I'll give another thumbs up to St. Louis... I've only lived here since August and was admittedly not so thrilled about moving here, but there really is a lot of cool stuff. I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for 4 years, and I totally see Lindsay's point. Like, the bay area had at least 4 or 5 awesome science museums... St. Louis has two that I know of. I can think of three zoos we went to in the bay area - two great, one middling. St. Louis has one, but it's a really good one - and free. Forest Park is amazing - it's actually larger than Central Park, and in addition to all the park-y stuff, it has the zoo, a good art museum with some truly good stuff - we have our Renoirs and van Goghs - science museum, theatre - lots of theatre here, actually.
I think having so many colleges and universities here makes the difference. There are tons of free lectures and films available through the colleges, and there are also lots of low-cost classes on interesting things. Wash U is a highly-ranked elite university - the medical school is generally ranked second in the nation.
But yeah, definitely urban. No quaint little towns or quilt shows - this is the city. Not West Virginia at all... and it has some of the problems typical of cities, like urban blight, crime, poverty - but all in all I think it' a cool place.
We also have awesome public transportation, which does remind me of the bay area. We also lived in a suburb of Kansas City and the public transportation in St. Louis is much, much better. The metro light rail train is about my favorite thing here, and there's also a great bus system. I know plenty of people without cars, which is a money-saver... and totally doable here. My university has a car-share program, too, so people can borrow a (hybrid) car once a month to do big shopping.
So yeah, I think St. Louis is pretty special... of course, the weather is nowhere near as great as the bay area, and this freezing sleet stuff we had last night really needs to go...
Dar