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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Well, I’d love to work for Apple, but I have no interest into moving from Minnesota suburbs to the Bay Area with all of its sanitation and ludicrous cost of living problems.

If I was Apple… it was the wrong time to build fancy headquarters. You got a few years, and now the area around it is falling apart and your employees have fallen in love with remote work.

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Just FYI, while cost of living is a problem pretty much everywhere in the Bay Area, the infamous sanitation issues are isolated to an incredibly tiny portion of the Bay Area.

What is that even referring to? My sewer works just fine and trash is picked up regularly.

Poop everywhere

Poop on streets is very common in San Francisco. Most of the bay area doesn't have that problem, though.

Map: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab72091...

Is this animal poop or human specifically?

Human

There is actually very little evidence for this. It is likely that it is mostly dog poop.

EDIT: the comments in response are non-sequiturs. The map does not display mostly human poop. It is mostly dog poop. I know I know, you see people poop all the time. But that’s not what the map is.

I've literally seen someone defecating on the street in the TL. But that's the TL. Elsewhere, yes, it's probably dog.

I was there for 4 days in 2019 and I saw someone poop right in front of me. A number of other social issues were apparent as well.

Oh yeah, the Bay Area is actually paradise.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gT5NULvRSk

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtyW4FRn78

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPuMceGWtOQ

Market south to Bryant, and 10th st north to the waterfront (i.e. SOMA) is a pretty prolific area, I frequently see the city deploying porta-potties to keep it under control due to the campsites that pop up. Also yeah Tenderloin, Lower Nob Hill, Design District, civic center, pretty much that whole "fertile" crescent. It's no surprise that the city gave twitter huge incentives to put their headquarters in between civic center and central soma.

I walk my kid to and from daycare in that area and see street pooping if not every week, three times a month. There's a reason why people move away from the city when they have kids. We are not far off from doing the same after almost seven otherwise very enjoyable years here.

I've "only" seen two discarded needles on the street the entire time I've been here though, one was outside of a major grocery store just before Thanksgiving.

The rest of the peninsula is pretty vanilla and mundane though. As are the parts of the city not an hour's walking distance from market street. It was very interesting visiting manhattan though, I'm not sure where everyone there goes, but their SOMA-style areas seemed overall cleaner than ours, which leads me to believe it's partly a city management issue.

Regardless of what the map is about, the statement "poop on the streets is very common in San Francisco" is both about human and dog poop. The frequency with which people encounter human poop on the sidewalk in SF is very, very abnormal, even if dog poop is more frequent. One of my best friends owns a house on a street which is not a bad part of town by any means (both sides of the street are lined with immaculately-kept victorians that zillow thinks are worth $3+ million) and he has to clean human poop off of his own sidewalk about once a month.

Both.

Honestly it's a game to identify which. Accidentally left my garage in an 8 unit apartment building open once. Had to clean up the poop 15 minutes later.

Human, if you're wondering still.

Even in San Francisco it’s mostly in a small geographic area, although it does happen to overlap closely with high foot traffic shopping and tourist areas.

Most of _San Francisco_ doesn't have that problem. One of the really weird parts about SF is that the worst part of town is right next to the tourist area, and all the tech companies congregated in the area that had really cheap office space because no established companies would touch the area.

The homelessness and drug use I hear about in SF really boggles my mind. If california were a nation, it's GDP would be higher than the entire nation of india. Why in god's name can a place as rich as SF and the bay area not address their problems? Seriously? This isn't hard. Look at Portugal. Are you really telling me this couldn't be done on a smaller scale in California? Do they simply not care?

Cynically, the answer that a lot of wealthy people have to the problem of inequality is to cut the lower tier loose - loose from bail, prisons and restrictions. Cut them loose from prosecution. SF and NYC, two cities with Progressive badging, have much bigger problems than cities with smaller budgets but wiser (and national) housing, healthcare and child care systems. Has anyone asked themselves why it's legal in California to pitch a tent on a sidewalk or shoot heroin on the sidewalk (in NYC, too, now), but stuff like this is barely seen in cities like Paris, London and Lisbon? And why we ceased prosecuting property crimes, with predictable results?

The answer, I think, is that Progressives in the American cities wear their homelessness and drug problems like a badge of honor. The messaging appears to be: look at how tolerant we are, and if you want to blame someone you can blame the rich. They should do better to learn from our European friends how to spend tax dollars to help the needy.

“Sanitation issues” are isolated to certain neighborhoods in San Francisco (“the city”), a 45-minute drive from Cupertino if traffic is light.

> now the area around it is falling apart

Lol. As a current Cupertino resident and non-Apple employee, this is the nicest place I’ve ever lived. Massive perfect roads, extremely low crime or homelessness, modern buildings, and easy access to freeways. It’s not at all like downtown SF

Coming from Menlo Park even, Cupertino feels a bit too dull and suburban, but it is astonishingly well maintained in comparison to anywhere else in the bay area. No doubt that the city is doing a great job.

I agree, extremely suburban outside the Main St area, but in terms of cleanliness and modernness it’s a very upscale and well maintained area.

I've lived here for 12 years and I can tell you that you are totally right -- it's very dull and suburban and also well maintained. It's practically a company town. The Mayor couldn't even name the second biggest employer in town after Apple. I think it's actually Amazon.

Of course, the people who live in Cupertino all hate Apple because they’re retirees and hate the traffic, think male tech employees will molest their children and hire prostitutes[1], cell phones will give them cancer, tech employees are too poor due to not yet being millionaires, etc.

* actual quote from current city council member

Oh yes I'm aware of our racist, ageist, and elitist city council, but it's mostly a reflection of the population. Only 12% of Apple employees actually live here. Although it's changing as the old people die and the only people who can afford their houses are current tech workers, but sadly, most of those current tech workers either don't vote or can't vote (lots of immigrants).

This city would be a lot different if we granted the right to vote to all of our resident non-citizens, which I think we absolutely should do. They live here and pay taxes. They should have a voice.

> Massive perfect roads

> easy access to freeways

Come live here, it's easy to go elsewhere

The perceived irony is facile; living in a nice safe area with easy commutes to a large amount of places is fantastic.

I'm glad you enjoyed it ;) I was just amusing myself; I moved to a semi-rural small town and bought a house that was twice the size for less money and can work remotely with gigabit internet. There's an Amazon cargo airport less than 2 hours away, so surprisingly my deliveries are even faster than they were when I lived in the city.

Enjoy suburbia; someone has to.

If two of your four points concern roads, especially how "massive" they are, then I think many people would disagree with your definition of nice.

I mean, I could pump up the restaurants and apartment buildings more if you like; I am unsure how modern well maintained infrastructure and mobility are not important factors in niceness though.

… sanitation problems? Next to Apple Campus? You should go on vacation there :)

The Bay Area is 6900 square miles of land and cost of living is as high as any other metro on average per square mile. London, Tokyo, New York and pretty much every other major metropolis has problems akin to the Bay Area but we never quite as frequently refer to London or Tokyo “falling apart” the way we like to attract all our collective attention to bash the Bay Area here.

Well speaking just for London when I lived there for 12 years before leaving commutes were as easy as jumping on the tube for 30-40 minutes, pretty reliable from a reasonably priced distance. The Bay Area sounds like actual hell in comparison.

“Sounds like actual hell in comparison” What gives that assumption?

I have been taking the Caltrain for work in the past decade, sure it isn’t the most ideal or perfect railway system in the world debatably but it sure is the workhorse of a bustling population that doesn’t get as much praise for doing it’s job.

With all of its wealth and demand, the Bay Area should look like London or Tokyo or New York. Instead it looks like Tracy. It’s not falling apart, but neither is it growing up. It’s stagnant.

Lowrise with mountains and surf breaks is actually pretty nice.

> London, Tokyo, New York and pretty much every other major metropolis has problems akin to the Bay Area

I've never lived in the Bay Area/SF so I can't comment on the problems there, but I have lived in London for the past few years.

I volunteer extensively with the homeless, and I haven't seen a fraction of what people describe in San Francisco, or anywhere near the level of antisocial behaviour or crime. Every week I'm serving food on the streets for at least a few hours; I've never once been threatened with anything other than words (and even then maybe twice with words?), never seen needles lying around (co-volunteers have, not common though), and never seen human faeces on the street.

I've lived in the Bay Area for 15 years. Except for the "poop on street" part, I've never witnessed any of those other things in SF or anywhere else either. I've never ever been threatened by anything (words or physically) in real life (this is true everywhere I've lived: Hong Kong, Florida, Connecticut, Texas, SF/Bay Area) In the Bay Area I've largely stayed in the less crowded suburbs such as Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc. where things are kept absurdly clean and orderly (the parks are hosed down at least once a week). Last week while going to work in Burlingame I did see there was human feces in the parking lot but the city sanitation worker was already cleaning it up. I do go to SF sometimes to see friends, to go at a restaurant (in pre-COVID times), etc. There is a small part of SF that gives me uncomfortable feelings but the rest of the city has never given me any issues and I've run through parts of the city in the middle of the night (during the Golden Gate Relay).

I'm not saying that it doesn't happen or that people who write about them are being untruthful. However, I do wonder if it is the extreme events or experiences that get written about and aggregated into news.

The solution has always been fewer rich people, and the more they believe this is hell-on-earth, the more they will leave and the fewer will come.

Please stay the course and let them have their “reality”.

Having lived all my life in several packed downtown metro areas all over from Delhi, Mumbai, NYC to San Francisco, being safety aware and conscious of your surroundings is pure common sense and not just a specific city problem. Yes, the political class and municipality can absolutely do better to quell the concerns for the wealth and demand the metro area attracts as someone pointed out earlier, although that’s a tangential discussion IMO

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