6 ms·

Anyone to share their stories living and working in Maine? My background: I have a great job in SF, but SF is such a terrible city to live in. In the 5 to 10 ye

by ktamura 10y ago

Anyone to share their stories living and working in Maine? My background: I have a great job in SF, but SF is such a terrible city to live in. In the 5 to 10 years time frame, I am strongly considering moving away from SF.

tejtm 10y ago
Be afraid. source: grew up in Washington County decades ago. Just revisited a week ago. There is something wrong with the culture in that whole region north and east of Bangor. It stops sharply at the Canadian boarder where people once again have respect for themselves. Portland seemed okay, a suburb of Boston.
ReadingInBed 10y ago
If you can get a remote job Portland Maine is an amazing place to live. Don't expect to get any kind of high quality tech job in Maine though. I've lived in both I don't think sf is so bad.
sillysaurus3 10y ago
Would anyone mind expanding on why SF is a terrible city to live in?
- nedwin 10y ago
  Expensive. If you moved here 5-10 years ago your rent isn't too bad but good luck if you need to move out for whatever reason (eviction, bad housemate vibe, meet a partner, have a kid...). Relatively high crime rate, human shit on the street everywhere, terrible schools... By comparison Portland Oregon is 50% less expensive to rent or buy (1 bed SF = $3500-4500; 1 bed Portland $1435-$2535). Plenty of high paying jobs but I know that personally I would be up if I moved to any other city and took my companies cost of living adjustment.
  - broodbucket 10y ago
    >human shit on the street everywhere Uh, what? I've never been to SF, but I've never heard this before.
    - ahlatimer 10y ago
      It's definitely a thing. SF has a pretty substantial homeless population and apparently very few options for them to defecate that isn't the sidewalk. You can spend all day walking around playing human or dog. Walking by one of the BART stops on a warm day, you're hit with a pretty strong smell of urine.
      - vvvv 10y ago
        I've travelled all around the world, including India and a number of poorest countries, and I've never seen anything like this.
        orf 10y ago
        Then you haven't looked. When I visited China I saw lots of people deficating in the streets, parents encouraging children to do it etc. When a man's gotta go...
        vvvv 10y ago
        If you're thinking of the same thing I am, then it's different. In some places, the only option may be to defecate on the side of the street by the curb, but that area gets swept frequently. I have never been able to play a dog vs human sidewalk poo guessing game as suggested above, including in the African, Asian and LatAm slums. Perhaps it's because those people are not a transient homeless population that (presumably) gets cleaned up after, but they actually live there.
        xerophyte12932 10y ago
        Then you happened to avoid the places in those cities where people defecate. Trust me, it's a thing. Though it surprises me that even SF has this problem
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools, and other white families move out of the city when their kids get to school age. Especially by high school, there are very few white kids left in SF schools. Beyond that, teacher salaries are a sad joke, and make it basically impossible for teachers to afford housing anywhere in the Bay Area. There doesn’t seem to be particularly more violent crime in SF than any other city, but there are a lot of car break-ins and bike thefts.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      I know at least one not-even-slightly-white couple that moved to Dublin on the basis that the test scores are significantly better.
    - rdtsc 10y ago
      > “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools Right. Talking to a wealthy, pretty liberal, upper class white person who sent their kid to a private school. Whatever the "code" they spoke I don't know. They were pretty blunt and factual. They did the research and it turned out that poor minority kids in schools did correlate strongly with disciplinary issues, high teacher to students ratios, overall bad scores for the school. Their kid was in a public school for a few years, then they switched to a private school. Knowing them for 5+ years, nothing indicated they were racist or had some kind of agenda against the poor. In this case they simply wanted a better school experience for their kid. While I don't doubt there are plenty of racist upper middle class white people who deliberately make that the central point of choosing schools, many also just look at the facts and draw conclusions. I don't have the resources to afford that for my family, so my kid is going to a public school, and that's fine. But those who are wealthy simply have more choices it seems.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Some reasons I hear a lot and that reflect why I don't want to move back there: - Absurdly expensive. This one is much-discussed. - The city itself has significant sections that are really not nice (unsafe, garbage on the streets, homeless people begging on every corner, etc.), to a much higher degree than other cities. - Traffic around the Bay Area has gotten as bad as LA (in some cases worse). - Highly homogeneous residents. It's difficult to meet someone who doesn't work for a tech company (or who doesn't want to work for one). - Sausage party. To people coming from cities with a normal gender split in the singles demographic, this one really sucks. - Good things are always crowded. Ex. Last time I tried to get brunch with someone on a weekend in SF there were 2+ hour lines at every place we tried. - Weak culture and night life compared to cities like NYC, LA, etc. I'm sure others will chime in with additional ones or rebut some of these, so YMMV.
- ahlatimer 10y ago
  All of what nedwin said jives with my experience (I lived in SF from June 2011 to June 2012), but to expand, here's why I left. It's a pain to find a place to live. Places will have one open house. You'll show up with 20 other people, checkbook in hand, and be expected to make a decision right then and there. It might be something you only go through once, but if you need to move for whatever reason, it's a hassle. It can be a monoculture. It was neat at first, but there are cities that offer plenty of opportunity in tech without completely dominating the city. The nightlife is kind of lame. I live in Austin now, and when I want to go out, I feel like I have a lot more options, especially if I want to do more than one thing that night. There's a ton of neat stuff in the area – it's truly one of the most naturally beautiful areas I've ever been–, but it takes a car to get there and owning a car is a hassle. I didn't find most people who lived there particular friendly. I also found it difficult to make close friends, maybe because of the transient nature of SF. I'm hesitant to draw a real generalization from this, though. I may have just had a string of bad luck, but that was my experience. The weather sucks. A lot of people like it, and it was certainly a nice respite from the 100F+ weather I left when I moved, but it sucked after a while. There really isn't ONE thing that makes SF a terrible city. It's a lot of little things that add up. Maybe those little things won't matter to you or will be overcome by the positives in SF. For some people that's certainly true, but for me, I couldn't wait to get out. I left as soon as my first lease was up.
  - danielsju6 10y ago
    It's worth noting that many large cities don't stack up in these regards. The medium cities do often strike a balance; but at costs—often limitations on career growth. Coming from New England, Boston most recently and Portland, Maine before that; I'm loving the San Francisco area (aside from poor public transit)—but I'm already married and tired of being a big fish in a little pond in respect to my career (this was moreso the case in Portland than Boston for sure). Maine for example has no nightlife, no tech scene, no venture capital / investment to speak of, is a monoculture, you need a car and "cities" are hours apart, is being ripped apart by the tea-party, has massive drug problems, and there's no dating life to speak of—people tend to pair off pretty quickly. Oh and don't get my started on recent winters; the weather in SF is mild in comparison to massive nor'easters that are trying to kill you. New England was basically out of commission for an entire month when we had 9' of snow dumped on us last year.
- dclowd9901 10y ago
  For me, it's all the vain, terrible humans. I had a few good friends, but felt constantly engulfed by self obsessed, unaware, cloying, micro gratification seeking leeches who have no identity or original thought and simply identify themselves by either being a resident of San Francisco, or their job. "Five to an apartment splitting an $7k rent? Forget my dignity! I NEED to live in the mission!" -most residents, probably Moved away a year ago, never looked back.
liquidise 10y ago
Born and raised in Maine, visit (and work from there) semi-regularly. If you are looking to live in Maine, stay close to the coast. As mentioned in another post, the land north of Bangor/Augusta is so rural as to consider it uncivilized. Pros: - Gorgeous landscapes, forests, mountains and coastlines - It's hard to be > 20 min from a lake/ocean people swim at - Portland, ME. has perhaps the best cuisine:population ratio of any city in the nation. - Cost of living, specifically real-estate, is silly low - Maine lobsters are cheaper than deli meats in the summer (seriously) Cons: - Gov. LePage is a thing - If you are into the city life, Maine will feel slow. - The summer heat+humidity and mosquitoes are a unique blend of annoying.
- xerophyte12932 10y ago
  Your comment > Cost of living, specifically real-estate, is silly low Clashes with another comment From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845054: > Portland is "expensive" for rent (you're very lucky to get a nice 1br for 1400/mo, with rents on the rise due to out-of-state purchasing of condos for rental-income or airBNB/subsidizing owner-seasonal housing) > Housing costs are steeply on the rise Please explain
  - slazaro 10y ago
    I think one is referring to the whole state in general, and the other to Portland specifically.
  - Kurtz79 10y ago
    "a nice 1br for 1400/mo" Seems silly low for NYC/SF. I guess everything depends to what you compare it to.
chaostheory 10y ago
Well then it's a good thing that the Bay Area gives you more than one city to live in if you don't like SF. Many cities are cheaper and a lot of them have good access to the train (CalTrain) and the 'subway' (BART) so if you want to hang out in SF after work, you can.

by ktamura 10y ago

tejtm 10y ago

Be afraid. source: grew up in Washington County decades ago. Just revisited a week ago. There is something wrong with the culture in that whole region north and east of Bangor. It stops sharply at the Canadian boarder where people once again have respect for themselves. Portland seemed okay, a suburb of Boston.

ReadingInBed 10y ago

If you can get a remote job Portland Maine is an amazing place to live. Don't expect to get any kind of high quality tech job in Maine though. I've lived in both I don't think sf is so bad.

sillysaurus3 10y ago

Would anyone mind expanding on why SF is a terrible city to live in?

nedwin 10y ago
Expensive. If you moved here 5-10 years ago your rent isn't too bad but good luck if you need to move out for whatever reason (eviction, bad housemate vibe, meet a partner, have a kid...). Relatively high crime rate, human shit on the street everywhere, terrible schools... By comparison Portland Oregon is 50% less expensive to rent or buy (1 bed SF = $3500-4500; 1 bed Portland $1435-$2535). Plenty of high paying jobs but I know that personally I would be up if I moved to any other city and took my companies cost of living adjustment.
- broodbucket 10y ago
  >human shit on the street everywhere Uh, what? I've never been to SF, but I've never heard this before.
  - ahlatimer 10y ago
    It's definitely a thing. SF has a pretty substantial homeless population and apparently very few options for them to defecate that isn't the sidewalk. You can spend all day walking around playing human or dog. Walking by one of the BART stops on a warm day, you're hit with a pretty strong smell of urine.
    - vvvv 10y ago
      I've travelled all around the world, including India and a number of poorest countries, and I've never seen anything like this.
      - orf 10y ago
        Then you haven't looked. When I visited China I saw lots of people deficating in the streets, parents encouraging children to do it etc. When a man's gotta go...
        vvvv 10y ago
        If you're thinking of the same thing I am, then it's different. In some places, the only option may be to defecate on the side of the street by the curb, but that area gets swept frequently. I have never been able to play a dog vs human sidewalk poo guessing game as suggested above, including in the African, Asian and LatAm slums. Perhaps it's because those people are not a transient homeless population that (presumably) gets cleaned up after, but they actually live there.
      - xerophyte12932 10y ago
        Then you happened to avoid the places in those cities where people defecate. Trust me, it's a thing. Though it surprises me that even SF has this problem
- jacobolus 10y ago
  “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools, and other white families move out of the city when their kids get to school age. Especially by high school, there are very few white kids left in SF schools. Beyond that, teacher salaries are a sad joke, and make it basically impossible for teachers to afford housing anywhere in the Bay Area. There doesn’t seem to be particularly more violent crime in SF than any other city, but there are a lot of car break-ins and bike thefts.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    I know at least one not-even-slightly-white couple that moved to Dublin on the basis that the test scores are significantly better.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools Right. Talking to a wealthy, pretty liberal, upper class white person who sent their kid to a private school. Whatever the "code" they spoke I don't know. They were pretty blunt and factual. They did the research and it turned out that poor minority kids in schools did correlate strongly with disciplinary issues, high teacher to students ratios, overall bad scores for the school. Their kid was in a public school for a few years, then they switched to a private school. Knowing them for 5+ years, nothing indicated they were racist or had some kind of agenda against the poor. In this case they simply wanted a better school experience for their kid. While I don't doubt there are plenty of racist upper middle class white people who deliberately make that the central point of choosing schools, many also just look at the facts and draw conclusions. I don't have the resources to afford that for my family, so my kid is going to a public school, and that's fine. But those who are wealthy simply have more choices it seems.
mdorazio 10y ago
Some reasons I hear a lot and that reflect why I don't want to move back there: - Absurdly expensive. This one is much-discussed. - The city itself has significant sections that are really not nice (unsafe, garbage on the streets, homeless people begging on every corner, etc.), to a much higher degree than other cities. - Traffic around the Bay Area has gotten as bad as LA (in some cases worse). - Highly homogeneous residents. It's difficult to meet someone who doesn't work for a tech company (or who doesn't want to work for one). - Sausage party. To people coming from cities with a normal gender split in the singles demographic, this one really sucks. - Good things are always crowded. Ex. Last time I tried to get brunch with someone on a weekend in SF there were 2+ hour lines at every place we tried. - Weak culture and night life compared to cities like NYC, LA, etc. I'm sure others will chime in with additional ones or rebut some of these, so YMMV.
ahlatimer 10y ago
All of what nedwin said jives with my experience (I lived in SF from June 2011 to June 2012), but to expand, here's why I left. It's a pain to find a place to live. Places will have one open house. You'll show up with 20 other people, checkbook in hand, and be expected to make a decision right then and there. It might be something you only go through once, but if you need to move for whatever reason, it's a hassle. It can be a monoculture. It was neat at first, but there are cities that offer plenty of opportunity in tech without completely dominating the city. The nightlife is kind of lame. I live in Austin now, and when I want to go out, I feel like I have a lot more options, especially if I want to do more than one thing that night. There's a ton of neat stuff in the area – it's truly one of the most naturally beautiful areas I've ever been–, but it takes a car to get there and owning a car is a hassle. I didn't find most people who lived there particular friendly. I also found it difficult to make close friends, maybe because of the transient nature of SF. I'm hesitant to draw a real generalization from this, though. I may have just had a string of bad luck, but that was my experience. The weather sucks. A lot of people like it, and it was certainly a nice respite from the 100F+ weather I left when I moved, but it sucked after a while. There really isn't ONE thing that makes SF a terrible city. It's a lot of little things that add up. Maybe those little things won't matter to you or will be overcome by the positives in SF. For some people that's certainly true, but for me, I couldn't wait to get out. I left as soon as my first lease was up.
- danielsju6 10y ago
  It's worth noting that many large cities don't stack up in these regards. The medium cities do often strike a balance; but at costs—often limitations on career growth. Coming from New England, Boston most recently and Portland, Maine before that; I'm loving the San Francisco area (aside from poor public transit)—but I'm already married and tired of being a big fish in a little pond in respect to my career (this was moreso the case in Portland than Boston for sure). Maine for example has no nightlife, no tech scene, no venture capital / investment to speak of, is a monoculture, you need a car and "cities" are hours apart, is being ripped apart by the tea-party, has massive drug problems, and there's no dating life to speak of—people tend to pair off pretty quickly. Oh and don't get my started on recent winters; the weather in SF is mild in comparison to massive nor'easters that are trying to kill you. New England was basically out of commission for an entire month when we had 9' of snow dumped on us last year.
dclowd9901 10y ago
For me, it's all the vain, terrible humans. I had a few good friends, but felt constantly engulfed by self obsessed, unaware, cloying, micro gratification seeking leeches who have no identity or original thought and simply identify themselves by either being a resident of San Francisco, or their job. "Five to an apartment splitting an $7k rent? Forget my dignity! I NEED to live in the mission!" -most residents, probably Moved away a year ago, never looked back.

liquidise 10y ago

Born and raised in Maine, visit (and work from there) semi-regularly. If you are looking to live in Maine, stay close to the coast. As mentioned in another post, the land north of Bangor/Augusta is so rural as to consider it uncivilized. Pros: - Gorgeous landscapes, forests, mountains and coastlines - It's hard to be > 20 min from a lake/ocean people swim at - Portland, ME. has perhaps the best cuisine:population ratio of any city in the nation. - Cost of living, specifically real-estate, is silly low - Maine lobsters are cheaper than deli meats in the summer (seriously) Cons: - Gov. LePage is a thing - If you are into the city life, Maine will feel slow. - The summer heat+humidity and mosquitoes are a unique blend of annoying.

xerophyte12932 10y ago
Your comment > Cost of living, specifically real-estate, is silly low Clashes with another comment From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845054: > Portland is "expensive" for rent (you're very lucky to get a nice 1br for 1400/mo, with rents on the rise due to out-of-state purchasing of condos for rental-income or airBNB/subsidizing owner-seasonal housing) > Housing costs are steeply on the rise Please explain
- slazaro 10y ago
  I think one is referring to the whole state in general, and the other to Portland specifically.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  "a nice 1br for 1400/mo" Seems silly low for NYC/SF. I guess everything depends to what you compare it to.

chaostheory 10y ago

Well then it's a good thing that the Bay Area gives you more than one city to live in if you don't like SF. Many cities are cheaper and a lot of them have good access to the train (CalTrain) and the 'subway' (BART) so if you want to hang out in SF after work, you can.