Comment by davidmathers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidmathers | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

Try Seattle. Our usual response to gentrification is "oh that sucks...Oh hey, a new cupcake shop just opened up!"

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.

Evidently Zooey Deschanel now lives in my neighborhood.

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.

I dunno if you can make the argument that, in the Seattle area, most of your neighbors won't be involved in tech. Microsoft, Amazon, Nintendo, multiple Google centers--hell, Ed Fries lives across the street from some of my old friends back there.

There's many reasons to choose Seattle, but non-tech neighbor probability isn't a good one.

well, my next door neighbor wrote Small Arms (http://www.smallarmsgame.com/), so my argument isn't entirely valid... :)

What's your neighborhood? Which other areas are good?

Capitol Hill. Specifically along 15th Ave. I used to live in upper Queen Anne, but it was a little too soccer mom'ish for my tastes. Depending on your tastes, you might also want to check out: Belltown, lower Queen Anne, the Central District, and Pioneer Square.

Paris over New York?

>> And the only city with decent public transportation is Paris.

Try London.

I have.

A frequently running bus anywhere in the city for £1. Super-fast, mostly reliable Underground to most places that people call London for £2.

I was in London a few month ago and had to pay something like £4 to take the tube 3 stops. So either prices have dropped, I got screwed or your numbers are off.

You got screwed. The cash single fare is about double the incremental fare using an 'oyster' card.

Yep, you got screwed. Next time pay the £3 for an Oyster card, and save a TON of money. Whether you pay trip-by-trip or a travelcard for a day/week/etc, Oyster is WAY less expensive.

Yeah, in London currently, did a double take when I saw the difference between Oyster and standard fare. The standard fare is absurd, whereas oyster puts it on par with NYC (and has the very nice feature of acting as a la carte until you reach a maximum for the day, at which point it effectively becomes a day pass).

Or Munich.

Or most large cities in central, northern & western Europe.

Tokyo & Singapore both have excellent public transport networks (at least until around 11:30pm)

Seoul and Hong Kong are pretty damned impressive to a USAian, too.

I like Seoul, NYC, D.C., Tokyo, London, Paris and Barcelona myself.

agree with DC, best in the US

The brutalist architecture can be grating after a while. And the lack of dual-tracking makes a breakdown anywhere in the system a minor catastrophe.

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.

Or Zurich

Berlin is v.good too.

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