue, Wash. 

So what do you get for $900,000 in Federal Hill? A wrap-around terrace with views of downtown Baltimore, a six-burner Viking range and a wood-burning fireplace in the master suite. 

You can read the rest more about the property here. 

We've heard the term metro applied to all things urbane -- think metrosexual.

Now higher education expert Evan S. Dobelle has ranked the top 10 "metroversities," or towns in which universities are a major economic engine driver. 

Dobelle puts Baltimore No. 3 on this list, after Boston and Raleigh. San Jose and Philadelphia round out the top five.  San Francisco, Seattle and Nashville (tied for No. 7), Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. also made the top 10 cut. 

You can read the story in Baltimore Fishbowl here and find the press release here. 

Baltimore leads the nation in overall hospital care, according to a report from ratings service HealthGrades. 

The survey got Baltimore national attention from a variety of news outlets, including U.S. News & World Report, which ran a HealthDay News item on its website. 

"Baltimore had nine top-performing hospitals out of 19 eligible hospitals in the city," the website says.

Phoenix, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Richmond, Va.; and Cincinnati rounded out the top five. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore may have had its share of challenges when it comes to race relations.

But Charm City has come a long way and is now more progressive than its counterparts throughout the nation, according to the Daily Beast. The website ranked Baltimore No. 5 in its list of 20 most tolerant cities. Miami, San Francisco, Honolulu and Durham, N.C. ranked above Baltimore.

The Daily Beast looked at the number of hate crimes, same-sex couples and the percentage of African Americans and Asian residents. You can read more about Baltimore's status here.

Folks in D.C. like to thumb their noses at Baltimore.

Well now the red-headed stepchild is getting some love -- well sort of -- by the folks at Slate. They wrote a piece called "DC: The Anti-Berlin," that noted that artists can live more cheaply in Baltimore compared with D.C.

The story stated that while Washington is thriving in many ways it is has one of the most expensive housing markets while not winning any points on crime.

Meanwhile, our pals at Baltimore Fishbowl jumped on the Slate story and did some number crunching to find out that Baltimore artists earn more than their D.C. counterparts. You can read it here.