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Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

I've always thought that Santa Cruz is a great place to spend three months and a terrible place to spend three years. The place has a certain energy and but you can get sucked into the vortex and spend every day bicycling to the local surf break and back without doing realizing that you have none little else for the past 6 months. Makes you appreciate how lively San Francisco is and how nicely it balances the more sensuous aspects of Santa Cruz's culture while having some sense of grandeur and purpose beyond sitting in a hot tub.

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the vortex is called 'the Mystery Spot'

There's a joke that Mystery Spot bumper stickers are a communicable disease.

I think you're basically saying that you want to live in a big city longer term--which, for all its problems, SF is a pretty good example. I almost certainly find Santa Cruz more attractive than most of Silicon Valley generally.

Maybe. San Francisco is unique among major American cities in a number of ways and it has a special charm to it. I don't think that a generic substitution of Santa Cruz vs ($BIG_CITY) would favor the likes of Seattle or Houston or Philadelphia to Santa Cruz. I would agree that Santa Cruz is nicer than anywhere in Santa Clara or San Mateo counties, and there is probably good reason so many people put up with the commute over the 17. The real issue with Santa Cruz (if it is even an issue) is that the whole town is on a perpetual summer vacation (especially the college students!). Boudrillard has some very choice observations of Santa Cruz in the 80's that more or less ring true to today. And Santa Cruz is full of interesting characters and it is quite cosmopolitan for a place its size, it also feels as if everything has gone to seed.

I don't disagree although the list of arguments against living in SF seems to continue to grow--though you avoid some of them (though not cost) depending upon where you live in the city. I'd actually argue that Seattle and Portland, OR have at least some of characteristics that make SF attractive. Of course, there are other cities in the US that are attractive as well but they're very different from SF, e.g. Denver/Boulder, NYC, Boston...

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