City Center

So, the city center (as is said here instead of "downtown", although they know what you mean when you do say downtown) of Bangalore is only a few km from Whitefield, but the insane lawless traffic and Himalayan-esque speed bumps make it 45-1 hour away.
Anyway, I was pretty down on this place having only seen Whitefield, but as we got into downtown I calmed down. The dirt guttered roads of Whitefield give way to a real city. And downtown is cleaner than Whitefield. Buddy took me to a small market that was actually as nice as anything in the states, with lots of western brands. We then cut down a little side street off of the main drag downtown, MG road (Mahatma Gandhi road, according to Buddy the main road in every city in India is MG road - kinda like our Martin Luther King Blvds... well, except those signify that if you are on them you are in deep shit) and went into a tiny little second story pub called Pecos that serves only Kingfisher beer on draft, and, the whole hour or so we chilled there and drank beer, they only played The Doors music. Great place.
Given the choice I would definitely live in city center over near work in Whitefield, but I have to defer to the collective wisdom of the expats already here that the commute is just too brutal.

Looking down out of Pecos