I've lived in a lot of major cities in my life, and SF is the first one where I've had to literally dodge human shit while walking on the sidewalk.
The weather is pretty much the only reason I don't regret moving here. Even the famously liberal population drives me up the wall sometimes - amazingly cliquey, and way smugger than even South Park portrays this place.
San Francisco is actually kind of disgusting. It is one of the dirtiest cities in the United States and there are literally-crazy homeless people on every corner. In many ways, it is dirtier than Manhattan; it makes Boston look sterile. There is human excrement everywhere, and serious crime issues. I passed a fountain that was effectively aerosolizing human shit (the homeless were pooping in it), which smelled about how you may imagine. It is not uncommon to walk through a cloud of pot smoke then to be hit in the face with the foul stench of waste; the mixture is revolting.
The locals are also out of touch with reality. They compare Market St. to the Champs-Élysées in Paris which only seems to demonstrate that they've never been to Paris. There are idiotic cancer warnings on everything; hotels, gas stations, parking garages, Starbucks, shopping centers, health clubs, and french fry boxes. There are Idiocracy warning alarms at the exit to every parking garage, presumably to prevent the deaths of the vast number of people that are killed every year by cars exiting parking garages. There is a tax on toasted subs. Idiotic protesters were allowed to block Market St., halting street cars, rerouting buses, disrupting commutes, and closing the MUNI station while blathering about how it was there first amendment right to do so (it's not). In short, the place is backward. There seems to be such a political desire to tackle huge societal issues and minor non-issues that the city has failed to master the very basics, and is unable to even manage human waste.
> There are idiotic cancer warnings on everything; hotels, gas stations, parking garages, Starbucks, shopping centers, health clubs, and french fry boxes.
I think this is a State of CA thing, not a City of SF thing.
The poor/middle-class parts of LA like the SFV are obviously in bad shape.
But yeah, the weather sure is nice. I figure that's part of the problem, though: if you're homeless, you'll head somewhere that's warm all the time. Everbody had the same idea and solution.
Oh, the crime isn't so bad. Everyone knows to stay away from the west side of Dolores Park! The crackheads in the TL won't bother you unless you show fear! Haha! Another person got shanked on my block this week - if only they were as street smart as the rest of us! I deftly dodged a piece of human shit on the sidewalk on my way to work without missing a beat, how delightfully urban-sophisticate!
I've never before lived in a place where violent crime, rampant substance abuse, and extreme poverty was treated in such a blase way, and often glorified as "vibrancy" and "color". The more I live here the more I feel like people here have these giant goggles on that only allows them to see the charming mini-muffins, startup parties, and great coffee.
What this means in practice is that nobody in San Francisco lives more than walking distance from an area of the city in which people are routinely mugged, whereas you have to get north of the 140s in NYC to see drastically increased crime.
San Francisco is, for its population, anomalously small. That plays into a lot of the problems perceive in it: it drives housing costs, makes transportation infrastructure harder to build, retards home ownership (and thus neighborhoods --- had a block party lately?), puts people into closer contact with crime, &c &c.
I lived in SF for several years, and I think 'potatolicious is if anything understating his case.
Most residents without families have roommates. Tweens who make up the majority of the workforce naive enough to work for start-ups live 3-5 people in older victorian or "railroad" apartments where the dining rooms and living rooms have long-since been converted into bedrooms.
These apartments are rent controlled, so it's common for these units to be priced below market if the lease holder has had their lease for a significant period of time.
I have several friends who spend $600-$900/month to share such a unit with 3-4 others, whilst the leaseholder pays $1,000-$1,500/month for the apartment. Often the leaseholder no longer resides in the unit, and sublets it as an income source.
Our rent control law was ill-conceived covering only buildings constructed before the bill was passed in the'70s. Landlords burdened by rent-control statues are only permitted inflationary rent increases. Landlords of newer constructions may set rates as they see fit when contracts come up to renewal. This artificially restricts the supply of available units and helps keep rents high.
My last apartment, a 2 bedroom, 2 bath in SOMA cost me $2900 when I signed up for it two years ago. They raised the rent to $4,200 this summer and I had to move to Oakland. It turns out Oakland is pretty awesome, but it's not home. Everything closes early, there are some 'hoods I bike through which are shady enough that I keep pepper spray mounted on my seat stay and a quick-action folding knife in my pocket.
There is very little violence in San Francisco directed at white/asian, upper-middle class people, like the suburbanites bitching in this thread. Most violence is crackheads killing crackheads, or gangs killing other gang members. I've walked every street in this city day and night, drunk, high, and sober, carrying a $2k laptop and a $3k camera on my backpack.
Panhandlers mostly stick to the neighborhoods locals avoid. The yuppie neighborhoods and the tourist neighborhoods. But honestly, if the fear of panhandlers keeps you from moving to the city and sticking in the south bay or the peninsula, awesome. You're not going to contribute anything to this city besides the money you spend at restaurants and bars, anyways, so you're just part of the invading gentry, you're not part of our city. Stay away. It's dangerous here. The poor are out to get you because they're poor and you're rich. Go back to Palo Alto where you belong. Please. They have coffee shops and women too beautiful for you nerds to ever sleep with.
As impendia brings up elsewhere in the thread, there are a lot of world-class people here, in startups and otherwise. I'm a part-time photographer on the side, and I've been able to find a lot more creative, ambitious, and talented people here than anywhere else I've been.
Though I wish I could get to these places/people without wading through the cesspool that is the rest of the city. SF is a city where you can attend an art show opening by incredible artists... but have to walk through crackstab-row to get there. You can learn dance from world-class instructors... but have to step over a few prone, immobile bodies lying on the sidewalk. There are unique shops you won't find anywhere else... and you'll be accosted by deranged crackheads the whole way. You can enjoy great, sunny year-round weather in the park... just watch out for the needles in the grass.
It really is a city of extremes. Personally, I'm not moving out of here anytime soon - though I would wish that people stop wearing obvious problems like a badge of pride. No, it's not cool that you live on a street where people get raped all the time. No, it's not cool that you have 5 crackheads hanging out downstairs blocking your building's entrance every morning. In other cities people would see these things as problems. In SF it's "ohhhhh it's just SF! Reminds me of how lucky I am to be here!".
The standard response to bringing any of these impolite topics up is either:
- hur hur. You're obviously not cut out for city-living (right, because I've lived in more major cities than most people have in their lives...)
- Well, I've never seen any of this! (unless you stay in the very furthest reaches of the Richmond or Outer Sunset, yes, yes you have).
That and a place with good public transportation. Portland has a huge homeless problem because it has free public transportation within city limits. Many homeless people just ride the trains around all day.
Do you really want to compare SF weather with Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, etc?
I definitely have. :|
SF isn't for everyone, but I absolutely loved it. I went to weekly swing dances attended by 200+ people, joined meditation circles, took yoga classes from the best instructors in the world, took comedy lessons from the studio that pioneered long-form improv, ... the list goes on and on.
SF has a huge concentration of high-energy, motivated, ambitious, creative people, and if I had the option I would move back there in a heartbeat, high real estate prices and all.
Everyone's tastes are different, I don't mean to criticize you one bit, but there are a lot of things to seriously love about San Francisco, and people who love these things push the rents up.
You nailed it: we're paying for the weather.
It's December 11th, and we're still able to be outside. Yesterday I did a 80k bike ride and it was perfect out. Even at it's worst (Feb) it's still quite tolerable. Every time I think about moving to the east coast, I remember the ice and snow of the winters, and am quite happy to stay here.
Also, we're geographically ideal. Want to get into the hills? take a drive down 1 or skyline, and it's gorgeous. We have ocean access. Napa and Sonoma are an hour north. Skiing and the mountains are only a couple hours east.
It's far more than just san fransico proper.
As a longtime Austin resident, I'd almost consider that a nice problem to have, because it would mean that walking was an integrated part of my daily routine rather than something I have to explicitly make time for so that I don't lose my mind from all the driving I have to do.
In any case, there are lot of cities in the US (and even more abroad) where you can get the walk-centric lifestyle without having to dodge human shit. Hell, even Manhattan, the city that supposedly defines urban grime, doesn't have this.
http://www.walkscore.com/TX/Austin
From experience, anything that isn't green on that map isn't anywhere near walkable, and only Guadalupe and South Congress have transit worth riding. 20-30 minute headways are the norm on other routes, and only transit devotees will put up with that, like I did when I lived on Burnet.
You are very correct that transportation is a lifestyle choice, but Austin doesn't make driving rarely an easy choice.
And since we're also talking about working for software companies, I would also like to posit – and I could certainly be wrong about this – that the majority of local software companies are not located centrally, where they are readily accessible via bus, rail, or bike. And once you're out of Central Austin, you're in a city that's built to car scale, not human scale.
If coming to New York meant that you had to put four people in a three bedroom apartment that's uncomfortably far from a subway line, instead of buying a nice little condo in Omaha, this does not mean that you are not "really" better off than your counterpart in Omaha; it means that you have chosen to consume your extra wealth in the form of "living in New York" rather than in the form of spacious real estate, cheap groceries, and an easy commute.
At some point, the crowd creates the job market creates the crowd...and it snowballs. Our preferences stopped mattering a long time ago.
Whether SF is 'nicer' than somewhere else is down to the individual's preferences.
Who hasn't said "That job looks interesting but the office location is a pain in the ass and will add 30 minutes each way to my commute"?