Maybe downtown SF is just the lesser of two evils between SF and SV because of job location. Maybe they really want to be with their extended family in a suburb of Cleveland.
This especially made me laugh because the VP of Eng at one of my Silicon Valley startups was from Cleveland and would often joke "I escaped a prison sentence by leaving Cleveland" and "The place is so polluted the river caught on fire, TWICE!".
I've been to Cleveland and it's actually a pretty solid place to live. I would argue you could have a far better life there with a $50k house than slavishly working for the rest of your life for a multi-million dollar tiny home in a giant sprawled out suburb.
FWIW I never met a single person in the bay area that didn't want to live basically anywhere else, but couldn't because of work (and access to work). I'm sure they're there but I never met them. Networking is going to be terrible during COVID too, which is arguably the best thing about being down there for a startup anyways.
I just think people are going to be amazed at how much that place hollows out as more tech companies decide to permanently go remote. I loved the weather, but I also like not having to work as much to put a roof over my head. I'm sure that resonates with a lot of other people too, that don't think retiring early surrounded by friends and family is a prison sentence.
Sure it's not as bad as say, northern Minnesota, but once you get away from the ocean and desert areas, if there's standing freshwater around there can be plenty of mosquitoes. The last time I camped in Big Basin everyone was running through clouds of them to/from the restrooms.
But yeah, in the cities like SF and LA, there aren't very many. The city would spray for mosquitoes at night when I lived in San Mateo, which surprised me coming from the midwest and not expecting Californians to be ok with such chemicals sprayed throughout their neighborhoods while they slept.
I'm really hopeful that remote work becomes widely accepted so that everyone gets more of what they want. That those who don't want to live in a city are no longer forced to and for those that want to live in a city, it becomes more affordable.
The most recent tech boom finally managed to get some construction going on in SF, but in a city where living rooms were converted into bedrooms and wildly successful 20-somethings having roommates, it's going to have to fall a long way before the city is affordable again on minimum wage.
All this says is you live in a bubble. I know many people who would love to live here but can't afford to do so. I also live here and the only reason I'm considering leaving is the expense. I imagine most people who own a home here don't stay here because they hate it. They could sell their homes and probably retire early anywhere else. FWIW I'm not from here. The only people who want to live "anywhere else" aren't from here and are only here for the money. Those people will leave, sure. But then again, maybe not, when they see that employees here make more than they do in Cleveland.
> I'm sure that resonates with a lot of other people too, that don't think retiring early surrounded by friends and family is a prison sentence.
I think you're vastly underestimating the number of people that are from here that want to stay here. I've got many, many friends that have left the area simply because they can't afford it.
It's going to be decades before the bay "empties out", because as soon as that starts happening, those people living six adults to a three-bedroom home are going to start spreading out and the people that left against their will are going to come back. And there is still going to be an absurd amount of money here, even it gets spread around some.
And as much as companies may start to allow remote work (not at all a forgone conclusion in my mind, although the $$ seems right), there are still going to be competitive advantages to employees and founders who decide to live here.
It was an ideal spot for 92/280 access. But while it was equidistant from everything of interest on a map, traffic was often so impossibly bad that everything was equally prohibitively inconvenient to reach. And forget about parking in SF after you've managed to get there, not on any busy night everyone else is out on too.
If you want to access the SF night life regularly, San Mateo isn't really a convenient place for it. Maybe via Caltrain+BART@Millbrae? That wasn't easy from my place, our location was very car-optimized.
I did prefer the San Mateo weather to SF or Berkeley though, even up on the hill we got way less cold damp crap weather ruining our nights out on the deck.
Why isn’t the train a more attractive option? You’re in one of the very few areas in the US with even one train line, and you still don’t sound like you’re very keen on it.
Surely the train is a fine option from San Mateo right into central SF? What’s stopping you?
- no wifi
- relatively expensive for a return trip
- 4th and King terminal is nowhere. You still have to get to FiDi or somewhere
- runs hourly after a certain time, ending at midnite (pre-corona.)
- if you forget/can't prove you paid, $200+fine and interrogation
There is garage parking downtown after 6 pm, but that's $20+.
This happened to me the first time I took BART to Millbrae from the Glen Park station. I did some transfer that I mistakenly thought was covered by my ticket but apparently wasn't. Was treated like a scumbag criminal by a BART cop on a power trip getting in my face and shoving me around, ended up with a stiff fine to boot.
I've had nothing but problems with Clipper cards and tagging on and off the Caltrain.