Differences between San Francisco and London (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Differences between San Francisco and London (2014)

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103 pointsJasamba89 comments

My view of San Francisco culture as an outsider is actually quite negative now. For years I thought it was a culture very in line with my own, but after years of watching and interacting remotely with people from that scene my mind has changed.

I now feel it's largely dominated by arrogance. Everyone wants to "change the world" but what they really want is fame and fortune. A San Francisco startup is hilariously not practical. The article cites working hard and living frugally, but startup culture is the opposite. It's ludicrous extremes like having pingpong tables and games and coffee baristas at work. This is not living "frugally."

Worse though, is the idea that everyone is a temporarily embarrassed Steve Jobs who is good at everything, even the things they are completely ignorant of. The disdain for areas they have no expertise in is astonishing.

Meanwhile, the engine fuelling all this, the VCs, have their own agenda, namely themselves. They feed the culture because it benefits them. Most will fail, most people are not Steve Jobs. But the VCs just need one or two successes to make it worth it. It's in their interest to have every possible upcoming company under their thumb. The VCs message is always clear: you won't make it without them. You won't make it without being in Silicon Valley. It's impossible.

It's all very off putting and not at all like the glittering fake picture that the SV culture likes to paint.

>It's ludicrous extremes like having pingpong tables and games and coffee baristas at work. This is not living "frugally."

If a pingpong table and games are a major expense in your company, you're already dead. A barista is wasteful, unless he/she is serving coffee to hundreds of employees that would otherwise waste company time by leaving the office for a coffee break.

As an engineer, I avoid companies like the plague that refuse basic niceties in the name of saving money. It's a major indicator that it's going to be a miserable environment and you will have to fight tooth-and-nail for every piece of equipment and (even worse) raises/promotions.

> If a pingpong table and games are a major expense in your company, you're already dead.

I would disagree with such a sweeping statement. There are lots of bootstrapped companies that can't afford such things, nor do they even have the office space for them. This doesn't mean they're "already dead", it means they're doing things differently in the early days and prioritizing other expenses. Not every startup wants to be a VC-funded enterprise.

An established company, on other other hand...

Hmm, I work for Google now, and they are the first company I have worked for with either baristas[1] or ping-pong tables. These are definitely luxurious perks and not "basic niceties".

But Google is not a frugal startup. It's a giant company offering a big complicated benefits package.

[1] Free ones that is. Not counting big plants with cafes that charge market prices and seem to break even.

>These are definitely luxurious perks and not "basic niceties".

I don't think you realize how little these items cost when divided out amongst the number of employees. In particular when you consider the alternative of them leaving the Google campus for a half hour for a coffee break.

If you think catered lunches and the like are purely perks, then you drank the Kool-Aid. There is a reason they don't want you bringing free food/snacks home - it's because when you consume it in the office they are getting a benefit out of it as well.

> and they are the first company I have worked for with either baristas

It's not because Google is that much nicer. It's just because they realized early on the return on investment these things provide. This stuff is pretty much par for the course for newer tech companies in the bay.

I work at Google as well and actually they give us plastic plates to be able to bring dinner home. Some colleagues of mine use this perk to bring their baby food so that they don't have to cook at home.

There's a catch though: the dinner is served at 18:15

A ping pong table is a one time cost of about $600. I don't understand how that could be considered a luxury in the context of a company in San Francisco

The table itself may be cheap, but the office space for it is probably not.

EDIT: Not that I'm saying it's not worth it, just that there are more costs to consider here.

That, and also the culture that says it's OK to just play ping-pong whenever you feel it is Ok to play ping-pong.

Well, maybe that is not expensive, but it is a big deal, and a company has to back itself to know that it will come out ahead.

I'm very cynical about San Francisco, and given the choice I'd live in London in a second (it's a real city; San Francisco is a playpen, there's no comparison), but the ping-pong table thing is off-base.

A ping-pong table costs $200. (Maybe a really good one is $500.) That's about what your chair costs, assuming your chair doesn't suck. A decent engineer costs at least $150k basic, probably $250k all-in. That works out at an hourly rate of maybe $120? So if you get 15 fifteen engineer-minutes of work per employee through a catered lunch, it's a net cash win.

(Plus the tax treatment is very favorable for that sort of perk.)

There is a ton of excess in Silicon Valley, it's unbelievable, but the office perks are one of the less stupid parts of it.

What on earth are you talking about? These are some of the most off-base generalizations I've ever read.

I grew up in the San Francisco area, and I know a lot of people who are a much closer match to what the article describes as London-type people: they work for large, established companies for a regular paycheck, they have been here a long time, they are embedded in local professional networks, etc. Some of them even have to wear suits to work! I guess the author never heard of the established, large companies in the semiconductor and software industries that supply the majority of jobs here, not to mention health care, finance, etc. It's not all startups.

This is the funniest part of the article:

> San Francisco is 6 hours away from the US East Coast and even further from Europe and Asia. This leaves it a little isolated and less connected to other parts of the world. A noticeable consequence of this is that people seem to be less aware of, interested in and knowledgeable about world affairs.

The proportion of foreign-born people is higher in the San Francisco area than anywhere else in the United States with the possible exception of New York City. The San Francisco area is far more international than the author gives it credit for. By the way, we are closer to Asia both geographically and culturally than the East Coast is.

This article does nothing but repeat stereotypes, and it contains no original ideas.

I've never lived in SF or Europe, but as an American who's lived in the suburbs of DC and now NYC, it seems to me that Americans in general are less internationally conscious than Europeans. Most Europeans I know speak 3+ languages, have studied and lived abroad, and have traveled extensively. Americans in my experience tend to be more insular and less cultured. And it makes sense because Europe has so many different countries clustered together, traveling between them is cheap and easy, and they get 4+ weeks vacation.

I'm an Australian living and working in the SF Bay and my wife (Russian) and I have noticed the same thing. Americans in general seem to live in a bubble. Of course pretty much everyone lives in a bubble of some kind but the American bubble seems to be stronger than many.

It makes a lot of sense to me though. America, like Europe, has a huge amount of diversity in things to do and places to go. It would take a lifetime to see everything worth seeing in America and I can see why the effort (and cost) of going to say Europe or Asia wouldn't seem appealing when you can go see something domestically like the Grand Canyon, the museums in DC or any of the numerous different cities/states.

So Americans don't have as much reason to travel I think and given that the American economy is so enormous and the country is physically isolated from the rest of the world, ultimately, the state of the world outside America doesn't impact an American as much as it does a European.

This isn't to say that this is right but I think this at least somewhat provides some reason for the way things are.

"Most Europeans I know speak 3+ languages, have studied and lived abroad, and have traveled extensively."

This is likely selection bias, at least in part. If you were to live in Europe, the proportion of Europeans you know who speak 3+ languages would go down, the proportion of Americans you know who speak 2+ languages would go up.

BTW - 25% of the Americans I know speak Chinese. Also selection bias: I live in China and have never lived in the US.

When you consider European countries are the equivalent of US states in size, you can easily grasp why it's so common for people to travel between countries in Europe.

I'm not sure if you intended to say Americans are intentionally insular, but if so, that's definitely not the case. It's just a side effect of being able to travel 2000 miles easily without ever leaving the US.

Additionally, in order to travel to another country other than Mexico/Canada, airfare alone for a family of 4 will be like 10% of the average annual household income so it's not really affordable for most Americans.

> Most Europeans I know speak 3+ languages, have studied and lived abroad, and have traveled extensively.

This is very much specific to what country in Europe you're talking about and what field of work you're in. Over here in the UK, there are a lot fewer people that speak multiple languages than in say the Nordic countries or Germany.

The UK is trying hard to become the 51st state - with some success. It's quite shocking how much of our culture is imported from the US.

We get far more news about the US than we do about Europe, US movies and TV are mainstream while European movies usually only get niche middle class art house distribution, our singers sing with fake US accents, and it used to be much easier to decorate your living room with photos of Brooklyn Bridge than of European landmarks - until we started putting union jacks on everything.

As far as many English people are concerned the US is full of sexy super heroes, while the EU is full of immigrants, shifty foreigners, bureaucrats, and smelly cheese.

So it actually makes no sense to compare SF to London, because in many ways (excepting the weather, the age of the housing stock, and possibly the social signals used to indicate class) they're more similar than different.

Comparing SF to Berlin, Barcelona, or maybe Lisbon might be more revealing.

As an European who speaks 3 languages I can agree to that. I live in London and even though British people may not speak as many languages as the average continental European person, but most Europeans and especially British people have literally traveled the world.

I don't even mean that Europeans travel more because they jump a few European borders. Most European people I know have taken a whole year out after university to travel the entire planet, trying to see and experience as much as possible, from far Africa, to Asia and even America. I travel a lot myself and whenever I cross continents I always tend to meet the same people: Europeans (English, Swedish, Germans, French, etc.) and Australians. I rarely meet an American. Mostly I came across Canadians in South and Central America, but that was it.

> Most European people I know have taken a whole year out after university to travel the entire planet,

This is not true of most European people I know. Yes, some people do it, but it's a very small percentage of the population, concentrated among the wealthier part. Even in the UK it's only a small part of the population that does it, never mind in poorer countries like Greece. I do think the majority of Scandinavians I know have done the "gap year" trip, but not the majority of British, Polish, French, Spanish, or Greeks.

My view of what's normal in the UK, though, may be different because I don't live in London.

This is totally untrue. As someone from the north of england, now living in London I would say <5% of people I went to school with took a 'gap year'.

In London I would put that number closer to 25%, but that says more about the type of people that move to London than it does about Europeans in general.

Exactly. I'm Canadian, and although my friends travel pretty regularly to the US/Mexico and sometimes Europe, I was amazed living in London how often my coworkers would be in other countries. Despite being near the US border, I rarely see people do weekend trips to the states, but it happens all the time between european countries it seems. Maybe flight prices have an impact, but europe just seems completely different culturally with regards to multiculturalism and leisure travel.

I don't know if it's true, but the common belief here in Europe is that interstate/intercontinental flights are cheaper in the USA. Flying from Prague to Milano costs around $100 with a low-cost airline, if you wait for a good deal.

From London, if you're flexible with the destination, it's easy enough to choose the $50 return deal.

This month, there are flights to France for £5 each way.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/cheap-flights/?from=STN&out-fr...

I know, but the median price is probably higher than this, because London is a huge international hub and a connection with both the east and the west. France is also very close to London.

Anything under $300 is a cheap roundtrip from where I am. We can often fly to europe cheaper than to the other side of the country.

There isn't a good rail system in north America and flights are expensive and slow (due to security and border crossing). You don't cross any borders traveling around Europe.

A trip between London and Paris is faster than a trip between New York and Boston.

Hey look, more stereotypes!

This isn't Reddit, if you have nothing of value to add then don't post.

Yes, this entire post is about generalizations. I figured that was sort of implied.

I criticized the article for containing nothing but stereotypes, and you replied with more of the same stereotypes.

And yet, your post added even less. He clearly mentions that Europeans he knows are more cultured than the typical American he deals with (caveat: I lived in DC and now live in Geneva, and this is my experience as well).

Obviously, we're dealing with stereotypes. If you're this repulsed by it, I'm very interested in knowing how you'd dissect "culture" without resorting to generalizations?

Generalizations are not equal to stereotypes.

I replied with my own observations regarding cultural differences based on my own personal experience, which you've sarcastically dismissed as "stereotypes".

Mods: Is there a way to mute/block users?

>Mods: Is there a way to mute/block users?

Great question. Coming from Mr. "I have no experience with Europeans, London, or San Francisco, but here's my opinion anyway".

To contribute: I've spent a considerable time in London and the original post has left me unconvinced that the author has spent any time in London except as a tourist and living vicariously through other peoples' blog posts.

Maybe you didn't actually read my original comment that you responded to, but I never defended the article - in fact I agree, it seems to mostly be baseless stereotypes explained away by the author working in totally different type of jobs in the cities (management consulting vs. startup). I was just speaking to a single point, from the perspective of Americans vs. Europeans. If you disagree then feel free to actually address any of the points I made with a counterargument. "Hey more stereotypes!" adds nothing to the discussion and devolves the community towards being another Reddit, where people just bicker like children rather than engaging in constructive debate.

There is a difference between generalizations, which may have value if shrewdly observed, and shallow stereotypical characterizations. This post was shallow. Pointing that out is every bit as value as snide remarks about Reddit and an equally snide uninformed reading of the piece. Perhaps more so.

How is that stereotyping? He didn't come out saying "all Americans are dumb, iliterate, and about 100 lbs overweight". _That_ would have been stereotyping. By contrast, his post was a fairly mild and inoffensive "in my experience, the Europeans I know are more cultured". Are you reading more into it than is there?

voting down because this sounds like a bad faith reply: it assumes the poster is wrong and demands proof, rather than admitting a lack of understanding and asking for guidance.

> The proportion of foreign-born people is higher in the San Francisco area than anywhere else in the United States with the possible exception of New York City.

Unless you combine San Jose and San Francisco into a single metro area (which I wouldn't, and the Census doesn't), then Miami, San Jose, and Los Angeles all have San Francisco beat, by quite a large margin [1]. If you're talking combined statistical areas, I don't know and don't have a source, but would suspect that both the Los Angeles and Miami CSAs beat out San Jose-San Francisco's on this metric.

Or maybe there has been a particular and drastic demographic shift in the Bay Area over the last 4-5 years that I'm not aware of.

[1]: http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/09/americas-leading-imm...

Proportion foreign born isn't a good proxy for "cultural diversity" anyway. If I a city's foreign-born population can be attributed largely to immigration from 1 or 2 countries that is hardly diverse...

"The proportion of foreign-born people is higher in the San Francisco area than anywhere else in the United States"

Doesn't really change anything. The point is that like most of us Europeans will point out. Americans are rather insular in general. Doesn't matter if you live in SF or not. Americans don't pay much attention to what is going on outside of their bubble. Also they tend to lack curiosity about the world outside.

Even foreign born Americans seem to end up like that. I've met Americans originally born and raised in Sweden but where utterly clueless about what Sweden is like in general or is like today.

At least in northern Europe which I know best, discussing politics and world affairs at the lunch table is rather common. When bought by an American company it was obvious things were different when one of the instruction was "don't talk politics or religion at work!"

Like others are saying (and actually the article also mentions), it's a very subjective view. I've also lived in both cities and had quite different experiences. To me, SF/bay area felt more like a rat race and my friends had a better work/social balance in London (note that I didn't work in finance). And while it might look like in SF are "working on causes they relate to." To me it feels more like people in SF find they have to be on some sort of mission. Just having a job you like isn't good enough. You need to change the world.

London is far too diverse for this comparison to make sense. It has ten times the population of San Francisco. If you think London is a particular way, it is probably because the bit of London you are in is that way.

> If you think London is a particular way, it is probably because the bit of London you are in is that way.

Not just London. Take this quote from the original article:

> In San Francisco the predominant ways people make money is through selling or floating their startup - it’s about working hard and living frugally whilst working with your team

For want of a better word, that's BS. Firstly that pre-supposes everyone working in tech in SF is in a position where they'd make money off their startup selling or floating (many startup employees aren't, and even then as a profitable exit is the exception, not the norm.

Secondly, it discounts everyone quietly making significant amounts of money plugging away at a sizable tech company milking the RSUs over time (and that's a lot of people).

I've lived in both cities, my experiences have been completely different.

The population of San Francisco proper is only ~800k but the population of the Bay Area as a whole is about 7 million people, which is only slightly less than Greater London's 8 million.

You are skewing the other way. A reasonable comparison may be the bay areas 7m vs the london commuter belts 14m

Why is this relevant? The Bay area is not San Francisco. The post is comparing London with San Francisco. San Francisco is tiny compared to London in both area and population.

One of you is talking about SF the city. The other about SF the political entity.

San Francisco the political entity what is that? At any rate the blog post isn't about politics at all.

San Francisco is a city and the "Bay Area" is a region. In London people from both Chiswick and Hackney which are quite far away from each other both say they are from London. Someone from Sonoma and someone from Santa Clara don't say they're from San Francisco.

Very true. London is an incredibly diverse international city. San Francisco is, by comparison, a village.

Funny how it ends with "my very individual perspective (I worked in London as a management consultant whereas in SF I worked with a startup)" ...which was entirely obvious throughout the whole piece.

Looks more of a "This is the bus/train route I used to take and these are types of folks, places I saw." Very simplistic view of both cities.

Curious, but what else would you have it be? A detailed, scientific comparison of jobs, club memberships, languages spoken, schools attended...Academic to the point of tedious?

I thought the whole point of a blog was personal experience? This is what the author saw and therefore, this is what he can express with honesty.

Here's a comment of a surprised San Francisco traveler that sums up the city for me: "I was rather surprised that there were so many homeless people. You'd think the supposed tech center of the world would be...you know...civilized and able to protect the weakest members of society better."

SF is by far the dirtiest first world city I've ever been in - significantly fouler than the outskirts of Naples, as uncollected garbage is less rank than SF's human faeces.

I hear a lot of complaints about SF being too tech-centric and monocultural. This is only true if you segregate yourself from the SF natives and the vibrant, diverse community that's existed before the tech booms and busts of the past two decades.

It's easy to feel like it's just a tech bubble -- there's not much interaction outside of it. But if you make an effort to step outside the tech-centric environment, it can be extremely rewarding.

Who has time for that? Seems everyone in tech is burning the midnight oil to get the next MVP out, and have forgotten that life outside of work exists.

Many companies also encourage navel gazing by providing "free" lunches, team outings, tech-meetups, company happy hours and parties, and other ways of remaining pretty much in the company and tech social scene.

If you're young and somehow didn't buy in to the many enticements to work every waking moment, you might have time to socialize with people outside of tech (if you were interested enough to do so, and actually made an effort to move out of your comfort zone).

If you're older, you are likely to want to spend your few precious hours outside of work with your family, and maybe if you're very lucky, with a few friends, who are probably also in the tech field.

Also, don't forget that many people in tech are famously introverted and socially phobic. Getting them to socialize at all, much less go out of their comfort zone and meet people unlike them is a challenge.

There are many bubble-dwellers in SF, but that doesn't make SF a purely bubble society.

To those who think so, consider this: how many Chinatown natives or longtime residents have you met for so much as an hour (total) of meaningful conversation?

How many Bayview natives?

North Beach?

How many South Bay natives?

Oakland?

etc.

The bubble myopia can become one's universe if that person doesn't choose to pop out of the bubble now and then. So to speak.

Almost everyone I know in tech in the Bay Area isn't like you describe... some of those things are true about some folks, but on the whole, most tech workers are not stuck in the tech community bubble.

>"But if you make an effort to step outside the tech-centric environment, it can be extremely rewarding."

Can you give an example?

I was in the Bay area during the first bubble, so that's my basis for my comments. An anthropologist I knew described the Bay area as a place where 'adolescents go to retire', which made a bunch of sense. A sense of the 60s was still around, with the general wackiness and Folsom Street Fair and the alt-cultures around. The tech scene was merely the latest incarnation of the gold-rush mentality.

But now, given everything I have read about the Bay these days, I don't think I'd want to live there. Apparently all the artists have left, Burning Man is a corporate event soon to be shut down permanently (given what I've heard about the cops), money, money, money... too much wanna be zillionaires all hoping to best buds with Zuckerberg someday. IT culture is not what is was 'back in the day'. And get off my lawn!

And I have lived in London for seven years, more than I did in SF. I greatly prefer London. Good public transport, it feels like a place you can live, it's a real city, not a bunch of suburbs (but now the rents... well, being used to SF rents when I moved, it was similar).

My take on the article is the guy projects a lot onto the two cities. The tech scene has all these romantic associations with it and good lord, I am getting tired of hearing about them. At the end of the day, it just a job for most people and few startups actually matter (Uber matters because they are screwing up so much). "Changing the world" only equals working on social problems like establishing UBI, not running the world's largest BBS so your grandma can read fake news that is written in Romania or feeding the ADD of adolescents who like to take pictures of their food. As for financial, that will always matter until capitalism crashes.

How can one compare UK and US and say the later has better social mobility? Ever heard of NHS (1) or council housing? Have you compared tuition fees on both countries?

While I mostly understand the different atmosphere on both places, and even agree with some of the points, I have to say the author had to be pretty immersed in a very particular bubble to have come to this conclusion - which does not seem to fit reality as all.

(1) Yes, NHS has its problems, but US simply does not have anything like it.

I was born in London, I've lived and worked in London, I've returned many times since to visit family and friends. I recognise the life choices and cultural norms presented here as only a small fraction of my experience of modern day Londoners.

I don't know SFO but I suspect the author has a similarly narrow perspective there.

San Francisco's climate is way better. But looks like theare are more programming jobs in London ( ~ 250 ) vs San Francisco ( ~ 140 ) https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=PUBLISHED_AT_D...

https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=PUBLISHED_AT_D...

London also has more than 10 times the population of SF...

As a foreigner I have lived in London for more than a decade and have friends and families living in SF. One interesting I found is although both London and SF have large number of foreigners/immigrants, in London not one group of immigrants have dominant majority and deep roots in the city. Immigrants usually live scattered around the boroughs, this I think makes London more diverse than many US cities. Because new comers will have to interact with people of other background and try to fit the culture of where they are living.

This article is 2 years old and it shows. Comparing post-brexit London to San Francisco falls flat very quickly. Living in London is not living in Europe.

"Living in London is not living in Europe"

Could you explain that sentence? Please.

"San Francisco contains a large number of start-ups with small teams where employees feel like they can have greater impact. Many people found their own businesses to pursue their passions or are part of larger teams working on causes they relate to. This leads to a culture of creating impact on others and of doing something that’s has wider benefit than to just oneself."

This is more startup and corporate hype than reality. Many startups pretend to set out to change the world to get funding, try to motivate their employees, and get good PR. The media is often eager to be fooled and jump on any bandwagon if there's a story in it, but people who've been in the industry a while and aren't wet behind the ears have heard such hype repeatedly, and it gets really old after a while, and is not very convincing.

Most people, whether in SF or anywhere else in the world, work because they get paid. Sure, it's nice to work on what you love, but relatively few people achieve that dream in the long run. Much more common is burnout and disillusionment, not just in tech but in many other careers as well. It often looks rosy and beautiful when you're fresh out of college, but gets less rosy with each passing year, unless you happen to win the startup lottery and have fuck-you money to really work on whatever you want whenver you want, or not, as the mood strikes you. Otherwise, it's mostly work, not play, and certainly not saving the world.

Wholeheartedly agree - except with the start-p lottery/F-U money.

What most startup employees don't understand that even if their start-up wins the lottery, they're not going to have F-U money. That's reserved for co-founders and investors. Maaaaaybbeeee if you're employee 1-20 at the next Facebook or Google you'll end up with a substantial sum. But the rest of the pack? You're .1% (if you're lucky) might next you $500-100k. Not enough to brag about.

If you have .1% and your company sells for $100 million, you don't get .1% of $100M. You get .1% of whatever's left over after the investors have gotten their 2-3x preferences, all debts have been settled etc.

There are also an alarmingly large number of Trustafarians in San Francisco who are playing at 'being in a start up' rather than admitting they are just dossing about on a trust fund...

There seem to be a rather large number of those people in London too. Though in their cases, it's often more playing at 'running a company' in general rather than a startup.

One stellar example: http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-fling-social-media-app-die...

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion, or are you just making baseless insults?

I've lived in the bay area for 25 years, I'm in the tech world and I've been around the block a few times...

Do you have any evidence that it isn't true? :) A wealthy family, if you have one, would be an excellent source of money for a startup.

It's sometimes hard to tell which bits are for real, and which bits are the play-acting, but I've long suspected anyway that more people than you'd think are playing startup. Does it matter if it's with somebody else's money rather than their own? I say no... but of course if your story fits the rags-to-riches American Dream then this can help ennoble what would otherwise be a straightforward tale of simple money-grabbing.

Keep in mind this was written in early 2014. Mike Judge's Silicon Valley would come out a few months later.

* cough *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXuFrtmOYKg

This crap has been going on for a very, very long time. The Dilbert comic strip started in 1989. The first Internet bubble burst way back in 2001. Everything parodied in Silicon Valley was as bad or even worse back then, and earlier. The real Silicon Valley is a parody of itself.

Yup. To clarify, I was pointing out that the author may not have been aware of the hubris of "making the world a better place" or how little meaning it holds for those that have been here for a while. I think if he were to read this now, he'd agree a lot of it is bullshit.

I have lived in both for years. IMHO this is a shallow comparison indeed. Not to be relied upon.

I lived in London for almost 3 decades; this is exactly why I moved to San Francisco

Luckily the comments are much better than this biased piece of blog post. Lived in both places. Loved only one. Won't tell you which one.

This is almost the exact opposite view of the London I see.

A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people;

some opinion like the east and the west

> Many of the wealthy in San Francisco are newly rich, directly from their own work in building a business. Many of these businesses are public or run professionally and so there is less space for heirs and, with the continuing fast pace of technological change, plenty of space for new entrants - meritocracy, not connections are key.

Uhh not sure what SF you're living in

what a vapid predictable piece of self aggrandization.

how so

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