Hacker News Reader

This is a "dangerous" summary. Not in the sense that I think it may cause significant harm to anyone, but that I consider it misleading for everyone reading your comment, thinking that it sums the article up accurately, and then ignoring to read it.

I'm not Polish, but I'm another European living in the Bay Area as well, and I don't think your comment reproduces what the author is trying to say, most likely through no intention of your own.

I won't repeat the same mistake by giving my own summary, but I understand too well the weirdness and isolation that suburbs and zoning laws give compared to European cities. It's totally weird, but I live in San Francisco, a dense city, and the zoning laws and "built for cars" layout[1], as well as spreading the population over California style suburbs, still make me feel more like I'm living in some backwater village. After close to a decade of living here now.

[1] I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans.

> I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans.

Yes. That's it. This is what a lot of people critical of the design (or execution) of US cities don't seem to understand. This also applies to the many failed attempts to make mass public transportation --and the reduction of automobile-based transportation-- a thing.

Cities evolve. And these cities are no exception. By the time they reached scale it became pretty much impossible to re-engineer them to fit a new vision of how things should be.

The best example I have is the absolutely failed California high speed train. We are about a hundred billion dollars into it and have nothing usable in place. I believe they built about ten miles of low speed track that you can't even use yet. To make things even more interesting, it was supposed to cost ten billion (that's how it was sold to voters).

This high speed train goes through so many towns and counties, each with it's own rules and issues, that the probability of it ever approximating something like the TGV or the Eurail ICE I usually take from Amsterdam to Munich during my visits is kind of laughable at best.

We'll see what happens at a trillion dollars, I guess.

Munich is where I grew up, by the way, so I'm all too familiar. And yeah, I have no idea of the history here, but it would not surprise me if a lot of what happened in the Bay Area (and maybe other places in the US, though admittedly I don't really know them) was not intentional.

Where I'm pretty critical however is zoning laws. That just seems unnecessary to me. The fact that even in a city I have to travel a large distance just to go to the nearest supermarket, to get a haircut, or to even just sit down in a café, is a bit maddening. This means I literally have to take my car just to go to Safeway here--which is weird at least to me.

As for the cafés, I'm not even sure whether zoning laws would prevent them from popping up in residential areas, but I suspect even if they were allowed, they would be sparse because of the overall effect of zoning. Residential areas mostly only consist of homes, and you are pretty much either in your specific home of that large zone, or out in another zone anyway. So there would probably be little incentive.

What's interesting here is that the author grew up in Warsaw, which has about half the population of the bay area in one third the space (and the more than half of warsowians living in the center live in 1/36 of the land area compared to the bay). The city was rebuilt after WW2 from almost nothing and was given a very car friendly layout. It's also a very dense city with lots of medium and high density apartment blocks and has excellent public transit that can zip you across the city in 15 minutes. While car vs. walking friendly are often at odds, it's possible to do them both reasonably well and Warsaw is an example of a new city that often gets it right. Score one for socialist city planning?

A counterpoint to the California high speed rail situation is that Poland has been building new expressways to connect its major cities. This has been an enormous undertaking with enormous success. Huge swaths of farms, forests and villages are being bulldozed to make way. The needs of the many...

> think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans.

You should give Howard Kunstler‘s The Geography of Nowhere and Duany, et al.‘s Suburban Nation a read. (There are other good ones, too). They’d readily dispel the timing notion you suggest. Rather this bland outcome is clearly from adopting civil engineering and planning codes intentionally.

Thanks. I haven't looked myself in how this situation came to be, and I totally accept that this can have come by intentionally. But whatever the causes, the outcome is not very good.

I’d push back on weather and culture. There are entirely different microbiomes within short driving distances of any city in the Bay. And if you look for it, you’ll find tons of underground art shows, theatre, music and film. It just isn’t organised and marketed the way it is in Europe or New York.

On variety of conversations, Oakland, Berkeley, Vallejo, Fremont, Cupertino, Mountain View, San Jose, Belmont, South San Francisco and Sausalito offer drastically different bar talk with friendly strangers.

>There are entirely different microbiomes within short driving distances of any city in the Bay.

That's not really "weather" though in this context. Here in Southern Michigan, I don't have to plan for, or travel to, changes in the weather. Same thing with seasons in general. As I go about my daily life, the weather around me is constantly changing from day to day. More broadly, the changing of the seasons punctuates the passing of time, and is the scaffolding upon which most of us hang our social lives on. It does all this because weather and the seasons just happen to us, we don't have to go find it.

As an example to go along with the article's point. I visited SoCal to see a friend of mine who moved out there a few years prior. It was my first visit to SoCal, and it took place during a September. For the week I was out there the temperature was the same every day and every night. What caused me the most discomfort though was during that whole week I didn't see a single cloud in the sky.

That's an extremely small sample size to use to condemn an entire region; I've never been to SoCal but I doubt there are no seasons, no clouds, and it's the same temp day and night

The music scene is notoriously bad in SF and has been for decades. You’ll find better music shows in third tier cities throughout the country.

Oakland and Berkeley keep the area just above fourth tier.

If you are talking about musicians coming out of SF, then I agree. If you are talking about tours coming to SF/Oakland, I don't see this at all. I can't think of an artist I care about that hasn't been through.

I mean, I can see Beyonce at Levis Stadium and the Foo Fighters at Shoreline. I don't think this even remotely counts as a local music scene.

Compare this to the era that gave us that little-known Palo Alto band, the Grateful Dead.

I don't know what you want. I find bands I like, I add them to Song Kick. I get emails when they come to SF. Music venues have been expanding in the last 10 years, not contracting.

I've never seen a show a Levi's or Shoreline.

I guess your complaint is there aren't more artists coming out of Palo Alto? Yeah, sure, I'll concede that if I lived in Palo Alto I'd probably be unhappy with its music scene.

Name two mid-sized music venues on the Peninsula or in South Bay.

Not stadiums or sports arenas that host Top 40s mega-acts like Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, but also not the local coffee shop that has a guy play some guitar covers on Friday nights.

I live in SF. I go to shows in SF and Oakland. I agree that the music scene of the burbs is bad. That's the way it is everywhere though.

Venues that I'm happy to go to: Bottom of the Hill, The Chapel, Hotel Utah, The Rickshaw Stop, The Independent, August Hall, Swedish American Hall, Great American Music Hall, The Fillmore, Bimbo's 365, Warfield, The Fox, The Masonic.

OP here. I loved most of those, I'd add DNA Lounge (though it seems based on the selection you're not into electronic music :) ). All of those are fond memories of some nice shows. Still was hard to justify a 1h (one way!) drive. :( An to me, the essential part is the local scene/culture. I didn't see too much of it in SF, maybe I didn't stick for long enough (my brutal commute to MTV took away my will to live and I had to move).

> I'd add DNA Lounge (though it seems based on the selection you're not into electronic music :)

You got me. DNA Lounge does have a special place in my heart though. JWZ was such a slashdot folk hero, its sad that so many people in SF don't know who he is anymore.

I also can't think of anywhere else in SF that is keeping the dream of the 90s alive the way DNA lounge does.

I do think that the bay area has pushed local artists out to more affordable cities. John Vanderslice/Tiny Telephone has done more than anyone else I can think of to keep the local music scene alive. He seems to be connected with just about every other local musician I know of.

Note that South Bay includes San Jose, which is a substantially larger city than San Francisco.

I'm sorry that San Jose is lame.

Mountain Winery, Bing Concert Hall, Frost Amphitheater, San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, Spieker Center for the Performing Arts

And I hear there's an opera house in San Jose as well! A perfect spot to pop in for some tunes when I'm winding down for the night.

Do you even know what "Thizz or Die" means?

You can also get to this conclusion axiomatically just by following Jamie Zawinsky's DNA Lounge blog and reading about how hostile SF is to nightlife, and also how hard it is to book shows in SF.

>There are entirely different microbiomes within short driving distances of any city in the Bay.

You mean microclimates. A microbiome is "the microorganisms in a particular environment (including the body or a part of the body)".

Regarding culture, variety, and politics, I think it’s more a consequence of the Bay Area being socioeconomically segregated. My neighbors are all artists, and have great and vibrant communities around their work — but of course, no one in tech mixes with those people!

Fewer people in SF work in tech than is often perceived, but the social circles are very clique-y and exclusive. It creates perceptions about the entire city that are really only true for one’s friend groups.

I wonder what it is about the design/culture of SF that makes that the case.

I think the poor public transportation really hurts the city. The time to arrival is a crapshoot and discourages it's use. It's also not a walkable city or bikeable unless you stick to certain parts of the city. I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side. It's not really a city, or at least not on the level of NYC. You are just surrounded by people in Manhattan at all times and I bet that helps promote socializing. You just don't really meet people in SF unless you stick to certain pockets of the city.

> I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side.

This is a great take. I was driving back into SF this week. As always, the green population sign stuck out to me. There are fewer than 1 million SF residents. Part of this is because it’s only 49 square miles, but the fact is you’re exactly right. SF may be urban, but it isn’t dense.

> social circles are very clique-y and exclusive

This rings true to my experience as well. I only managed to make friends with some fellow engineers after living there for a few years.

And it's not for lack of trying, I joined sports teams, wide variety of meetups, social clubs and tried to chat to strangers I encounter.

It seems people are generally not interested in adding another engineer to their friend circle, except fellow engineers. It's quite ironic because my interests are actually more athletic and artistic than geeky.

I've had the opposite experience in the Bay Area, on average. I'd follow the typical advice people get, which is to create opportunities for serendipitous meeting. To say, I'd try to set up group dinners and invite a bunch of different engineer friends to them, only to get a bunch of responses like "I don't want to meet people I don't know already" and "I have enough friends, my social circle is full."

Maybe I'm missing something but, "cliquey" and "my social circle is full" are the opposite of opposites.

The opposition that you failed to notice was between your comment that "people are generally not interested in adding another engineer to their friend circle" and my comment that my engineer friends seem really loath to interact with people they don't already know.

The comment about the lack of seasons was odd to me. I grew up in the Bay Area, but spent about 10 years in Southern California where there truly is no such thing (based on my schema) as autumn and winter. When we were moving back to the Bay, my wife (an LA native) and I were looking at neighborhoods during January or something, and she remarked, "everything is dead here!"

It's winter. We have deciduous trees in Northern California... In autumn they turn orange, and they spend winter without leaves! A foreign concept in LA, where most of the trees are palms or coral trees or other evergreens.

It's true that we don't get snow like many European cities. But I guess the presence or lack of "seasons" depends on what you're used to.

For people who come from tropical climes, such as Hawaii, Singapore, or subtropical Australia and India, the Bay Area does indeed have "seasons".

But the majority of Americans and Europeans hail from places that have much more delineated (and varying) weather across the four seasons, the Bay Area seems lacking in comparison.

My point of reference is very European. In most of Europe you get very distinctive four seasons - cold, sometimes snowy, almost always frosty and depressing winter, fresh and optimistic spring bringing some change, muggy and sweaty, but exciting summer that you spend outdoors with your friends and 'white nights', nostalgic, colorful and beautiful smelling autumn reminding you of passage of time. And all of those are sometimes dry, sometimes muggy, often raining/snowing. To me (growing up in central-eastern Europe) it's essential to add some "rhythm" of life, otherwise I get into "day of the groundhog" workaholic mode. I'm sure though that people who grew up in those non-seasonal climates have internalized some different ways of marking the passage of time. :)

Sort of a strange comment since January is when everything turns green in the Bay Area.

> The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA.

I think this is pretty unfair, he's just giving context for the things he's experienced elsewhere. It could have been anywhere. It's hard to say what you like and dislike about a place without having another experience for contrast.

The story is not, "I came from Warszawa, SF was not like Warszawa, so I went back to Warszawa." The story is, "I came to SF, and I loved it, but we think NYC is a better fit for the lifestyle my wife and I want to live."

I really disagree with those points about Variety, public transport, culture, and weather but I suppose if ones frame of reference is NY or a large euro city then perhaps some of them may be that way.

But variety? That one just is weird. Within a couple hours driving distance is a vast array of hugely different environments. Within bart-ing distance is a huge variety of very distinct neighborhoods and cultures.

And the comparison of living in Poland and being able to walk from the suburb across city districts to having to drive or take a long train ride from Palo alto to Sf doesn’t make sense. I doubt he walked 25 miles back in Poland. I lived in a small German town for while, it also took 1.5 hours to train into cologne. I could walk across cologne like I do SF. But I could not walk to cologne from Juliche. And driving would have been much faster than taking the train, just like driving from PA to SF is.

His points about suburbs are mostly accurate, but sounds like he was in the wrong spot in the bay. Oakland/Berkeley/sf are better than Palo Alto or the South Bay for actually walking to bars and places. He also doesn’t like the brown looks Mediterranean climates have, so NY does sound like a better fit.

The Bay Area has weather. What it doesn't have is winter.

There is plenty of live music in the Bay. Example: https://thefillmore.com/

Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none

Wrong. The South Bay has Caltrain, the East Bay has BART. SF has... a few systems, but mostly Muni.

Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery.

Very untrue. Try visiting Oakland, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Santa Cruz and see if you think they are the same.

Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive.

The situation is the same in NYC. Housing is expensive.

> Wrong. The South Bay has Caltrain, the East Bay has BART. SF has... a few systems, but mostly Muni.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my guess is that you have never lived for a significant time in a major (or even smaller) European or Asian city? Where I come from, pretty much everyone, everyone, uses public transport all the time. To go to work, to go to any leisure activity, to do some quick shopping. And it's extremely clean, modern, and convenient (yeah, people complain, they do all the time, but they complain that it's 10 minutes late in the deepest winter and then still use it daily).

That's just not feasible in the Bay Area. You are screwed here if you don't have a car, where as when I lived as a fully grown adult in Europe, I and many of my peers did not even have a driver's license (getting one is expensive, time intensive, and usually plain not necessary). Many others had a driver's license but no car. Now I need a car just to go to the supermarket because there isn't any in a walkable distance.

I have to say the subway system in Manhattan is indeed the closest I've seen compared to the European or Asian systems I'm familiar with, even though it still looks pretty "industrial" and somewhat run down.

this isn’t true at all. “everyone” isn’t actually everyone. and it isn’t always “clean and convenient”

all you’re measuring is living closer to a city center. and the larger the city the better the story. if you live in the burbs in either location you get a suburb experience

There is a dramatic difference between most European & Asian public transport systems and most non-NYC American public transport systems, though.

Once I stayed with my in-laws in Sanxia Taiwan, an exurb of Taipei. When we wanted to get to Taipei 101 (37km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to the historic district (26 km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to Tamsui (a bucolic oceanfront suburb, 42km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to Banqiao (the main shopping district, 16km away), we took public transit.

From the mid-peninsula, this is equivalent to going to San Francisco; going to downtown San Jose; going to Half Moon Bay; and going to Stanford Shopping Center. You can actually get to the first two through Caltrain, but you'll walk about a mile to get to the Caltrain station, rather than half a block to get to a bus that comes every 10 minutes. You can't effectively get to HMB, Stanford Shopping Center, or any of the other non-city-center through public transit in the Bay Area.

That's what foreigners tend to complain about with the walkability of American cities. It isn't the difficulty of getting from dense, built-up city centers to top tourist destinations. It's the difficulty of getting from common, ordinary residences to the next tier of destinations.

there’s actually bus lines that take you to all the places you listed in the bay area

I don’t know how much you have taken the bus but it is truly abysmal in the Bay Area. Not to mention the VTA is cutting a bunch of stops due to low ridership (it’s a chicken and egg problem). Additionally, the buses are slow and rarely go where you want to go.

I just looked on Google Maps. Assuming that I can only walk and take public transport getting to Stanford Shopping Center from where I grew up takes 5x longer than driving, Half-Moon Bay 4x longer. For contrast getting to London from any surrounding area and vice versa is generally faster by public transport when compared to driving (even when that trip involves buses).

It simply isn’t comparable. The infrastructure might exist in theory, but it is not very usable.

Does not match my experience of both living and traveling in multiple places. Compared to the Bay Area, I know public transport from for example multiple German and French cities plus Prague (places where I lived), or Tokyo and Hong Kong (places where I traveled), and a few others, as clean and convenient, and the "suburb" experience being much different as well.

If you compare the Bay Area to most of the US, it has significantly better public transportation. That was the point I was making in my comment.

> And it's extremely clean, modern, and convenient

For every St Pancras there are lots more Gare du Nord.

Convenient, yes. Modern--sometimes. Clean--occasionally.

> The South Bay has Caltrain

The Caltrain is literally a single railway line.

I think this reasonably approximates to no public transport system.

On top of that it isn't available all the time (how can last train be at midnight -- that means everyone has to wrap up their thing and head out between 11pm and 11:45pm depending on where they are. So it's impossible to not live in SF, not own a car, and say attend any normal house party. Like even one that ends on the early side, at 12am, you'd have to leave before it's over.

It is entirely accurate to say that there is literally _no_ public transport for major routes, for part of the day.

Also within the city, to access most parts you have no BART or other train, you only have Muni. And if you've ever tried to take it without the help of an app like Transit (or even with the help of the app) it's pretty unreliable and can be difficult to figure out. Compare to Taipei or even NYC where you can more or less jump on a train that arrives at regular intervals, at any time, and get to most parts of the city.

Yeah, it would be nice if their last train was later. To be fair, SF kind of shuts down around midnight anyway. If 24/7 bars and so on are important to you, there isn't any substitute for NYC.

The South Bay also has VTA, the Altamont Corridor Express (ACE), and Amtrak. Caltrain is just the one that goes to the penninsula and to SF.

> There is plenty of live music

This is the lowest expectation one could have for a music scene.

> The South Bay has Caltrain

Damning with faint praise.

>The South Bay has Caltrain, the East Bay has BART. SF has... a few systems, but mostly Muni

Americans are so cute in their assumption that what they have aside from cars is a public transport.

> - Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort.

Wrong. Plenty of music in SF. Lots in Oakland too. Great shows at the Greek in Berkeley, or big acts at Shoreline (kinda meh the last few years though), Levi's Stadium, or San Jose. If you enjoy chamber or symphonic music, you get it year-long at Stanford, Music@Menlo, and more.

> Weather: The Bay Area has none.

I experienced this same feeling in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Every day the sky and air are almost exactly the same, day-in-day-out. I was very ready for some seasons and weather when I got back to the UK.

You can visualize this: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/557~23912/Comparison-of-t...

Appreciate the summary.

Indeed, for the writer to blithely assume that CA has no weather, culture, public transportation, variety, affordability, or politics ignores that the Bay Area is a tiny portion of the state, and that Silicon Valley is but a small portion of the Bay Area.