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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> NYC is often considered more expensive, and Manhattan is certainly... well... Manhattan. But taken collectively the NYC metro area is actually much more affordable. You can find places to live that are nice, friendly to someone older than 25-30, and at least sanely priced.

It's crazy, isn't it? I was looking at housing prices recently, for places within a 30-35 minute train commute of work (I refuse to make a car part of my daily routine). In New York, for $750k or so there are 2-3 BR places in good school districts in Westchester, right on the Metro North line. Not cheap, but not entirely outside the long-term plans for a two professional family. Similar places in Palo Alto or the like seem to start well over $1 million. Over a million, to live in a place where the nice restaurant are in strip malls!

And if you can expand to secondary cities... it's incredible what kind of water views you can get in downtown Seattle for $500k.

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Yeah that's the other thing. $1 million for houses in a plain vanilla suburb. I mean, Silicon Valley minus its admittedly awesome tech/science scene is not much different from the duller parts of Orange County and is at least twice as expensive. OC has better weather and nicer beaches and parks too.

It's just http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13608503/Daffy_Screwball....

If you're willing to tolerate a 30-35 minute commute, Millbrae/Burlingame is a lot cheaper than Palo Alto, and that allows for job opportunities in both SF and Silicon Valley.

But yeah, Bay Area prices are really high.

I wouldn't mind a 30-35 minute commute if I didn't have to get in a car at any point. My commute from Westchester to Manhattan was amazing: a block and a half to the train, and a block and a half to my office. Almost never late, came every 15 minutes during rush hour, etc.

The problem with Cal Train seems to be that you have a mini-commute at the beginning and end of every trip. My Westchester town had several residential high-rises just a block or two from the train station. Looking at the Millbrae station, there is nothing around it--it's designed for people to drive into. And on the San Francisco side, the SF Caltrain station isn't exactly amazingly centrally located...

There are bunch of apartment complexes near the train station. They're just not that tall.

The nice thing about Millbrae is that the station has both Caltrain and BART, so you would be able to commute to most SF tech companies without driving.

But the train ride is 30 minutes, (BART doesn't do express), so it would be more like 40-45 minutes with walking and waiting.

What nice Palo Alto restaurants are in strip malls? Most stuff is near University or California Ave. The only thing in Palo Alto I really think of as anything _like_ a strip mall is the Stanford shopping center, but that's more of a mall-mall, and the "nice" restaurants there are the big chain restaurants. Maybe the Fry's too, I guess, but there are no restaurants in that one.

ElCamino and Alma/Central sort of meet the description. Though less so in PA then surrounding towns.

Pizzeria Napolitano on El Camino.

It's true, the best restaurants (combination of great food and not super pricy) in the Valley are in Strip Malls.

Pizzeria Napolitano is not even in Palo Alto. And your redefinition of "best" to "cheap" doesn't really work for me either.

Not necessarily right in downtown Palo Alto (it has a cute little downtown area), but in the surrounding areas definitely. When I was a summer intern in my employer's Menlo Park office, I had a lunch budget which means I had to figure out how to take advantage of several free lunches a week. I probably hit up a dozen (nice) places, and all were either in strip malls or in isolated buildings surrounded by a big parking lots.

E.g. this is a Michelin-star place in Cupertino: http://goo.gl/maps/VsVNL. Right next to the highway, surrounded by a parking lot. Might as well be a Taco Bell.

This is another Michelin-star place in San Mateo: http://goo.gl/maps/KjdnP.

Of course I'm being somewhat facetious. There's not a lot of places to put a restaurant in the suburbs other than in a strip mall next to a Walgreens or in a building surrounded by a big parking lot. But that's my point--you're paying Manhattan prices to live in a suburb. Not a compact, walkable one like Greenwich, either, but a sprawl-y generic one that looks more or less like the faceless generic suburbs in any other part of the country.

OK, I concede. The prices are very high for an unwalkable suburb, although I think most people think Palo Alto is at least prettier than your average. Our downtowns are better too. Still not as nice as living in a city, but not quite as bad as living in a Houston exurb either.

To be fair, downtown Palo Alto, if you can afford it, is pretty nice, if somewhat sterile. Reminds me a lot of Greenwich, actually. I can't say the same for the rest of the valley, though...

His wording was hyperbolic but his point wasn't far off the mark if you compare the restaurant scene in SF (or NYC or Chicago) to that of South Bay.

By that standard, one of the best restaurants in NYC is above a Whole Foods and adjacent to a food court.

This is a little like talking about the restaurant scene in Yountville. I mean, yeah, but what else is there in Yountville?

By the way, you can also get a spacious 2 bedroom co-op with a large outdoor courtyard in NYC with 1 hour mass transit (express bus from door to midtown/downtown)for $300,000, in a fantastic neighborhood.

That sounds nice, but 1 hour is a major commute in my book.

It is, but my commute in DC is at least 45 minutes and normally 55 (by Metrorail), and many have far longer, so it's really not that bad in the context of living in a major metropolitan area.

When I lived in DC I commuted from Huntington to Foggy Bottom. That was roughly 40 mins, with 30 min on the train and 5 minutes on each side for getting to the train station and then from the train station to work. However, I could have rented in Foggy Bottom, 500sq/ft for $1600/mo and reduced my commute to a 5 minute walk. I guess if your willing to live in a box or a box in a basement you can reduce your commute most places.

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