What city is the US chess mecca

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David, check out all the YouTube videos of Grandmasters and Masters speaking to the St. Louis club and there are many important tournaments played there.  I'd be thrilled if there was anything half that good close to me - and I live between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

https://www.chess.com/groups/home/st-louis-arch-bishops-fan-club

I just joined this group. But I know there is an important tournament held in St Louis every year, world class chess. Btw, my sister lives there. Google that tournament, lot of links and videos.

But Makka is in Saudi Arabia. Salam

There's no US city named chess mecca. Believe me, I got good grades in oceanography.

In terms of major open tournaments, the east coast, west coast, and Chicago probably all have bigger and better options than St. Louis.

The reason St. Louis is still the chess "mecca" of the US right now is not huge annual tournaments, however, but the day to day offerings for locals. Free grandmaster lectures almost every night of the week and small but competitive rated tournaments once or twice per week are examples of things that can slowly but steadily build up the strength of the local community. The appearance of two or three top university programs in the area and the number of top national players who have moved to the city builds on this. Improving at chess is much easier in a community of strong players, and this community has gotten stronger together every year since the club opened.

I might take what the Chicago player above said and turn it on it's head - Chicago is easy to travel to from St. Louis a couple times a year for its mega-opens, and you can spend the rest of the year here taking advantage of the club's daily offerings however often suits you. I'm not well-versed in the east and west coast chess scenes but within the Midwest, at least, I'm confident St. Louis is the best place to be for chess.

First think I thought of when I read the question was "St. Louis." It's 2017, not 1960, and while New York may have more people by sheer number, St. Louis appears to have build itself an identity specifically around chess. The US Championship is there, the club there probably, on average, has the strongest players walk into it each year than any other building in the country, and when you see on youtube, Kasparov, So, Caurana, and Naka all locking horns in blitz and rabid tournaments on US soil...it's in St. Louis. Magnus, Aronian,  Vachier-Lagrave, and Nakamura were all at the same table playing Bughouse a while back...in St. Louis. 

So while you may have more tournaments to go to in the very large cities, and maybe "more" clubs, I doubt that in any of those clubs, you're as likely to run into a table with 4 of the top 7 players on Earth, or 2 or 3 of the strongest who ever lived, inside it at one time, than in St. Louis. 

St Louis

Very interesting thread , I was wondering about the same thing in my head.

Santa Fe.