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Comment by failwhaleshark | Hacker News Reader

I grew-up in San Jose, went to Davis, and came back to the Valley and commuted to Chico until 2019. Most Californians seemed bitter, angry, resentful, humorless, and ready to explode.

I live in ATX now in overpriced, poorly-maintained apartments full of "stock-broker"-types, salespeople, managers, and software dev couples, and people who think they're hot sh%t either because of inheritance or university pedigree. $3k/month isn't like Valley prices; this is a 1400 sq ft cost-saver efficiency for me. I'd happily trade for a 3000 sq ft / $6k/month place if the people were more decent over there, if that's within the realm of reasonable expectations.

There's no apparent stress of amongst the people with more money than sense, but there is stress amongst the hundreds of people living under I-35 when they've been told that their existence is illegal when they have nowhere else to go.

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The people you are describing are more a function of where you live, those people tend to congregate in what I calm “yuppie slums”, shitty made multi family units with names like “aloft” and “elevate” with art and random shit in the lobby. There’s a ton in every US city. And they are all the same.

They attract people who don’t know the city very well and have a check list of amenities. When your lease is up I would encourage you to look at different neighborhoods, ideally a little away from the “revitalized former industrial/meatpacking district” which is probably bougie breweries and wine lounges now.

Sounds like a result of poor urban planning. My travels have taught me that these generally aren't all stuffy people desiring "yuppie slums"—it just happens that these are the only types of housing available near where the jobs are.

Unfortunately, I may have mistakenly signed a lease in a yuppie slum in ATX because it was the only large apartment available.

It's an "expensive" (for the area), boring, mixed-use development that gentrified an east side area, abutted right next to I-35 and neglected homeless (who's existence are now illegal thanks to hateful bandaid policies).

And, it appears to be populated mostly by Millenial kidults who live to party hard, act like they're still in high school, got their jobs by lying on their resumes, let their dogs pee and poop in the common hallways, and live like their hedonism is more important than anything or anyone else. I dislike most of them because they resemble Seinfeldian, Kafkaesque caricatures and many offer nothing more than shallow, vapid, shitty, ignorant, infantile %sshole, consumerist, ephemerality manufactured by a steady diet of mass media and screen time.

One woman walks around with one hand in the air like Peg Bundy from Married... with Children but seems like a WASP who works-out and dresses to climb up the next richest pole. She won't even acknowledge my presence with a friendly "hello."

This is what most of the apartments on the bay area peninsula are like.

My wife and I realized very quickly that because we didnt fit into the corporate hierarchy of ivy league grad, VP at FANG corporation that we were not worth the time.

Explored more of the bay area and found lovely people in other areas. Every now and then we get a peninsula type here but they move pretty quickly as they cant handle the unbridled good mornings and nobody starting a conversation with their resume credentials.

Haven't been to Austin lately, but this was my experience in Denver.

It felt... like everyone from the Midwest in their 20s had moved to a city, to live what they took from their childhood TV to be a "hip" life, which developers therefore supplied in the most cost-effective way.

Not to say that it isn't a hoot, or the food is bad... but it just had a "paint hasn't dried yet" weird new feeling to me.

Suburban Denver felt like stable, family-friendly Americana but odd compared to big cities. I noticed the majority of couples were short, plain-looking dudes with above-average attractive women.

Used to live in ATX as a software engineer and I had to move away from ATX precisely of the tech bro types moving in.

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