I've lived in Boston, DC, NYC and London for extended periods of time, and spent a stint in Berlin. It's tech scene is awesome - if you find the right group of people it feels like CCC year round. It's art, music and food scene was an amazing value for the money when I was there circa 2011.
I'm guessing the equivalent of their hipsters got wise to it and drove up prices a la the gentrification you saw (compare the between the dirty-grimy NYC of the "Taxi Driver" 1970s vs the clean power-tie NYC of the 1980s bond-trading years, or the early 2000s Williamsburg where the rent was somewhat reasonable vs 2010 where anything on the L costed literally 3 times as much because every white kid with a fixie had his parents pay his $2600 rent, etc. $800/mo on a split isn't too bad for Boston if you're anywhere close to a decent spot on the T, considering the supply/demand (it's arguably the biggest college region in the US - between Cambridge, Boston and BC in Newton it's probably the densest student:non-student ratio in the US). Berlin had that vibrant feeling that's hard to explain but yeah the tech scene was (and hopefully still is) spectacular, especially re: the hardware hacking scene when I was there and it's certainly worth a visit.
Edit: http://ccc.de/ In math if you solve something major, odds are you'll wait till that years AMS Symposium to present; if you crack the PS3, CCC is where fail0verflow went to present. (Don't write them off because of their l33t-name, these guys aren't script kiddies -- these hacks are worthy of PhD theses if you see the detail of reverse engineering they go into.).
I'm guessing the equivalent of their hipsters got wise to it and drove up prices a la the gentrification you saw (compare the between the dirty-grimy NYC of the "Taxi Driver" 1970s vs the clean power-tie NYC of the 1980s bond-trading years, or the early 2000s Williamsburg where the rent was somewhat reasonable vs 2010 where anything on the L costed literally 3 times as much because every white kid with a fixie had his parents pay his $2600 rent, etc. $800/mo on a split isn't too bad for Boston if you're anywhere close to a decent spot on the T, considering the supply/demand (it's arguably the biggest college region in the US - between Cambridge, Boston and BC in Newton it's probably the densest student:non-student ratio in the US). Berlin had that vibrant feeling that's hard to explain but yeah the tech scene was (and hopefully still is) spectacular, especially re: the hardware hacking scene when I was there and it's certainly worth a visit.
Edit: http://ccc.de/ In math if you solve something major, odds are you'll wait till that years AMS Symposium to present; if you crack the PS3, CCC is where fail0verflow went to present. (Don't write them off because of their l33t-name, these guys aren't script kiddies -- these hacks are worthy of PhD theses if you see the detail of reverse engineering they go into.).