Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

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One of the things that I really noticed when I moved from San Francisco to Italy was that here (Padua, Italy), there are young people, old people, rich people, and people not so well off. San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist. No kids, no old people, no people with sort of average jobs. I didn't like it, it felt too strange to me. I prefer to have a mix of people from all walks of life.

Also, some people - a minority, but "anecdotally significant" - seem to be a bit smug: like living in San Francisco makes them better somehow.

That said... I don't regret the time I spent there, and it's a city I heartily recommend to Europeans visiting the US, as it'll be a lot more familiar to them than something like Los Angeles, and it has a ton of stuff to do and see. And California in general has probably the most variety of any one US state in terms of geography, so if you get bored of the city, you can go the mountains, or the "lost coast" up north, or Death Valley, or pretty much whatever suits your fancy.

There are actually a lot of kids, and people with average jobs in SF. They just aren't white so tech people don't notice them.

Regarding old people, retired people are actually the fastest growing demographic in the city.

Retired people are the fastest growing demographic in every city. We're living longer.

Yeah, but the article I read suggested that rich Californians from other parts of the state were choosing SF as a place to retire. (Whereas people actually from SF were leaving due to costs) I'll try to dig up the article if I can.

Look at the census data for SF. There are far fewer children there than average in the US. I think the average is around 24% for under 18. In SF it is around 12%. Brooklyn, by comparison, is average.

There really aren't. I live in one of the few "family" neighborhoods in this city and there are maybe 2-3 families with kids within blocks of here. Plenty of non-white people around here too. If you go out to the "burbs", everyone has kids...

I guess I lived next to an elementary school so it seemed like there were a lot of kids. I know statistically it's low but I chalked this up to the large numbers of transient workers and singles. Amongst groups who seemed more rooted in the city (like, say Chinese people in the Richmond) it seemed like the number of kids was about the same as anywhere.

There are actually a lot of kids, and people with average jobs in SF. They just aren't white so tech people don't notice them.

This, 1000x this.

> This, 1000x this.

Repeating a grammatical error 1000 times does not make it "more better".

If you look at actual statistics, they do seem to back up my impression: income in SF is not your typical bell curvish distribution you'd see in many other places. There are a lot of people making a lot of money, more at still quite a bit of money, and a small peak for those making very little money, and fewer in between:

http://www.city-data.com/income/income-San-Francisco-Califor...

Look at:

Distribution of median family income in 2009 (number of people)

Distribution of median household income in 2009 (number of people)

Repeating a grammatical error 1000 times does not make it "more better".

Douché.

If you look at actual statistics, they do seem to back up my impression ....

You're either confused about my comment or making a completely non sequitur argument for the heck of it. The claim I agreed with was that there are actually a lot of (largely minority) kids and people with average jobs in SF.

That is true and can be shown so by inspection, at that.

There are plenty of kids and families who live in my neighborhood (I'm on the cusp of Union Square and the Tenderloin). If you take a ride on the T towards Bayview in the middle of the afternoon, you'll also see plenty of kids.

Are the public schools in San Francisco just empty, waiting for families to move in and send their kids there? Of course not. As for people with "average jobs," who do you think is serving you that latté, helping you at Macy's, or cleaning your office? They don't just ship all of those people in from Oakland.

That San Francisco has no children or working class is a preposterous idea, mostly advanced by those who fail to step outside of the high-rent parts of the city.

Take a walk around SF's Chinatown if you want one example of people who are a mix of: young / old / rich / not so well off.

The outer Sunset and Richmond have lots of families and older folks.

I hadn't thought about the "people from all walks of life" aspect missing from SF before. I find that true as well. I haven't been to many other big cities but I'm curious how SF relates on that aspect to cities such as Seattle, New York, and LA. I wonder if SF actually does have quite a lot of diversity if you expand your definition of SF from anything within 10 minutes of Civic Center to everything from Outer Sunset to South San Francisco.

I think part of the problem is just geography. A city like Boston or Seattle has a lot of room for suburbs, so if you have less money, you can go further out. In SF, you can only go South, otherwise you have to cross the bay. San Francisco, as someone else writes here, has a housing supply problem.

San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist

I've dropped this link many times before, but it's still relevant here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... . There's not really a "weird bubble" so much as basic economics at work: SF is a desirable place to live in many respects, but it's virtually impossible to build new housing there for reasons discussed at the link. In the face of exploding demand and constant supply, prices rise.

Regular people move to the sunbelt, where development is easy and real estate prices more reasonable, and the people who have the money and/or need to be in SF stay/move there.

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