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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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.

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.

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

I'm sorry that San Jose is lame.

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.

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?

>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)".

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