[misun78]

I would maybe keep SF and LA as tier 1.5 (ignoring the fact that LA is mostly a collection of suburbs) given their presence at the global scale, but there is a drop-off in tiers for all other cities. Chicago is a great example, it's usually considered a sister city to NYC, but as someone who grew up there and then later spent time in NYC, the differences in cultural attitudes between the two could not be starker.