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Comment by redm | Hacker News Reader

I think your painting with a pretty broad brush. Sitting aside your bad experience at the licensing office (and general negativity on the culture), someone moving from SF may have a higher quality of life, depending on what they value. For example, more space, lower cost of living, lower taxes, ability to travel more, save more, have a larger house, etc. You can trade tornado's for wild-fire's and earthquakes.

I lived in LA for 5 years, and in SF proper for 3. I live in the midwest now and I prefer it, not because of the weather, but for the cost.

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> depending on what they value

And therein lies the rub. We had the big house (that we had to clean more often and pay more to heat, cool, and maintain), the huge yard with lots of space (that we had to spend hours every weekend dealing with, along with the cost), the two cars (with their own costs and hassles), and so on.

What we didn't have was the respect of our community, or at least the recognition that families like ours should be full members of society. It's fucking awful to hear your governor on TV crowing about how immigrants are "ruining the state," or that the latest environmental-disaster of a highway project is "true freedom."

No amount of money can ever make up for that. Where we live now, we still get to save, we still are able to travel (well, pandemic notwithstanding), and we need not drive everywhere to do it and we feel accepted--or at least somewhere between begrudgingly tolerated and utterly adored--by the government of our state.

I used to optimize for cost; no longer.

I was hoping someone would make this comment. White flight to a red state is nothing new. My neighbors in the bay area represent dozens of cultures and no one's going to pay me to give that up.

As a CA native, I feel weird and out of place when in any area with a single overwhelmingly dominant ethnicity. Whether it’s the Midwest or Shanghai, it just feels weird like something is off. I’m just too used to very multicultural areas.

I get a disquiet feeling when I'm in old southern towns like Savanah, I didn't know why at first, until I realized it's because their society is still so segregated.

> I get a disquiet feeling when I'm in old southern towns like Savanah

I love Savannah and Augusta. Those cities are a lot of fun. I spent time living in both in my early 20s. The segregation both is and isn't there. It's very strange. I think that the feeling you're describing is due to the ghost of slavery. It was always very hard for me to separate the history of the antebellum south from those two cities specifically.

To be fair, though, the most segregated place I've ever lived was easily East Los Angeles. It doesn't have that same feeling that you describe, of course, which makes it ... different but in a slightly better way.

I eventually identified that the feeling came from a noticeable divide between the people working the service industry and the people consuming the service industry. Added to that, and probably linked as cause/effect, was different places seemed to "switch" who was there based on time of day.

This comment makes no sense to me. All over California are neighborhoods (Chinatown) and entire cities (Rosemead) that segregated themselves because they wanted more familiarity, which makes sense.

Neighborhoods being segregated is much more different than entire geographical regions. People in those neighbourhoods still travel around. Also, Rosemead's most populace race according to wikipedia is only 60% asian. That's a far, far cry from 80-90+% white regions.

(I should also note that the idea they wanted familiarity is just one part of why specific minorities live together. Another is because of the effects of racism actively rejecting any attempt to integrate.)

All good points, I've been through both for a few days each recently and enjoyed myself. I wondered what the line is between a common community Vs forced segregation.

Ehh what a nitpick. Okay I confess I grew up in the Bay Area not Redding or Yreka. Ca is massive so pardon me for referring to the areas most people associate with it, the bay area and La. anyway, yes there are neighborhoods that are monocultures, but they aren’t walled off ghazas where people’s movement is restricted. And even with some areas being clustered, there’s still a lot of dispersion. And that said, again CA is massive like many states, which non Californians probably overlook, and I wouldn’t enjoy living in quite a few areas even in the LA area. Looking at you palos verdes.

As I said below to the other child, all good points and I wasnt trying to nitpick it just didn't make sense to me, perhaps it was just super early.

I love these areas and the cultures I dont have to travel afar to get a taste of.

I just found it odd as being in Rosemead the other day and then seeing that, probably just a crossed wire, my apologies.

Good for you. You seemed to move to place that sit right with your political positions.

Wanting to be respected by their community is a political position?

or some people always looking for a reason to be offended or feel like someone doesn't like them.

There are plenty of people in a self righteous bubble who think they are enlightened and those in the red states are mouth breathers who spend their day looking to hate people.

Meanwhile you see people in the Bay Area with BLM signs in their yard yet no actual black lives live in their neighborhood.

Not about having to drive everywhere, which is a deal breaker for me.

Unfortunately that's basically the case everywhere in the U.S. outside of NYC, SF, and DC.

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