Comment by sargun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sargun | Hacker News Reader

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The weather really matters to a person like me. I find that in snow, and rain, I don't get on very well. I tend to get very sick in extremely cold weather, and my mood isn't great either.

For this reason, London, Boston, Chicago, and New York are effectively ruled out for me as places to live for a large enough chunk of the year.

I don't really like Seattle very much. Their airport uses TSA. The employers in the area that are within walking distance of any of the places I would like to live don't greatly excite me either.

San Francisco meets a lot of special requirements that are hard to meet: -Very walkable -Decent transportation options (Uber) -Temperate -Good collection of employers -Empirical data appears to show a great number of interesting people

I don't think I've read a single pro-San Francisco blog, and even if I did, someone's opinion about San Francisco would only factor into a small part of my decisions to live here.

As someone from one of the least sunny parts of the country (Pittsburgh area) I agree. Weather is one of my primary concerns when I think about moving. I would never move from Pittsburgh to Seattle even though Seattle gets a little bit more sunshine.

What is it about the bay area that attracts everyone? What is so bad about Southern California? It seems to have jobs galore and good weather almost all year.

> I don't really like Seattle very much. Their airport uses TSA. [..]

So does SFO. Don't all airports in the US use TSA?

Also, literally every other city you mentioned has Uber available. Speaking specifically to Seattle, we also have Lyft and the other "popular" transportation-as-an-app services available.

Technically SFO is one of the very few airports (and the largest one I believe) that contracts out its airport security to a private company. The company and its operations are regulated by TSA, and for all practical purposes offers the same experience as any other airport, but the people who look at your bags and such are not TSA employees.

See: http://www.flysfo.com/about-sfo/safety-security and http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/airports-who-opt-out-of-tsa-scre...

>Their airport uses TSA.

All US airports use TSA.

There are a handful of airports in the US, SFO among them, that were/are part of a program that used private security contractors that operated according to TSA SOP. If I remember right this was just a pilot program that was discontinued, but the existing airports were grandfathered in.

That said, I haven't been treated any better by Covenant Security's (the contractor for SFO, aka "TEAM SFO" as you see on their shirts) people than I have been by actual TSA employees elsewhere. Seems like a nominal difference to me.

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