Hacker News Reader

Comment by lobotryas | Hacker News Reader

You are forgetting the weather.

DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking.

SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it.

This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.

View on HN

"...every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the... hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. "Isn't great, every day, hot and sunny?" What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather. I'm a mammal, I can afford coats, scarves, cappuccino and rosy cheeked women"

Bill Hicks

That's the thing though, on the peninsula it's NOT always hot and sunny. Sometimes it is, but mostly it's close to perfect weather. 70s, 80s. Sun.

That said though real estate there has gone absolutely berserk, not worth the weather.

Did Bill Hicks say this of SF ? LA ? California in general ?

Starting around San Mateo and going north from there through the city all the way to Sausalito (and probably beyond), there are numerous microclimates. It's not at all like the LA that I know.

he was saying it about Los Angeles, when making fun of LA types. He was performing (as he did nearly half his career) for a British audience.

To add something to this discussion: On my South Florida tropical island, rent is 1500-1900 per month, depending on whether you live on a canal, or waterfront (nevermind living on dry land, which is much, much more reasonable). For most of a decade, I've telecommuted and received, well, let's round it down to the San Francisco 119K per year, and yes that's W2, and paid 22.8K/year a month for rent. Snow? Ice? haven't seen them in years. Jackets? Surely you jest, I shiver at 73 degrees.

My point isn't that San Francisco is worse than this or that, but that every day I read that it is the center of the universe, and recruiters used to tell me "but you _have_ to be here, this is the place to _be_" which is terribly unconvincing for persons of my particular persuasion, nevermind that I don't care for wading through bums and traffic.

TL;DR it's a huge universe, and you don't have to put up with California to develop software in it.

You read San Francisco is the center of the universe because there really is a network effect for software development. Companies looking for a bigger pool of talent to draw from relocate to the area, post jobs, and bring in yet more developers. On your South Florida island can you find someone with ten years of Cobol or five years programming 12F675s? If I started a company there, how many people could I hire that have solid experience in Scala? Not "I played around with it after work" experience, but real experience?

SF people have to stop quoting the weather. The summer's are miserable with fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.

It's never very foggy east of Fillmore street, even in the summer. YMMV but SF weather is only miserable to people from LA.

SMH. You know you're drinking the Kool Aid when you try and go neighborhood by neighborhood. SF is terrible, Oakland/Berkeley better but not much (Berkeley gets nailed by the finger coming straight in from the GG Bridge) If you grew up somewhere else where summer meant putting your coat away for 3 months then "Two blocks over here the wind is still biting but the sun is out" isn't much of a consolation. Now, if you hate heat, as some do, then it's wonderful. I just think SF has a fantastic climate April/May and Sept/Nov. Folks need to realize though that there are big trade offs living there. No beach and always needing to have warm clothes if you leave your house for more than a few hours in case the fog comes in.

I don't know what you mean. The microclimates there are just a fact of life. The sunset is going to be cooler and foggier than the Mission simply because of the topography. Berkeley and Oakland are actually 10 degrees warmer with only occasional fog all year round. The whole area gets like 300 days of sun per year. I just wonder where people are from when they say that the bay areas weather is "terrible." It seems highly relative. For reference, I've lived in Minneapolis, Tokyo, Tucson, Atlanta, Boston and NYC and thought SF's weather was better than all of those places. They all had at least one season where it was miserable to be outside.

Given we're talking about the weather some of this is in jest. And you've somewhat turned this around as "what do you mean the weather is terrible". I was objecting to the "the weather in SF is fantastic!" crowd who blow by Mark Twain's keen observation. Places I have lived for more than a year include the Bay Area, Boston, Melbourne Australia, Istanbul, Chapel Hill, London. I found the fog to be very annoying as I had to manage to the weather constantly there.

> Mark Twain's keen observation

If you're talking about "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.", Twain never actually said it: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp

As someone who lives in Portland, I would love to have SF's weather.

Yo Larry! Come down to LA, Santa Monica area. Code with ocean views! Although, I do miss the amount of live music in Portland.

Hah, hey Patrick! Long time no see. Sounds like things are going well over there. I'll let you know next time I'm headed that way.

It's not foggy, but it's not warm either.

Foggy mornings and evenings aren't rare even as far east as 3rd St, although it usually burns off during the day.

Really, if you want good weather in the bay area live in the valley. It's close enough and the weather is waaaay better.

Hop in a car or on BART on the weekend, go 15-20min east and you can hike in the sun or wander around Berkeley/Oakland in warm weather. That said, March to April/early May and Sept-Nov are generally quite glorious.

Fog is a nice to have, you can always travel a short bit to avoid it.

SF people have to stop quoting the weather.

SF weather is awesome: ~50-75 all year round with specific neighborhoods that stay warm and sunny all the time if you're into that sort of thing. Heavenly compared to Pittsburgh, Boston, NYC, or DC.

The summer's are miserable with fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.

Bizarre claim. Also, avoiding fog is simple: move to a different neighborhood.

And let's not forget that DC during the latter part of summer is swamp-like, with high humidity and 80-90 degree weather. The city largely shuts down in August.

> Also, avoiding fog is simple: move to a different neighborhood.

A 20+ hour a week job for a month, even if you can afford a place in the neighborhood you want to move to.

The DC winter is pretty mild. There is perhaps one snowstorm a year. Yes, sometimes there's ice on your car, but if you live and work in the city there's a good chance you don't drive to work or necessarily own a car.

If you want to complain about DC weather, I would direct you to the heat + humidity level in the summer.

SF and DC are very different cities, but based solely on weather I would absolutely take DC + $11,000/year. No question. It's really not that bad and some people even enjoy having discrete seasons.

I grew up in Syracuse NY. The snowiest city in the U.S. I don't consider D.C. to "have" winters. They have a mild falls until spring.

I've lived in Syracuse. DC gets what Syracuse would consider a real snowfall about once every five years. But when it happens, everything shuts down. Not enough plows. And terrifyingly bad snow drivers.

The weather is one of the worst things (that and high cost of living) about San Francisco (the city itself, not suburbs). There are maybe 3 weeks a year of actual warm, sunny weather. But you don't get the cold/snowy or hot/humid weather either.

Now, if you live 30+ minutes outside of San Francisco, you can have great weather and slightly lower cost of living.

Some people find seasons preferable. I plan on moving back to Boston for that reason alone.

The lack of seasons in SF makes me feel like it's Groundhog Day. I'd gladly take some snow in exchange for the other seasons. For me, summer feels much better after a long winter.

I suppose this outlook is related to where you grew up. To someone from the north, referring to DC as cold and snowy is preposterous. They had one bad year with snowfall a few years ago, but other than that winter they rarely even crack 10" in recent years, and even that usually comes over only a couple of days during infrequent storms. Their mean temperature is above freezing every month of the year.

On average in and around DC we see a blizzard every six years.

The last awesome snow filled winter we had was the 2009 to 2010 season. We accumulated up to 80 inches of snow; fun stuff!

San Fran weather is awesome, the amount of homelessness makes me sad though!

> San Fran weather is awesome, the amount of homelessness makes me sad though!

It bums you out?

Ive lived in Baltimore, Philly, NYC and Nashville and never encounter the culture of homelessness that one experiences in San Francisco.

I know part of why it's like that is because of the weather.

Besides being bummed out by being surrounded by destitution the smell of destitution is just as bad.

in SF, summer is often colder than winter.

I've never lived in DC, but

  - presence of good chinese food
  - weather (even though I love winter weather, DC summers would not be worth it)
  - jobs (which companies have large presences in SF vs DC-area)

all conspire to make me completely incurious as to whether DC is "$11k/year" nicer than SF.

Exactly. SF is expensive, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more than ~$1k/month disposable income for me to give up what that amount buys me in quality of life — for, admittedly, my definitions of "quality of life"; YM, as always, MV.

DC, especially in the suburbs, also has very good Chinese food.

Ya, I think parent hasn't been to DC before.

And, as much as I hate DC, all kinds of other foods, including really great Ethiopian and Moroccan. But not good sushi (back when I lived there 7 years ago).

> in SF, summer is often colder than winter.

A common misconception, even among residents, easily debunked by paying attention or doing a quick Google search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate

http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;q=san%20francisco

SF itself has even more fine-grained microclimates than the peninsula (which only has a few). I didn't (immediately) find out how the wikipedia climate numbers were assembled nor what weather station(s) weatherspark gets data from, but if it's a single weather station, the data gathered is nigh-useless.

weatherspark looks very nice btw, I'm going to go look if they have an android app.... seems there isn't one. oh well.

Is there any neighborhood that experiences higher average temperatures in the winter? I've spent most of my time in South Beach, FiDi, and Outer Sunset, and while I never kept records, it always seemed to me like each of those had a higher average temperatures in the (late) summer.

I grew up in the Midwest, where we had all the seasons and often fairly bad summers (old people die if their air conditioners fail) and winters (can't leave the driveway without 4WD). Still, in San Francisco, I am personally uncomfortable due to weather far more often than I ever was in the Midwest. This is due primarily to the lack of air conditioning in housing (I have bay windows constantly open and a fan directly on my desk and bed, and am still almost always hot, often to the point of having difficulty sleeping for long stretches in the late summer), the lack of air conditioning in my office (an older building in the financial district), and being improperly dressed outside due to the lack of predictability in the weather. I really dislike San Francisco's weather, not because it looks bad on paper (it obviously looks great), but because it causes me discomfort much more frequently than I was used to in the Midwest.

It sounds like you could significantly improve your standard of living by buying an air conditioner...

Most apartments and shared houses I've seen and both the ones I've lived in had no easy way to install an air conditioner.

Having more money is pretty much objectively better, while more distinct seasons is personal preference, to a degree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com