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as someone who's lived in SF for years this is all very true.

Food is expensive and a lot of it's designed to be instagrammed. There are definitely some great spots but not that many and really not that diverse (lacks middle eastern, greek, british, American bbq, spanish)

Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am, hardly any live music, gender imbalance, and not much density so it often just feels "dead" in a lot of places

the weather is ok. there's usually a few hours per day where it's pristine but quickly gets too cold/windy. And it's too uncomfortable to eat outside for dinner.

Public transit is unpleasant and slow, so most people who can afford it resort to 100% rideshare. And having your own car here is also a pretty bad experience (though some people would say this is a feature not a bug)

Petty crime is high. My friends regularly have to deal with car break-ins. (yes the same person would have multiple break ins in a single year, and no they don't keep anything in their car)

It's hard for me to speak to the culture, most of my network is in tech, and most people I know intend to leave at some point. Living in a city that people don't plan on living in for very long does not create a very good community or culture.

I live here because this is where my job is and where my friends are, but I want to leave pretty badly. I just don't really have anywhere else to go, if not my home country

> Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am, hardly any live music, gender imbalance, and not much density so it often just feels "dead" in a lot of places

As a southern Californian, I can attest to this. It's pathetic that our bars have last call at 2am (effectively many close at 1:30a).

There's been push after push to get last-call to 4am like it is in NY but they never go anywhere in the state legislature.

I think it's silly that they even close. What's the point? Can someone enlighten me on why bars and stuff close at 1am? Thanks!

Politicians don't want to go against MADD, and business owners might not want to expand payroll to staff those hours where people are far more likely to get either violent or violently ill.

Because the best way to reduce drunk driving risk is to force everyone out of bars at more or less the same time. Back in my teens and twenties I found myself intervening, with varied levels of success, to prevent drunken trips to the store because "beer-o'clock" was nigh and it was the last chance to obtain more alcohol.

It's always seemed crazy to create a sudden spike in the number of impaired drivers.

What I'd like to see is a comparison of statistics from areas with early last call laws and other jurisdictions with later last call or no restrictions. It would be great to move past what feels good and use some actual data to make a our policies.

In the UK they pushed for pubs to close much earlier. The effect was that people would start drinking earlier and more (at home), and binging because stuff closes earlier. TL;DR it backfired.

Drunk people tend to get sick, fight and break things which has a huge public cost.

Yeah, but they could do that any time of day! Especially when you close bars at 1am and send everyone drunk onto the street at the same time.

They don't, though, do they? They do it at night.

Bars are loud. People smoking outside of bars late at night tend to be very loud and sometimes get in fights. If you're trying to go to sleep, it's annoying to have a crowd of drunk young men screaming at each other outside your window.

So the bar wont lose its licence - I recall seeing JWZ's posts about how many loops they went through with dna lounge

I'm not sure what you're comparing it to, SF is known to have a world-class food scene. There are multiple examples all of the things you listed(except maybe british but who wants that?), as well as things that you don't find in may other cities: burmese, cambodian, laotian, peruvian.

SF does have some very nice restaurants, but the vast majority are nothing special and quite over-priced for what you get IMO. And the very nice restaurants are so expensive they're not the thing you go to more than once a month unless you're very wealthy.

>> SF is known to have a world-class food scene.

Exactly. It is known to have a scene. It is a great place for people who like to go to restaurants. For people who like good food, not so much. I remember going to a tea tasting in SF's chinatown while at a conference there. My friend (a local) asked if we had such good tea in Vancouver. The shop owner who was serving us interrupted: "They do. My brother has a shop there. He sent me this tea."

Really not sure what your point is here. Name cities in North America that have 10+ legitimate Burmese restaurants. If you want to try good Burmese food, it really helps to have local Burmese restaurants. The last time I was at a Burmese restaurant in San Francisco, the waitress told me a lot of the staff was in Burma for the month finding new flavors and ideas for recipes. In most cities there is no chance that the wait staff at your local ethnic restaurant is actively going back to Burma every year to get new recipes and ingredients.

Since you mentioned Vancouver, I searched for Burmese food on Yelp. Only 7 restaurants total come back total.

2 are "Burmese / Thai / Malaysian" Asian fusion places Three of 3 are a generic Asian chain called Noodlebox that has one item called "Burmese naan" 1 is a Thai restaurant with one "Burmese curry" dish 1 is a Vietnamese restaurant that mentions its near one of the Burmese / Thai / Malaysian fusion restaurants

So Yelp has 7 total Burmese restaurants in Vancouver, not one of them is actually Burmese, and almost all of them don't even have Burmese dishes (where is the tea leaf salad? Burmese naan doesn't count)

So you can act like San Francisco is just known for having a food scene, but when you don't even have access to many of the same world cuisines in other cities it is hard for me to take you seriously when you say its not a place for people who like "good food."

You know the majority of American produce is grown in California? Do the vegetables get better when they're shipped for a few days to the east coast?

heh. food scene. i don't want a 'food scene.' i just want good food. i don't care if it's on 3 plates with sauce designs, i don't care if it looks like a beef-flower, or if it photographs well for my 'stream.'

btw the british school of cuisine is one of the most famous in the world. not scene-wise though, but good food is for eating, not instagram.

sf is definitely not known for tasty food. it's known for showing off food. good for bored tourists. not good to live there. and no, sf doesn't habe good greek food or middle-eastern food. i've been to greece and the middle east quite a bit, and they have better food at has stations.

sf is all show and hype. that's not what locals want.

> sf is definitely not known for tasty food.

Yes, it is.

It's mostly orthogonal to the trendy food scene, and if you follow the latter hoping to find the former you’ll likely be disappointed, but SF is known for excellent examples of both a wide variety of authentic ethnic cuisines and a wide variety of excellent unique creative/fusion offerings apart from the trendy scene.

so what is that food?

the south is known for great bbq. chicago is the meat capitol, with deep dish and greektown. maryland for crab and maine for lobster, nyc has authentic jew-food that rivals what i ate in israel and jordan.

what is the food sf is known for? because if i literally ask anyone i know, the answer will be 'fusion.' or 'pizza' with ranch and lettuce in it.

you're known for california rolls. the big mac of sushi.

known doesn't mean known just to you.

you may have some good restaurants here and there that people can uber to. the rest is fusion of hipster and lsd microdoses.

in a city i want to live in, i walk outside and pick from 5 good places. you take an uber across town to those. people are leaving now that work doesn't require them there. to a cities with better food.

Mission burritos, dosas, nouveau veg/vegan, food trucks

Is that not the menu of any CA town with over 100k people?

Yes, lots of places in California, especially Northern California, are inspired by,or share inspiration with, SF.

Can't think of any place I've known so many people (and not just of any one national background) who live well outside the immediate area go to regularly specifically because of the quality of some particular cuisine (often, people of non-US origin going for their own national cuisine) that is there, though.

> because if i literally ask anyone i know

That doesn't really tell me anything about SF, but it does tell me a lot about the people you know.

> you're known for california rolls.

Me? I mean, I live in (approximately) Sacramento, not SF; of course, it's LA that is known for California rolls, anyway.

> known doesn't mean known just to you.

Yeah, I mean “known in media and culture”; not for a particular regional cuisine, but for the cosmopolitan variety of high-quality cuisine available.

> in a city i want to live in, i walk outside and pick from 5 good places.

Sounds like SF to me.

The good places and the popular, large, heavily marketed and online-reviewed places with glaring signage, though, only occasionally overlap.

British people? I'd kill for a local place that regularly served Sunday roast with a Yorkshire pudding. There was one in my city for a while but sadly it was at the edge and they didn't sell enough to keep it up, as such roasts need to be prepared a long way in advance, so you had to pre-order.

Always love to grab myself one when I'm in the UK though.

Discovered the other day a restaurant that sells afternoon cream teas - perfect!

I would very much like an English style pub that serves full English in the mornings. In the UK the price point is also very attractive; a meal that lasts you for most of the day for often less than 5 pounds.

There are not any diners/cafes that do that in SF - one rule of thumb in the uk is if the beat PC's eat there its good.

Weatherspoons has a nice mixed grill.

That said, that grill, and the traditional English fry-up are pretty unhealthy; I think I'm better off not living near one.

> There are definitely some great spots but not that many and really not that diverse (lacks middle eastern, greek, british, American bbq, spanish)

I've personally had great examples of all of those except Spanish in SF (and that exception may be because I've never sought out Spanish in SF.)

Piperade is a destination for Basque food

>Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am

Serious question. Are there many night clubs and any day clubs? I was last out so late/early quite a few years ago but in most (possibly all?) Australian cities there are night clubs that were open through the night until 6am. I can recall one place in Melbourne that opened at, I think, midnight and didn't kick people out until 10am.

There were also a few day clubs in Sydney and Melbourne, which are like a night club but not opening until night clubs are just closing.

Personally, I've not been to San Francisco. I'm just staggered that given the cities fame the night life is so constrained.

> culture: there is no culture. culture was when i lived in versailles. sf is all snooty people with no content, trying to show off. culture is down to earth, with class.

So I'm in the South Bay and only visit SF once in a blue moon now that I've got a family, but when I was younger & single there were quirky events that I've never seen in any other city. Things like Bring Your Own Big Wheel, Bay to Breakers, a random pillow fight with thousands of attendees (I guess San Jose has this as well, but it only drew a few dozen), scavenger hunts that covered multiple city blocks, poetry readings in the unpermitted basement of an antique shop, a game fair where indie game developers tested out their street games on the public, Carnivale, the Folsom Street Fair, etc. Maybe it's gotten too expensive since and this all moved out, but at the time it was worth making the trek up from the South Bay just for the events that you couldn't get anywhere else.

If you think San Francisco has poor quality food, you clearly haven’t spent much time there (as you admit) or you don’t have very discerning taste. California grows the majority of the country’s produce and most everyone else is getting the same ingredients a few days later. Farm to table is the standard instead of something that starts at $25/plate like in most US cities

The city could be more dense in some areas but it’s far more walkable than almost any US city outside of NY. Maybe go to the Mission next time and show me how LA, Miami, etc. are more walkable after

I don't know about Miami but LA is known for its sprawl. Imo using possibly the worst possible example of a thing to compare it to only makes the other persons point for them.

It's like pointing at little people as an example to show that 5'6" is heaps tall.

Most cities are known for sprawl here. It’s not my fault.

Sure I could compare to Portland but it’s small and honestly not that different from SF in terms of the kind of farm to table food and wine that’s served

What are the numerous cities I am missing that have better food and are more walkable than SF and not counting NY? I honesty haven’t found them

i did not say poor quality food. i said very average food, overpresented artistically and overpriced. farm to table isn't good for meat -aged meat is better. aged about a month. sushi -yes. except very little sushi from what i saw in sf. a lot of weird rolls, which is not sushi to me. good sushi was in tokyo, where i have lived for several months.

fresh produce is shipped overnight anywhere nowadays. being near a farm no longer gets you fresher produce. and keep in mind, produce is grown in many, many places. heck, in chicago we got farmer's markets every few blocks.

miami is one little street that's walkable, and a run down city of trash. i never said it was better. la was the example i gave of a city that is not walkable, like sf is not walkable. so density is not sf's pro, which the comment i replied to claimed.

as far as discerning taste, i've lived in moscow, versailles, catalonia, and tokyo. i've had good food. sf wasn't it. it was regular food, presented in weird ways, just to be different. putting avocado on something or drinking sake cold doesn't make it good -it just makes it different.

San Francisco has functional public transit which escapes almost every American city and the cool neighborhoods are in fact quite dense, like the Mission. This is why people view it as one of the most walkable cities in America even though it may not be a compact area built around a train station like much of Europe, for example. I would like that, but that’s not how any of America is.

You went to a few sushi roll places and now you want to demean the quality compared to Tokyo? Give me a break. I’ve spent months in both and you’re not painting a very fair picture. Tokyo is the sushi capital of the world. No one would dispute that the Japanese have the widest variety of amazing sushi. But San Francisco is way up there and if anything the problem is there are too many unaffordable omakase menus with the best fish from Tsukiji market in Tokyo or from Monterey Bay. There are places that sell California rolls to tourists like everywhere, but San Francisco has so much actual Japanese food and so much omakase that I find it absurd that you characterize it that way. There is no way Chicago can go toe to toe on Japanese restaurants and you know it.

As for drinking sake cold, if you spent much time in Japan you’d know they typically serve crappy sake warm to disguise the impurities of not having polished the rice enough before making it. A good Junmai Ginjo will be served cold. You are welcome to have sake however you want, but don’t blame San Francisco for knowing how to drink sake properly. In fact, San Francisco has the only sake store in America (True Sake) because there are so many Japanese people and it’s so popular.

i did not go to mission, so my comment about density may not be correct. which is why i asked. that's one neighborhood though.

as far as sake.. i don't drink anymore, for a while now, but you're wrong. serving it warm brings out the taste, and makes any cheap nastiness worse. serving it cold is what hides it. having a store that only sells sake does not make it 'the store for sake.' there are many stores stateside that have a good sake selection. they also sell japanese beer and plum wine. and in the style of true sf culture, you just said japan has crappy sake, which is why they serve it warm, while sf is doing the traditional japanese wine correctly. this -people like you on every corner, is why i didn't like sf. it's the culture -or lack thereof.

Honestly, I can’t take anything you said seriously if during your 3 weeks here you didn’t step foot into one of the most unique/distinctive neighborhoods in the city and then proceed to berate the availability of tasty food. I read all of your comments here and was trying to decide whether you were uniquely knowledgeable or full of shit and this right here tells the whole story. I have also been all around the world and SF has a wide collection of high quality cuisines from all around the world — not just Japanese food in Tokyo and Russian food in Moscow.

Once again, the Japanese know very well that a nice polished sake like a Junmai Daiginjo will be served cold.

https://boutiquejapan.com/sake101/#:~:text=At%20the%20risk%2...

"At the risk of overgeneralizing, many sake experts say that ginjo and daiginjo sakes are usually best not warmed (since being served chilled enhances their flavors and aromas)"

It is bizarre you go on these rants about how people on Hacker News aren't cultured like you after all your time in foreign cities, but you didn't visit the main neighborhoods, chose a few bad restaurants on Yelp, and clearly don't know how the locals prefer to drink their sake even after bragging about all your experience. Since you don't even drink, maybe you should listen to the people who do and who have toured the sake factories.

Way to be totally obnoxious and ruin the normally polite discourse here. You're posting on a brand new account and already getting flagged for abusive posting. You're not even trying to have a productive conversation. Go argue with people on Reddit.

Actually, sake can be enjoyed cold, warm, or hot. Having the sake serve at a warm temperature doesn’t mean there is anything inherently wrong with the sake itself.

The purpose of changing the temperature, as you pointed out, is to change the flavor notes. Having a particular sake cold may bring out fruitier notes while warming it up gives it an extra layer of vanilla. This is just an example. All sake have different notes and it can be really subjective on what notes are being registered. The ability to change the flavor drastically just by temperature is what makes sake interesting. This legit use isn’t just limited to subpar sake, but to the entire quality spectrum sake as well. So it really depends on many factors like the intended temperature consumption by the brewery or the establishment you are consuming the sake at (they want particular notes to come up so it goes well with the pairing of a dish, for example), or the most important: consumers palate.

Playing with the temperature is akin to whisky drinking: neat vs on the rocks vs water dropper. Each preparation changes the flavor and aren’t necessary bad.

You are correct that warming up bad quality sake can mask the undesirable attributes.

https://boutiquejapan.com/sake101/#:~:text=At%20the%20risk%2...

"At the risk of overgeneralizing, many sake experts say that ginjo and daiginjo sakes are usually best not warmed (since being served chilled enhances their flavors and aromas), while many junmai and honjozo sakes do well either way (since warming these types of sakes tends to draw out their complex flavors and smooth them out a bit)."

Sure. This excerpt you shared supports what I just wrote in my post, no?

Partially but it affirms my point that you disagreed with. My point from the beginning was that “nice” sake that was polished more and costs a lot (a Junmai Ginjo or Junmai Daiginjo for example) will be served cold. Many of the more alcoholic sake styles and cheaper sakes will be served hot or cold. The heat can help hide impurities but it can also play down (or change) the heavier alcohol flavors.

So yes I agree certain styles will be served warm and might have different and interesting taste profiles depending on temperature like your whisky example. But ultimately, warming the sake will tend to hide the subtle flavors that the sake maker did all the extra rice polishing to achieve, so it wouldn’t be recommended for a nice Junmai Daiginjo. The poster I replied to tried to falsely claim that hot sake would better pull out these subtle flavors, which I cannot find any reference for and does not agree with my experience drinking and reading about sake.

> "farm to table isn't good for meat -aged meat is better."

"farm to table" does not mean the meat is not aged. It just means the restaurant buys directly from the farm. No good restaurant would ever serve you an un-aged steak.

> sushi -yes. except very little sushi from what i saw in sf. a lot of weird rolls, which is not sushi to me. good sushi was in tokyo, where i have lived for several months.

Ok, you lost me there. I've lived in SF for 10 years and there's sushi all over the place. Actual, real sashimi, nigiri, whatever you want. A la carte, set meals, omakase, whatever. Some of it is pretty high end, and you'll pay more in SF for an equivalent meal in Tokyo.

Beyond that, it's a little weird to bring up Tokyo as an example... the sushi in Tokyo is better than the sushi in pretty much any place in the US, perhaps in pretty much any place outside Japan. Not really a fair comparison.

Regardless, I kinda just think that you were visiting the wrong places when you visited SF. I agree that there's an annoying amount of of mediocre food that seems to exist more to look nice than to taste amazing, but that's true of many cities. (But these places tend not to last that long.) There's lots of fantastic food in SF, and frankly it's not even that hard to find, so I'm baffled by your bad experience.

> If you think San Francisco has poor quality food, you clearly haven’t spent much time there (as you admit) or you don’t have very discerning taste.

Or just are following shallow, presentation-focussed hipster-targetting marketing and being surprised that it leads you to presentation-focussed hipster-targetted food offerings.

or, follow me on this. i just walk out onto the street, type "restaurant" into google, and pick something with 4 star and up reviews. no marketing or presentations involved - just what people around there reviewed as good. and the food is average. this isn't bad, but average food with some gems you have to know about and take an uber to, is not a reason to live in a city - and it was presented as such in the comment to which i replied.

If you're seriously suggesting that a Google search for "restaurant" is going to get you a marketing-free, accurate picture of the world around you, I'm not sure what to do with that.

> or, follow me on this. i just walk out onto the street, type "restaurant" into google, and pick something with 4 star and up reviews. no marketing or presentations involved

Heh.

Reliance on numerical ratings in online reviews isn't particularly different than reliance on marketing with a specific demographic targeting and, yeah, surprisingly enough it does tend to lead you to the more instagram-ready establishments.

right.. when someone eats at a place and gives it a number of stars rating how good it was, it tells you the same about how good it is as instagram marketing. here's the point - you go to sf, get a place around you with good reviews, and the food is overpriced, overpresented, and average in taste.

The OP literally stated a reason to live in SF is the food. That's simply false. It's not poor quality, but it's no reason to live there. It's not better than in an average city.

> right.. when someone eats at a place and gives it a number of stars rating how good it was, it tells you the same about how good it is as instagram marketing.

There are distinct demographic trends in online reviews activity that are broadly similar to those involved in instagramming meals, which makes the biases in using aggregate ratings similar to those in favoring Instagram or marketing targeting the same demographic, yes.

(You can get better information from online reviews, but it takes more than blindly following aggregate ratings.)

The majority of the country's produce? I call bullshit.

https://vegetablegrowersnews.com/news/3-states-produced-76-p...

Well you called bullshit and the number is 56.7% per the article the other user helpfully linked. This is why "California cuisine" has been farm to table for so long and why it is more affordable to eat fresh, tasty, in-season produce there.

Yep. The only reason CA hasn’t seceded yet, the rest of the country would starve without them.

If you're going to call out people for "bullshit" when they post facts you could easily Google, then you could at least apologize after you were shown to be both wrong and rude.

Is this a shitpost? I honestly can't tell. You start off by saying you've only ever visited SF and then go on to make a load of generalisations as if you know SF like the back of your hand.

Also this:

> there are very few attractive girls at bars, or at offices, or even on the street, compared to just about anywhere in the world. and if that's not why you go to bars, i have to ask -you'd enjoy going to bars with mostly men? because that's cool too -once in a rare while

Is so awful that the only explanation is that the whole thing is a shitpost.

Boom, mystery solved. Case closed.

It sounded right to me..

I've visited SF about four times over the last few years - staying between one and three weeks each time.

Both of you don't know the city.

People go out to have sex. Either you haven't noticed somehow (maybe you aren't old enough?) or you're deluding yourself that it's about something else. We're a sexual species. You exist because your parents met and had sex. It's just the way it is.

Okay ? Are you humping everything in sight every time you step out ?

I have no idea how to respond to such a silly comment.

> food - most of what i saw was not good food. hipsterish overpriced food made by chefs trying to show off by putting a twist on dishes -not to be good, just to be different or weird. tiny portions, not tasting above average, on a huge plate. all presentation, not actual taste.

You probably selected places to eat by either marketing presentation or talking to novelty-seeking hipsters, and so found presentation-heavy novelty-focussed hipster food.

San Francisco has plenty of good food—and it's usually much cheaper than the food of the type you describe. Of course, if you live in a hipster bubble and don't communicate outside of it, and don't actively explore, you might have trouble finding the real gems.

> culture: there is no culture. culture was when i lived in versailles. sf is all snooty people with no content, trying to show off. culture is down to earth, with class.

There's plenty of culture in SF, but this also sounds like you spent your time in the same kind of hipster bubble your food impression reflects.

> culture was when i lived in versailles

As someone who actually lived in Versailles, this made me laugh outloud. It’s a boring upper-class suburb which happens to have a big castle in it. Culturally it’s at the same level as the Hamptons, just with older buildings and more royalists.

Wondered if someone was going to call this out. Could've namechecked many other places but picked a Paris outer suburb.

Coming from the east coast US, I didn't find the people snooty. They seemed friendlier than where I am from, I made way more friends here than I did back home. Back home you would get arrested for drinking beer in public, in sf you can have a beer in one hand, a joint in the other while playing kickball in golden gate park.

I liked the food a lot. I got giant, tasty, burritos in the mission for like $8. Of course you have to go to a side street, not something right on mission.

Didn't really go to bars so not sure about that.

To me the city is absolutely beautiful. Seeing the city from twin peaks, walking to the beach through golden gate park, or cycling across the golden gate bridge are all incredible experiences.

Tenderloin is trash though.

> i have an honest question here

I think you may have forgotten the question.

I've lived in San Francisco for a couple of years now, and I'll tell you why I have no current plans to leave: the startup ecosystem.

When I moved to San Francisco, my goal was (and still is) to move into entrepreneurship. Some people working in tech might move away, but the startup community, venture community, and general notion of SF being a "startup capital" seems like it's going to be more or less unaffected by the pandemic.

so, you are agreeing with me that the only reason people are in sf is because of work. the implied question was: he gave a bunch of reasons which from my total of 3 weeks there, were not true. it may have instead been my experience which was not normal though. it was up to op to counter what i said.

> i have to ask -you'd enjoy going to bars with mostly men? because that's cool too -once in a rare while.

Personally I only go to bars to socialize with people I know. I have never spoken to a stranger at a bar and I used to go once/twice a month.

> bars -there are very few attractive girls at bars, or at offices, or even on the street, compared to just about anywhere in the world. and if that's not why you go to bars, i have to ask -you'd enjoy going to bars with mostly men? because that's cool too -once in a rare while.

I don't think everyone goes to pubs or bars for the same reasons as you might.

the reason they go is to socialize. both men and women prefer to socialize in an environment that's not mostly men. bars were listed as a reason people live in sf. i say it's not, because a sausage fest that closes at 1am is not something people find as a reason to live in a city. the people who do are the people who sit at their weird guy-table in a normal bar full of girls, afraid to walk up and say hello.

> the people who do are the people who sit at their weird guy-table in a normal bar full of girls, afraid to walk up and say hello

If a guy's out having a nice time with his boyfriends, there's no reason to belittle him for that. ;)

I actually agree that SF has essentially no culture and a poor food culture compared to many other major american cities. The only things truly exceptional about the city are the weather, housing prices, and being the most city-like city in greater Silicon Valley. And with that third point being moot, it's no surprise people aren't staying if they don't have to. I'm also leaving in two weeks.

The only reason a lot of people live in SF is solely that it's a really good place for a career in the technology industry or to do a startup. That's why I was there.