1) $2495 for a 500 sq. ft. one bedroom apartment.
He's obviously in the wrong part of town and can't figure out how to use the real estate section of the NYT. Extend your commute on the subway by 15-20 minutes a day, or live in Queens or something and you'll shave 70% off of that for a place twice as large. In 10 minutes I found a dozen 2 bedroom apartments for $1600 in Queens. You want to live in an expensive area, then that's what you get. When you model a place like NYC, it's better to think of it as a much larger area. A few blocks is like a few miles of price differentiation elsewhere. Don't like what's right here? Go walk 10 minutes in any direction and you'll be someplace completely different.
2) ‘Ramen’ money in New York is enough to support three families, and then some, elsewhere.
I have no idea what he's spending money on. Even if he was pulling down only $60k a year (unlikely as a quant), your apartment is only 1/2 of your gross income. Even after taxes you have like a thousand a month to live on at that rate and no car expenses. Being a quant @ GS, I'd figure you're pulling down another 30-40k/yr gross anyways so you can still have a nice night out once a month. NYC is really not an expensive place to eat. I don't think I've ever paid more than $7 for a stuff me to the gills breakfast. And a decent date-meal for two ran <$120 with drinks. Apparently the author never figured out how to operate a Deli or a Diner.
3) can't fit in socially with the wrong social group that I'm just dying to be part of blah blah
Cry me a river, go to different bars and stop hanging around with people who won't let you into their clique/you already have a girlfriend (at the time) what are you doing picking up chicks? Color me confused.
4) In San Francisco, people don’t pay two months’ rent to a real estate pimp: they create Craigslist and make the pimp obsolete.
I wasn't aware that San Francisco had managed to abolish Real Estate agents. It's funny because craigslist serves other parts of the country and we still have Real Estate agents....
5) The intellectual candle-power isn’t there
And the elsewhere goes on to pine that everybody he wants to hang with is ivy-league. The only thing that he said that makes any kind of sense is that the educational makeup of the in-city schools is all wrong for tech startups. I mean there's NYU-Poly I guess, but that's small fry, Princeton is not really that far away (an hour more than Stanford is from downtown SF by car). But there's a ton of schools with great engineering programs within a day's drive from the city (MIT for example). Am I supposed to understand that the entire educational system of the North East and mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. can't out-compete Stanford? Again, color me confused?
6) One of the biggest shocks upon moving to New York was realizing it had no cafés
What? At this point I'm not even sure the author has even been to NYC. Which is besides the point, the point he's making is, "you can’t have startups or revolutionary political movements without cozy cafés to dawdle, work, and plot in." Because as I noticed before, the author failed to figure out how to operate a Deli or a Diner. He also failed to figure out how to operate a public park, a bookstore, a coffee shop, a donut shop, a bench, a stoop and numerous other public places other than an office where you can sit and meet for long hours in the city. Protip, there's this fantastic huge public place you can use in NYC called "Central Park" absolutely free. If that's not "cozy" enough, there's a bunch of smaller parks like Madison Square all dotted throughout the city. If you want to eat while you forment revolution, there's like a Starbuck's on every single block in the city. http://kottke.org/05/01/maximum-starbucks-density Even in 2005.
7) The reality is, the food culture in New York mostly sucks.
I know food can be subjective, but seriously? I'm definitely sure that tales of living in the city are grossly exaggerated and/or he was confused with living in Tampa, FL or something. No wait, I'm sure I've seen a cafe there.
7b) blah blah blah, people in SF really all want to be farmers
Wonderful, if you live in a place with some dirt you can till without getting a fine, you can farm it. NYC is not such a place. Deal with it.
7c) Even the skeeziest convenience store in Daly City or Oakland has a drinkable collection of California wines on offer.
Like I said, I don't live in NYC, but last I remember was being able to pick up some Sonoma Valley vino at every 7-11 along the East Coast for <$10.
7d) In three years of living in New York, I never ate someone else’s home-cooked food even once.
See #3. You.hang.out.with.the.wrong.people. I'm not sure I can put it more plainly than that. No wonder you couldn't afford anything.
One thing NYC is famous for is locally grown produced trucked in in the wee hours of the morning to sell in small stalls. The NYC butcher was the model of meat procurement until the grocery store and strip malls ended that across the country. For goodness sakes, the whole city is basically a farmer's market. You know what's doing gangbusters business? Whole Foods. I barely know people in the city, and I've never lived there, and I've had more home-cooked meals than this poor sap.
8) blah blah home depot in NYC only sells nail clippers and 10 cent nails.
This is really just a jab and the relative masculinity of New Yorkers compared to San Franciscoers. Whatever, the author got eaten up and spit out by the city and simply couldn't handle it, now he wants to spend the rest of his days cultivating asparagus in a plot behind his house. It's really amazing how so many of the tallest buildings in the U.S. can be in one city with no hardware stores in site.
He's then absolutely enamored by a real Home Depot, no doubt anchoring a strip mall someplace, and a big box electronics store as proof that SF is a hacker's paradise. yawn, I live in the suburbs and have half a dozen of each within 20 minutes of my house. By this standard, Anytown, US is twice the hacker's paradise than SF since most places have a Home Depot, a Lowes, a local lumber yard, a garden nursery, a stone quarry, a Fry's, a Best Buy and two Radio Shacks.
9) Three years in New York, and I went north of 14th St maybe three times. Trips to the Met excepted, of course
Facepalm. No wonder nobody would talk to you in a bar, it's not because you were a quant.