So You're Moving to San Francisco
al3x.net
al3x.net
What al3x appears to not know: It's not about passive acceptance. There is a major political force that fights for the circumstances that he finds (and I find) so objectionable.
In this mentally defective "progressive" movement--that can't tell the difference between helping the poor and helping poverty--cleaning up bad neighborhoods is called "gentrification" and fought tooth and nail. Likewise any plan to fight homelessness that isn't some variation of "give the homeless more free money." The result is a massive political deadlock between two sides that can never agree on anything. Perpetual warfare.
The situation is, in reality, both much better and much worse than he understands. Better because we're not a city full of selfish bohemians. Worse because we are a backwards, provincial city with a deeply broken political culture.
But, even though I also hate victorian architecture, I can't think of anywhere else I would rather live. Portland is way too homogenous and small-town for me.
Edit: btw, I love my transit situation. I use a combination of bicycle (mostly), City CarShare (a fleet of cars at my disposal), Muni trains, and cabs. Not owning a car is a fairly high priority for me. And the only city with decent public transportation is Paris.
No really.
Edit: plus, Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, jogged past my place the other day. Evidently Zooey Deschanel now lives in my neighborhood. Most of my neighbors are not involved in tech. I'm sitting in the bar around the corner from my apartment writing this on a big couch drinking a great local microbrew while using their free wifi. If I really wanted a stable job, I'd go back to Microsoft. The only downside to this whole thing is that Zooey Deschanel is now married.
I don't even know who that is. In LA you'd have movie star neighbors. The "famous" people in my neighborhood are internet micro-celebrities like Veronica Belmont and porn stars like Madison Young. Perfect, for me.
Edit: ah, I see now that Zooey Deschanel is a movie star.
Also, downvote wtf? Seriously, explain yourselves. I'm perplexed by your rejection of my comment.
There's many reasons to choose Seattle, but non-tech neighbor probability isn't a good one.
Try London.
It also seems a hair expensive compared to other municiple transit systems in other cities, and the service outside of D.C. should have grown much faster, a long time ago.
But the stations are very well maintained, very safe, and the system is free of trash, graffiti, beggers (for the most part) and other annoyances and safety issues.
I had no problems driving up to the city for a mid-week show or event, and I could get a 4 star hotel room in the city for $70 on Priceline, meaning I could live in Mountain View during the week and stay in the city every weekend and it still be cheaper/more convenient than living in the city proper.
This statement was demonstrated all too literally for me my first night out in SF as a proud, newly minted resident:
It was a Friday night out with co-workers at my new job, and I had a blast. Really felt like it was easy to click with people, and that they were all so much more interesting than the "d-bags" I'm used to pretending to get along with at bars. Then again, these were co-workers--all very talented in their own right--and probably not an accurate sample.
Contrast with what happened immediately following: on the way out of the bar, at around midnight (not too late), I was stopped and robbed by a gang. Mind you, this was a nice part of a "safe" neighborhood (Castro). Bad luck I guess, but the worst of it was trying to find a sympathetic soul to (at the very least) let me use a phone. As soon as it was apparent that I needed assistance, this well-dressed twentysomething became invisible. Even the cops couldn't have been less helpful, and thought it best to drop me off where it had happened.
In most other cities I've been to around the world, I can't imagine folks being so apathetic.
It all worked out in the end, just struck me as a bit disturbing: What if I'd been physically harmed? Would your average stranger be more or less likely to lend a hand?
I saw a similar incident in Noe Valley, 8:30PM, people everywhere. Someone ran past me chasing someone and yelling "Call the Police!." I ran after them, calling on my cell phone. (Unfortunately it wasn't until it was after I started running that he added "He f-ing pulled a gun on me!")
We ended up making a statement to the police, and IDing them, and they got the assholes.
The crappy thing is, at least 15 other people were standing around at the time, and no one else responded but me.
It is shitty, but I don't know if it would be different in any other city.
"San Francisco boasts superb weather. ... There may be some fog, or a bit of rain from time to time, but most of the time it’s sunny and hovering around the high 60s to lower 70s."
and a closely-related bad point:
"the sight of homeless persons in varying states of dishevelment".
If you're homeless, being so in a spot where it's nearly always comfortable to be outside is perfectly sensible. It's not surprising that there are fewer homeless people in areas where it snows and freezes.
His link to http://emptyage.honan.net/mth/2009/07/are-you-going-to-san-f... is well worth following, particularly for the good advice:
"If you're moving 3,000 (or even 300) miles to live in San Francisco; live in San Francisco. And by I don't simply mean that you should not live in the East Bay or the Peninsula or Marin. I mean live in a part of the city that your great-grandparents would recognize as being San Francisco. Somewhere that was entirely residential, and all of the homes in your neighborhood existed, prior to 1915."
The old neighborhoods of San Francisco are wonderful, with considerable village character, nothing like living in SOMA or the Tenderloin.
and: "Enormous competition for limited resources. You will wait for everything. The better a thing is (food, coffee, a nice place to sit), the longer you’ll wait for it. When you finally get what you want, you’ll be crammed in with others trying to enjoy the same place/thing, diminishing everyone’s enjoyment."
I've lived in both Miami and Chicago for extended periods of time and there sure seems to be a lot more homelessness in Chicago, which is quite counter-intuitive for the very reasons you mention.
I don't blame SF for the size of the homeless population; SF can't help it, it's a small city, which exaggerates the problem. But SF's response to the problem hasn't been a winning one:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/13/...
Remember the credit card machines?
It's one thing to see someone begging on the street-corner. It's a whole other thing to see them out there wrapped in an old wool blanket when it's below zero. One is fairly innocuous for anyone acclimated to big cities, the other one gets you thinking "holy shit, that person is in mortal danger".
Miami is only bearable because of air conditioning in offices, cars, and homes. If you've ever had the A/C break in any one of those you'd be miserable in minutes.
I enjoyed my time in San Francisco, but really got a sense that it was not a place in "equilibrium", so to speak. Families can't really live there unless there's a million dollars for a house somewhere, which means that you have to be pretty wealthy, or you're headed out to some other city in the bay area. SF was great for being single, but it just struck me as being a bit artificial. Here in Padova, there are wealthy people, poor people, young people, families, elderly people - a nice mix, in other words. Same with Portland.
Also, he's right about so many people being in tech. Here in Padova, I have more friends who aren't in tech, and that makes me happy - I love to hang out with my tech friends too, and talk about this or that, but sometimes it's nice to get away from that, and in SF I never felt I could, despite trying.
That said, as someone born and raised in Oregon, I just don't think I could deal with moving back to the rainy part of the state. Endless drizzly gray days get pretty depressing. They don't even feel very 'cozy'; winter in Innsbruck was way better; watching the snow fall or waking up to a brilliant blue day with snow covered mountains was much better than sloshing around in the dismal gray day after day.
I'm actually not sure where I'd go if I went back to the US. Southern Oregon is nice in some ways, but not much going on at all in tech. Boulder looks appealing in several ways, but I've never been there, and it looks like they have a strong sense of 'smug' of their own, something I'm not a big fan of.
Edit Let's see... other random notes
* Portland, for me, had better food than SF. This was because I worked downtown in Portland and had a nice variety of affordable and diverse lunch options. Where I worked in SF didn't have nearly as good a selection.
* Portland has Powells. Powells is awesome.
* Portland is closer to more outdoor stuff, although I always got depressed in summer because of the thought of my precious few sunny days slipping by sitting in an office. Even with good technical gear, it's hard to stay warm in 5C and steady rain on a bike.
They basically said they believe most people would hate it in San Francisco but that's the whole point. Because the people who love it there don't really fit in many other places. It's a sanctuary for a certain type of culture and that's where its value is.
Everyone deserves a place where they can fit in and for the young idealist, the aging hippie, and all the other odd balls that call that place home that's where they belong. But yes, as a consequence that means that a lot of other groups (most families for instance) don't belong. Not every environment has to be all inclusive.
Actually I do see a few houses in the $1 million range on that page, but none of them seem to have yards. With no backyard and no reasonable parks in the neighbourhood, where would your children play?
There are a couple of possibilities:
* There is a supply of decent middle-income housing inhabited largely by Mexicans and less so by other groups.
* Those people have money and are living in expensive San Francisco houses that have a decent amount of space for a family.
* They don't have much money, and are crammed into small houses or are living in bad neighborhoods (as defined by high crime or other objective measurements).
* Your numbers are off and there aren't 'tons of families' from that group.
Which is it?
I thought you said you had lived in SF?
SF is dirty in the gross parts, but it's not as dirty as places like Chicago, NYC or even Paris. It just so happens the dirtiest parts of SF are where startup people work and hang out: SOMA, Tenderloin, the Mission. The level of dirtiness in these areas is so off the scale (one regularly steps over human poo) that it warps one's perspective as to how dirty the city is in general. In contrast there is a layer of garbage and grime everywhere in New York City. So much so that after a day of walking around in the summer, you can turn a white handtowel black just by wiping the sweat off your brow...
That's because the NYC summer is hot, not because the city is dirty. (Maybe you have oily pores?)
That's true, but it's still a dirty city. However, it's a different type of dirty than SF. The dirty parts of SF are dirty due to insanity and apathy. NYC is dirty because there are so many people out and about, all the time.
The climate may suck, the public transportation a joke, the government corrupt as hell, but doggone it, it's clean!
As a life-long Chicagoan I still find it incredibly strange that people believe Chicago is safe. It has a very high crime rate, double NYC in every category.
I've never heard anyone say Chicago was dirtier than San Francisco before, and I'm just going to assume you've never spent any time here.
Berwyn isn't Chicago.
Wicker Park, Uky Village, and Bucktown are all essentially the same neighborhood --- they're adjacent, clustered, and only a few square miles; they're Chicago's version of SOMA or Greenwich Village. And yet they're tree-lined (right now, they're covered in fall canopy), and every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes.
NYC and SF are dirty in large part because they are poorly planned.
I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo, though. Noe Valley seems no more or less filthy than the nicer areas of the Castro.
I found that observation a bit odd. The part about North Beach being clean was also a bit suspicious. Whenever people make blanket claims about how dirty SF is, I wonder if they've ever been to the western half of the city.
If Noe Valley is covered in poo, at least it's dog poo.
My point was, I lived in really crappy SF, I lived in hipster urban SF, and I lived in residential SF, and they were all filthy.
This is the first thing that I noticed when visiting New York for the first time. The place stunk, because the sidewalk was half for garbage and half for pedestrians. I just couldn't believe it.
(Pittsburgh is like this too. I remember having to literally move boxes of garbage away from the doorway to a restaurant to get inside. Not a great way to start your meal. The food ended up being bad, too, and I got a big piece of paper mixed in with my food. I don't think I ate anything for the rest of that conference...)
Anyway, Chicago has its problems, but it is certainly nice-looking and well-designed. I have not visited anywhere else in the US that is as clean.
(Tokyo and Copenhagen are similarly clean, though. Even Hong Kong is better than New York.)
The other big problem with SF is the parking. Horrendous. And yes, many of the people there do seem to spend a great deal of time in an advanced state of self-congratulation.
Only for certain unusual values of "everywhere." Even in Manhattan, certain neighborhoods are very clean; venture out into Brooklyn, where far more New Yorkers actually live, and the trash dynamics totally change.
Of course, this is true of all generalizations of New York. The city is so enormous that it's possible to go for decades without realizing that the part you live in is actually just a small part of a large ecosystem. So when anyone (especially a New Yorker) says "New York is..." the first move to understanding what they're saying is to ask what neighborhood they live in. Conclusions about "what New York is" are going to be pretty different coming from someone living in Park Slope vs. Chinatown.
In fact, for a city of this size it's quite well maintained.
The city annoys the shit outta me, but it's a fun place to visit sometimes.
Combined with San Francisco, Berkeley, there are far more things to do than I can make it to.
Ultimately, of course, being content is not about finding more fun things. It's about finding more things fun.
Restaurantwise, there's a few good ones, but not really enough to satisfy your every whim. Barwise, once you've removed all the really unsafe ones you've got just a handful left, scattered among Oakland's three or four safe neighbourhoods and separated by miles of "don't go here at night".
The weather is better (slightly) and the rent is cheaper (much) though.
I strongly disagree with your assessment of restaurants in Oakland. Oakland has a lot of amazing eateries, including many of what are regarded as the "top 50" of the bay area.
Piedmont Ave, Lakeshore, Uptown, Jack London, Oldtown, Rockridge, Temescal and Lake Merritt are all fantastic neighborhoods for eating (and shopping too). They're all close to each other (walking distance), relatively safe and just generally cool places to hang out.
I've been an East Bay resident for a long time and, before getting to know the city better, most of my experience was based on the bad press I had heard.
If you spend some time exploring some of the cities gems I think you'll be very surprised. I was.
He should reconsider living in a big city. Yes, SoMa had both LoveFest and Folsom St. Fair happen within the span of a week, but for the rest of the year it stays relatively quiet. Try Daly City. They don't have any festivals there.
"What sickens me most about San Francisco is not its dirt, or its large homeless population, or its questionable safety, but that locals and the city government seem to accept these circumstances."
On the good side, he didn't really go into the outdoor advantages (nearby access to mountains and ocean, in town trails and bays) but he's got a good handle on the downsides.
Perhaps the reason that San Francisco is so relentlessly progressive in its politics is that the residents can all see first hand the divide between the rich and the poor?
I've always thought of it as the other way around. A less "progressive" city would have cracked down on all the bums, vagrants and low-level crime long ago. One Giuliani-style mayor and the Tenderloin would look like... well, Times Square.
(Admittedly it would probably just kick the problem to the other side of the Bay.)
As soon as I read this sentence: "There may be some fog, or a bit of rain from time to time, but most of the time it’s sunny and hovering around the high 60s to lower 70s."
I knew that the author of this piece has fallen into a trap that many people who move here for work fall into; they never venture away from certain neighborhoods, and this filters their view of the city. That sentence clued me in because of the word "sunny." Yes, the Mission and SOMA are sunny, but the rest of the city is foggy, nearly all the time.
If the author made it over twin peaks out to the Sunset, or the Richmond, you might not find as much sunny weather, and you won't find startup offices, but you'll find the real neighborhoods of this city.
Are there bad neighborhoods in the city? Of course, like any city. However, because our city is constrained geographically, there is no real transition zone between good and bad areas. You can be walking through a generally OK neighborhood (say at 4th and Howard), walk a couple of blocks, and be in one of the worst parts of the city (6th and Howard.) Since the Mission and SOMA are near these bad areas, if that's the only part of the city you frequent, then the city will seem dirty.
Maybe he does have an issue that everyone he knows works in the tech field. It's really not hard to meet people in this city, maybe he should try striking up a conversation with a random stranger at a bar. I assure you most locals will be glad to talk. I have friends here that are teachers, police officers, fire-fighters in training, journalists, and yes, in the tech field as well. We have plenty of things to talk about besides the latest startup.
I'd suggest that the author makes it out to the Richmond, or the Sunset. It's not dirty, there's plenty of restaurants, and plenty of people that don't work in tech fields. You'll find the real residents of the city there, not just people passing through.
Though it won't be sunny.
(Also, really? Beer is underrepresented here? Where has he been going? From his other blog post, he doesn't seem to like any west coast beers. You can't call our beer selection "underrepresented" if you don't like the local beer styles. There are literally hundreds of microbreweries in this state. He can't really be surprised that the most common beer will be local.)
Edit: Also, if any of you reading this are planning on moving out to SF, or just moved out here, feel free to email me ( natmartin <at> gmail.com ), and I'd be glad to give you advice on neighborhoods to check out, things to do, or introduce you to some good people here.
Public transportation in LA is worse than San Francisco, especially once you need to get out of the core of the city. San Francisco has BART and Caltrain which make traveling between the city and most of the nearby regions pretty convenient (though the price has been climbing). Within the city, the bus has served me pretty well. Especially with nextmuni.com to tell you when the next bus will actually arrive.
I've never had an incident on a bus in SF (admittedly I haven't been here long), but when I lived in LA I rarely took the bus without having to deal with someone who was truly crazy. And LA traffic is so much worse than San Francisco, traveling by bus makes that much less sense.
I've live all over the country. NY, Miami, and various parts of the Bible-belt. I've visited other cities like Chicago and Montreal. Moving out to SF was different than anywhere else I've lived.
SF is not dirty. I've heard the comments before, from people who have grown up and only lived in the Bay area to those who come from big and small cities alike.
NYC smells like garbage. Any time I've been there, it literally smells like week old garbage. The same thing for Miami, except much more humid. From the times I lived in the suburbs of Ft. Lauderdale to partying on South Beach and hanging out in Coconut Grove, to walking through the streets of NY and Chicago, the streets are dirty with trash and other random crap. And don't even get me started on the homeless problem in Miami. They make the homeless folk here in SF look like suburbanites.
The air in SF is very, very clean. Its largely due to the constant breeze from the Pacific. Down in the valley is a bit different and gets pretty smoggy at times.
Basically, there is no where else that I want to be. The culture out here is fantastic. The people ARE FRIENDLY. I live in Lower Haight and have never been mugged, robbed, or anything. Its pretty easy to stay safe here, just like anywhere. Don't be a fucking tard and walk through bad neighborhoods by yourself at 2 in the morning. Most of the problems people have, they cause themselves.
It is definitely more expensive out here than back east, but the pay for tech jobs is way, way better. I am making roughly 3x the amount I was making in Florida for less work. I'm much closer to the 6 digit salary range than the low 5 digit like I used to be.
I'm not sure what the problem people have with SF. This is one of the best places to live in the world, period.
Coming from Toronto, that was definitely part of my first impression - "dirtier than I expected", and "whoa, I didn't expect so many homeless". I still love the city, but I don't think it's valid to dismiss the criticism just because there are worse cases out there.
I'm curious what he would expect a city provide?
Honestly, it sounds like the guy just doesn't like it here, and is looking for reasons to justify his feelings. To each his own.
He does mention that his hobbies are beer and coffee. Portland probably beats anywhere in the US in terms of per-capita coffee shops and beer bars (and strip clubs.)
My first vivid image of New York City was from Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye. It was an intimidating and claustrophobic image. It was a city filled with sleepless characters running around in the cold trying to figure themselves out or trying to con someone somehow. To Salinger's credit, after almost three years living here, my first impression wasn't too far off.
It's hard to find a city more stratified along class lines. Or a place more materialistic yet also so bohemian. A city of greed and poverty but also of immense heart and empathy. It is a city to suite every mood while at times suiting none. A city of everything. A city you want to describe as a muse but stop when it seems it could not be any more machine like and heartless. Among its eight million inhabitants, it breeds patience out of necessity but can explode with anger without warning. And when it does, it may be rude and it may be ugly, but it does not fester and you learn that in New York nothing is personal.
If you fly into La Guardia in early autumn, the lights of the city make the overcast clouds glow a synthetic orange. It reminds you the city is vibrant and will be long after you decide to leave. The lights dazzle and mystify me still. Flying in for one of the last times before i leave for the other city on the coast, I don't try to find the places I know but scan the skyline for places I may have never been. Maybe that's the New York mystique, at least for me. After three years, those lights still look alien. When I look back, I don't think of what I did but of the so many things left undone. This is my lasting impression of this city, and it leaves me not with regret but instead hope, for I can always return as if it were my first time.
While I don't necessarily disagree with this point, I think it's a shame if you don't explore the sports and outdoors opportunities near SF. Twenty minutes by bike can put you in the hills of Marin County. A few miles to the west of the City will bring you to Ocean Beach. A short car ride to the south gives you access to the vast forested area of the peninsula, notably Big Basin State Park. A few hours in a car can get you to some of the most beautiful places on Earth, including Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, and Big Sur. Hike, backpack, ski, surf, sail...
The road cycling in the area is world-famous. There are several tracks within a reasonable distance if club auto racing is your thing. Heck, there are even a few ice arenas in town on which you can play ice hockey.
In short, there is plenty to do (if you like sports or the outdoors).
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=170750
Bill Wyman, who has never written a word that rang false to me, said it better than either of us back in '99:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/11/03/sf/index.html
Alex sees an upside to SF that I don't. Apparently you can DJ at a club in San Francisco. But your favorite band skips San Francisco, because there are so few venues to play at. I could opine about that, but JWZ said it better than I did:
http://www.dnalounge.com/donate/
(San Francisco was a crappy place to see music back when bands were playing the Maritime Hall, lest you think I'm being opportunistic here).
There are some excellent restaurants in San Francisco. Unfortunately for SF, NYC, DC, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle can all go toe-to-toe with it. SF gives you Michael Mina, NYC gives you Per Se, and throws in The Spotted Pig. For such a small city, SF throws down admirably, but it is simply outgunned by the big cities.
Of course, this is all a moot point, since you're probably not going to live in San Francisco if you move to the bay area. You are probably going to live somewhere in the South Bay, and the South Bay is an unforgiveable suburban wasteland.
Alex is one kind of person for whom San Francisco isn't ideal. I was him 10 years ago. Now I'm a different kind of person for whom San Francisco doesn't work: someone who wants to live in an actual neighborhood. There are 6 other young families with kids on my block, and I know them all; we have block parties. I never once met a neighbor in San Francisco; not in SOMA, not in Bayview, and not in Noe Valley.
But, hey, great dim sum. Seals. Really old trees. Knock yourself out.
And we're not comparing A2 to SV, I know, and it's silly to compare cities like that, but it's not crazy to say that the lower bar for "good food city" is "better than Ann Arbor, MI".
I concede that Santa Clara is great for food if what you're looking for is a diverse selection of medium/low-end Asian and Mexican.
I used to work in the building next to Birks. Pass.
Once I gave this town a chance, I began to see the good in it. My friends haven't. They are still bitter. And its very exhausting to be around them sometimes (not to mention slightly depressing).
I think its a little unfair to compare completely different cities with completely different histories. You can always find exceptions, and if you are really hell bent on doing this type of comparison, that's your prerogative.
You have to appreciate every city for what its worth. If you don't, you are going to be miserable.
But Bill Wyman article touched on something that jumped out at me when I first came here: the quality of journalism is abysmal. I was really astonished at how much lower the quality of writing is out here - and I'm an engineer, fer chrissakes. I kinda just got used to it, but I also don't read local news here very much.
And compared to Boston, I'm surprised how weak the local rock scene is. I've done a little digging and haven't been impressed. I hear better things out Oakland, but I don't get out there very much. Venues are pretty expensive too.
I feel like many of the complains ultimately have the high cost of living here as a root cause. When it's all said and done, that's probably the only thing that would cause me to leave.
High cost of living is related to scarcity and the fact that SF has had itself thrust into a role it wasn't ready to handle.
* An unplanned beach bonfire at 1AM
* Solid dim sum for lunch on a weekday
* Access to a vast open air drug market
* A day on a 30 foot sailboat in April
* Weekly tech meetups
* Plants from a shop dedicated solely to freshwater aquarium plants
* The drive down CA-85 to Half Moon Bay
It's nice to see someone talking a little bit about the area without all of the gilded verbiage.
(Of course, #2 on my list right now is Portland, and I'm finding myself having a similar problem with discussion about that city right now as well ;))
It also escapes most of the suburban cliches (there's independent grocery stories, fewer chain stores -- other than the Walmart/Target area near San Antonio).
Mountain View is much better than Cupertino, so long as you are relatively close to Castro St. Highly recommended if you want to live in that area and don't want to pay Palo Alto prices.
I agree with most every criticism he has of San Francisco, but maybe don't hold the same vibe of judgement.
Ultimately, he seems to be on the right track, that San Francisco is not working for him. That's really all we should focus on when deciding where to live. Look inside yourself, think of what you need, and what type of place makes that easier to achieve.
Unique Challenges for him
I imagine holding a high-profile job at red-hot company (Twitter) in San Francisco/Silicon Valley could be claustrophobic socially and physically. Also, a bit of a monoculture, intellectually, as he described. (In the middle of a really diverse place, I've witnessed an eery lack of diversity when attending some SF tech events.) And he totally fairly introduced his blog post as such (for young tech types). But many tech types might be able to overcome some of the challenges he had, just because it's extremely unlikely they have the same work + media + community demands that Alex has.
Anyway, I'm not really disagreeing with anything he said. His post was great. Also, if he reads this, I want him to not stop writing things that actually state an opinion, no matter how rowdy reactions get. :D
San Francisco workarounds (for everybody else)
If you're stuck in San Francisco, and getting annoyed by things, i have some workarounds:
* Live "on the other side of the hill." I lived in the inner Richmond district (the San Francisco neighborhood, not the city). Every time there was a massive fair/festival (mentioned in the blog post), I didn't know about it.
* Living on the other side of the hill also changes up the sorts of people you live around. Less dot-commers.
* Take BART/Car out to the rest of the Bay Area. Cities like Fremont and Redwood City have lots of interesting destination to get you out of the bubble (indian movie theaters, streets where you HAVE to speak Spanish (as a speaker of Spanish, a pleasant experience for me.)).
* Seriously evaluate whether your friends are d-bags
* Seriously evaluate whether you sometimes are a d-bag
* If you are for sure not a d-bag, and are sure your friends are not d-bags, avoid places where d-bags are. You are who you are around. You are probably ruling out places in the Marina right about now. Sorry, not agressive enough. Even really cool places on Saturdays might be making you sick.
* Make sure there is meaning in your life. This is not a San Francisco thing, but almost everybody I've witnessed who is extremely unhappy with the place he/she lives, has something else pretty heavy going on in his/her life. Real talk.
I left San Francisco extremely annoyed with the ridiculous real estate situation, my quality of life, and lots of other stuff. All those opinions still hold true, but I now sit back and see some things I did to make life more difficult for myself.
After experiencing the civic magic of Portland, I'm more patient, interested, and appreciative of ALL city landscapes and experiences, including San Francisco's. I could easily see moving there again one day.
Would it be reasonable to ask you to write a comparison of the two? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested in a first-hand comparison as both are popular techy destinations but seem like fundamentally different cities.
If I can find a way to discuss this abstractly, I for sure will.
For now, you can crawl through my HN comments, where I've talked about Portland a bit. Here i did a bit of a comparison of SF/PDX, though it was mostly about Portland:
Not sure if I've taken in enough of the new city to write an in-depth comparison. But if there's anything you want to ask, feel free.
* Difficulty to make real friends; meeting a lot of d-bags.
* Traffic/waiting for everything.
* Public transit in any major US city (except perhaps NYC) -- everyone always complains, even if it's decent. (IMO, SF's is at least decent.)
* Cities have rich areas and poor areas, safe areas and dangerous areas. West coast cities have homeless people.
* Seemingly few non-touristy things to do during the day (in the city at least), outside of the regular coffee/eating (and if you're not into watching sports).
I also second that if you're unhappy with where you live, you may just be unhappy with whatever you're doing. But, it is genuinely hard to meet friends and potential dates when you're new to an area, don't know anyone, and aren't in school. Give it a year and put yourself out there!
My answer is the same as what I wrote above cities. Whatever works best for you. It's totally personal.
For me, it's a problem, but for other people, it's not at all, and I'm not mad at that.
Diversity can mean lots of different things. For some it can mean people from different countries, different genders, different schools, different parts of the country.
For me it mostly means different backgrounds. I basically seriously dig it when the people i discuss tech stuff represent the world i otherwise live in + with.
(As Alex hinted at with "1st world problems...") Some can people stand in a circle at a launch party where everybody talks about their favorite ipod headphones for 45 minutes and totally dig it, and others can walk away from that feeling really out of place. Neither one is wrong or right, but it is quite easy to slip into an intense, concentrated subculture in quite an exceptional way.
(the second part of your question: startups vs big tech co's)
I go down to SF a lot for conferences. I notice more diversity and different backgrounds at events from large companies (like VMworld) than i do at open source things, i wish that were flipped, as i do more open source stuff than corporate stuff, but it's cool. Either way i get a lot of good info from the events.
If you think it's bad in SF, try Los Angeles. The different types of people mentioned don't just sit in different neighborhoods; they wall themselves off in almost San Francisco sized sub-cities. That said, I'd still choose to live in LA over SF any day of the week.
Compared to the Chicago public transit system, the BART is much, much, much better.
I know those are trendy places for engineers to live, but this city is really a bunch of small villages. Pac Heights, Nob Hill, NB, Russian Hill, Cole Valley, Bernal, Noe, and Hayes Valley are all wonderful, clean, "diverse" neighborhoods (well, diverse in the sense that your neighbors aren't engineers). I think a lot of people get myopic when they either live in the same neighborhood they work in or cluster too closely with people from their industry.
While Lovefest was indeed this weekend, so was Oktoberfest, the Fillmore Food and Wine festival, and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. The Bluegrass festival was free, outside, and featured some amazing music. http://www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com/
There's a lot to appreciate here in the city that isn't tech related!
but if you are inclined towards sports or the outdoors, SF is the best place in the country. i went surfing and hiking last week. also went on a couple of double digit bike rides. not too many places back east like that.
Yet I don't have to contend with massive over population. In fact, I live in a suburb of Los Angeles and am no more than 20 miles away from everything you mentioned. But my city has a population density of only 2,137 people per square mile. While San Francisco on the other hand has a population density of 17,000 people per square mile.
So I wouldn't throw around "best place in the country" so liberally.
Of course if you're comparing with 'back east', sure it's probably not so bad, but if you've ever lived in a place that's really good for outdoors sports, SF isn't all that great.
(Sidebar to visitors: check out the Springwater Corridor. Cyclists/walkers/horse riders)
SF proper is not nearly large enough or traffic-free enough to do serious cycling in, though.
There's no reason to say that SF proper is too small to take advantage of; I think the appeal is that here, you have year-round, every day exercise. That little bit adds up, just like every day of brutal cold in Chicago or NYC changes you.
That effects people's psyche, and I think that's a major reason why the attitude out here is different.
Like NYC, it is straightforward to start a company in Chicago, and like NYC, there are hundreds of businesses to sell services and products to. Unlike NYC, Chicago is cheap and still stocked to with talent.
There is no better city in the US to bootstrap a business in.
NYC, in my six years there, compared to my six years and change in Chicago/Aurora, is substantially warmer in the winter.
Bottom line: Fantastic city with a terrible terrible climate.
The good:
* Great cultural institutions (the ballet, symphony and opera are world-class).
* Fantastic restaurants. You could go to a different restaurant every night of the week for a year and not expend the supply of good eats in this town.
* It's clean and safe and cheap for such a big city.
* If you like music, every band that matters comes to town. Lots of good local music as well.
The bad:
* Horrible horrible winters. You get ridiculous bouts of cold where it'll stay below -10F for weeks on end.
* The winter lasts over four months, and summer is like 2.5. If you need sun and like the outdoors, Chicago is probably not the place for you
* It's flat. Which basically leaves you with... ice fishing for winter activities.
* The local and state government are corrupt as hell and everyone just accepts it as a characteristic of Chicago and laugh it off. Don't follow the local politics, it's too infuriating.
* Related to the previous point, we have one of the highest sales tax rates in the US.
* Lousy public transportation as well. The average age of the buses is 16 years. Which is worse than every major city in america.
* You'll pay a lot of taxes for lousy and outdated infrastructure.
* The tech scene is so-so. There are a few startups but the vast majority of jobs are in Finance.
San Francisco towed my car, via a third-party contracted by the city. They lost my car for several months, and when they found it, they charged me for the time it spent hidden in the lot. A lesson learned: it is extremely hard to sue a municipality.
Chicago towed my car. My registration was expired, and it was a Friday night, so I was screwed until Monday afternoon when I could get that straightened out. I asked, "is there anything I can pay to get my car tonight?" $50 later, I learned about the loophole that says your car can be towed out of the impound lot; you just can't drive it out. Total win.
People talk about the "corruption" in Chicago as if it was a daily hassle. If you're in politics or commercial real estate, I'm sure it is. But for the rest of us, it's mostly a problem in principle and not in practice, and it's not a problem Chicago has a lock on.
I don't know how old the busses are in Chicago, because I never ride them. Busses don't count. Something's gone wrong if you have to ride one. Where do you live in Chicago that you can't walk to an El stop?
My Dad got three parking tickets from Chicago this year. For a truck that he hasn't owned in four years. My Dad hasn't been to Chicago in a few years. The truck had never even been to Illinois. Dad disputed the tickets instead of just paying them, because he could prove the truck was in Florida when the tickets were issued. [He owns a trucking company, so he keeps pretty meticulous records, including fuel receipts.] They graciously waived the fines after he spent a few hours arguing the matter and provided the documentation.
At first he thought the tickets were due to a computer error or something...there have been a few cases of people getting multi-million dollar parking tickets in Chicago in the last few years due to 'computer error.' He thought maybe someone just mistyped a VIN. But NOOOOOOO...it turned out to be a scam - run by a few elected gentleman - that have previously gotten into trouble for doing the same thing. They send bogus tickets to out-of-towners, especially commercial vehicles. They know that a certain percentage of people will just think "Well, I was in Chicago...?" and then pay the damn tickets without protest. Easy cash. That, my friends, is "Chicago's way." ;-)
This speaks to why my Dad refuses to come and visit me in Chicago. And why I get to hear him gripe anytime someone mentions Chicago, parking, traffic, cars, scams, etc. etc. I'm hoping a new grandkid will finally get him to visit again.
Sorry. Your story sucks, and I'm sorry that happened to your dad, but I'll take Chicago over San Francisco any day.
I really missed the seasons when I was in California.
I strongly disagree with your frat-boy/big-10 comment. Chicago is a massive city. Like every other big city, it has hipster enclaves (Uky Village, Bucktown, Logan Square), and it has yuppie/frat-boy enclaves (Lincoln Park); it has 2+(2*.5) viable college towns (Hyde Park, Evanston, and UIC and Loyola campuses), a large Chinatown, the sizeable Thai/Vietnamese area around Argyle, the Indian drag on Devon, huge Latino areas and innumerable family neighborhoods.
I'm not giving the cop-out "you were just in the wrong bar" answer here: I'm saying, you must have been very unlucky to have only found sports bars. I'm pretty sure they never play Bears games at Publican or Violet Hour.
Any HN people in SF that would like to have a pint and clue me in to the city would be very welcome!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=2...
Bottom line: I don't think a person is qualified to rip on a whole city unless he has lived in at least 5 different neighborhoods and has actually made a bunch of friends.
SF takes work to maximize. Portland is nice too, but more like a busy suburb than a city fwiw. I qualify that by saying that SF should be thought of as a cluster of neighborhoods rather than a city.
On the other hand, don't. Take your resentment with you to Portland and don't let it keep you from enjoying its wealth of cultural offerings, which are sure to dwarf San Francisco's attempt at socio-intellectual relevance.