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Comment by ageitgey | Hacker News Reader

Not to be flip, but literally anywhere. Mountain View is a pretty small place with just one main street - Castro St. You'll see people coding on laptops at every cafe and restaurant around there.

It's the same way in Palo Alto around University Ave and to a lesser extent, Menlo Park around Santa Cruz Ave. Your biggest problem with be the inability to escape the "tech world" since nearly everyone you meet will work in tech.

But if you want to meet up with someone to code or chat, the suggestions for both RedRock Coffee (Mountain View) and Philz Coffee (Palo Alto) are great.

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How exactly do you escape the tech world when you want? Just visiting SV for a couple days was borderline oppressive to me! Everyone has an idea for an app, nearly every bar or restaurant patron was discussing something technical. How do you overcome the lack of professional diversity, or am I just hypersensitive to it? Chicago is admittedly not all that diverse (we have lawyers, accountants, consultants, or tech) but the jump from ~1 profession to >1 profession results in a wildly different experience for me.

Not to be flip, but you don't. You just finally get sick of it, and you move away. Even niche interest groups in the bay area are dominated by people who work in tech.

The problem of diversity in the tech industry will not be solved until the industry is forced by its employees to relocate.

I moved out of the state to escape it.

> Even niche interest groups in the bay area are dominated by people who work in tech.

I don't think this is true. In San Francisco 12% of the population is tech workers, while the valley is closer to just 30%. I live in Oakland and outside of work encounter almost no one that works in tech.

I also agree, living in the east bay. In cities like Hayward, Union City, San Leandro, Castro Valley, you will most likely find that most people you meet locally don't work in tech. I can see the same for San Francisco, but chances are people on HN tend to hang out in neighborhoods like SOMA where it's a lot more tech, than neighborhoods like Sunset where it's not.

While I agree that there are better and worse places in the bay area, they mostly self-partition based on the pain of transportation to tech centers. Sure, you can always choose a more painful commute to escape tech, but that's implicit. You can commute from Fresno or Marin, too.

East bay neighborhoods that have "easy" access to SF/Facebook/Google are just as clogged with tech people as anywhere else, modulo the pain of a daily BART commute.

(Also, arguing about exact percentages isn't relevant. It doesn't matter if it's 12% or 30%, if the group overlaps substantially in lifestyle and interests. If I have to change my entire lifestyle to avoid being surrounded by tech bros, I'd rather just move somewhere where I can go out and not be surrounded.)

I find professional diversity in interest groups. I swim (not very well), and my masters swim team is comprised of doctors, nurses, stay at home dads, accountants, Olympians, bankers, etc. There's obviously tech people, but we don't even talk shop.

I belong to a service organization and most of us are lawyers, real estate agents, city officials, professors, university administrators, and s small smattering of tech people. Again we rarely talk shop.

> How exactly do you escape the tech world when you want?

Go hiking I guess. The hills have lots of awesome trails.

I live in SV but grew up in Chicago. It's one of the best things going for that city.

When I lived in the bay area, my favorite way was to take a hike – https://bahiker.com/

Currently live in Mountain View. Red Rock is the epicenter. Lesser known (but pointing it out here so it gets more business and stays in business) is Olympus Caffe & Bakery. It’s not really suited towards long coding sessions. But it’s easier to talk without being overheard by 18 other startups.

Agree with other posters. The challenge is escaping tech. I have two kids and every parent at their school works for Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Apple, HP, some startup unicorn, or some new startup. Me? Oh, uh yeah. I’m a founder of a 50-person startup.

I've written thousands and thousands of lines of code at Red Rock. The wifi can be a little flaky and the seating isn't ideal but the coffee is good and the business is a non-profit. Bring a pair of headphones if you want to escape the noise.

But if there's a performance upstairs (and, yes, Open Mic counts), please have manners and don't take your loud conversations upstairs with you.

I recommend the Assam tea. Real, loose leaf in a real pot.

A new coffee place called "Coffeebar" just opened up in Menlo Park and it's really nice - one of the few large enough to actually have a lot of seating (it still gets crowded though).

As a Menlo Park resident and a fan of Coffeebar, please do not go to Coffeebar.

Menlo Park is separated from Mtn. View by the 20 minutes of traffic known as Palo Alto.

It's almost faster by bike when you use the bike bridges and car-limited Bryant St.

Used to live in MV, comment is legit. I still drive down to RedRock from SF at times on the weekend, years after moving (40ish mi).

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