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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

When I read, "In The City", I thought they opened a branch in NYC :-)

People in SF (and really all around the bay) refuse to let San Francisco's obvious shortcomings and relatively insignificant size stop them from considering it the center of the entire universe. It's one of the most frustrating things about living in San Francisco, especially if you're moving from somewhere bigger or more interesting. However, NYC transplants to SF are rare; instead, you'll find hundreds of people from small towns across the country and world who must assume all "big" cities (something SF barely qualifies as) are flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system which barely runs and a terrible male-to-female ratio that reinforces the awkward social climate.

  > a terrible male-to-female ratio

San Francisco's male to female ratio 1.008 [1]. It must be rough finding someone when for every 251 males there are only 249 females. But, in fact, even that's an understatement.

If you factor in that there are more gay men than lesbians in San Francisco [2][3], the tables turn. The straight men to straight women ratio is more like 0.96 [4][5].

So, far from the stereotype you've pulled out here, in reality for every 24 straight guys there are 25 straight girls.

[1] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....

[2] https://www.baycitizen.org/news/census-2010/census-34000-gay...

[3] Assuming that the ratio of gay to lesbian individuals more or less follows the ratio of gay to lesbian couples, which seems reasonable.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orienta...

[5] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28251+*+%281+-+0.154+*...

>flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system

  urine: no worse than London, where I moved form.
  mentally-ill: more than London, and it doesnt bother me
  transportation: bad enough that (as in London) I ride a bike everywhere
  weather: better
  start-up friendliness: much better (than when i left in '06)

Not liking SF is fine. Besmuding the judgement of its residents to fit your own tastes: not so fine :p

Well, I see you've had this on your mind a bit.

On a side note: Ive found San Francisco to be quite nice, just about as nice as most other cities ive been in. NYC was nice (though a bit less friendly than most), DC was nice (except for the politicians), San Francisco was nice (though surprisingly cold), Seattle was nice (and just as rainy as expected), and Portland was nice (very beautiful each time I've been there).

American cities are on the whole all at least pretty nice.

> NYC transplants to SF are rare

Not so rare that I don't meet one every few weeks. They pretty much all say the same thing: there's nothing like NYC but SF is more livable.

On the other hand, people who move here just for the tech boom tend to polarize hard into either the most earnest people you've ever met but who have little interest in the city, or complete a-holes who hate everyone/thing. That's my scientific determination at least.

Am I the only one who thought London?

No, you are not.

Where does Alexis work out of, if they don't have any space in The Real City.

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