8 ms·

I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest t

I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest time recorded is 40 minutes without any delays and essentially running the "last mile"). This was the longest commute of my life, and I lived 3 miles from work. It would take me just a little more time to walk there. Biking was faster, but more dangerous -- I got hit once (by another cyclist running a light) and that was it for me. That, plus people assaulting my wife on the street, plus $3000 rent for a 1 bedroom, and I had it with the city. I loved it, it was a great experience, but I just couldn't take it anymore. Now I work from home in the central valley, where I can afford to rent a 3000 sq. ft. home (not because I'm paid much, but because housing is so cheap), and my commute is 1 minute. I'm much happier out here, yet I find when I tell people from SF where I live, some (not all, most people ask "Where the heck is that?") wrinkle their noses. I say, if you're tired of the city, give it a shot -- you might be happier.

tomkarlo 9y ago
That's great, but it seems kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?
- cmontella 9y ago
  > kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. The problem can be attacked from two angles. Either ramp up housing development to take care of the population influx, or slow down the population influx to match the rate of housing development. Obviously, the people of the area have a vested interest in keeping the area attractive; but for the rest of us, I think it's important to remember there are other places to live and you can be just as happy or happier elsewhere. I'm someone who could have used that reminder a year ago. There's a lot of justification that goes into paying $3000 per month to live in a one bedroom apartment. You have to recoup that value elsewhere. A lot of it has to do with the job opportunities available to tech workers. That's undeniable. But some of the other justifications I used were more or less lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay. > Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) It's already happening, so maybe we should embrace it as a valid option. The town I'm living in has become sort of a telecommuter town, precisely because of rents in SF. > and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? I actually went about 8 months without a car in SF. I took Uber, bike, and muni as my get around. Between me and my wife, we were spending $700 per month on transportation, so we ended up buying a car to get around -- it was just more convenient. Out in the valley, we actually put fewer miles on it, because it's easier to bike out here, and things are actually closer to us than they were in the city (both in miles and minutes).
  - swendoog 9y ago
    > lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay. care to elaborate?
    - xapata 9y ago
      He mentioned how awful the commute was and that he needed a car despite being in the city. For me, enabling a carless lifestyle is an important feature of a city.
- eip 9y ago
  >What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely? I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote. Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.
  - sushid 9y ago
    It's not that they are unable to do the work remotely, it might be frowned upon or straight up not allowed for some workers.
  - exolymph 9y ago
    Yeah, but you also need to work for a company that will let you work remote. Or find another job.
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    edit: I phrased this originally in a way that the community didn’t care for. Plenty of people work on, and require physical access to, computer systems that can’t practically be made available to remote workers.
  - tomkarlo 9y ago
    The folks who are having the most trouble living in SF - the ones who don't work in tech - often don't spend all day looking at a computer, and have to be physically present at a specific location to do their work. They're teachers, firefighters, nurses, chefs, mechanics, contractors, etc. Generally the tech crowd is impacted the least by housing prices, because they have higher incomes and more job mobility.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    Employers are still leery of too much work-from-home. My company allows it, but only one day a week. Even people who are ostensibly working from home full time typically have to show up to the office occasionally for meetings and such, so they can't move too far.
- ryguytilidie 9y ago
  "Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)?" I don't know where you came up with this. The OP implied that by moving away from a heavily populated area and working remotely, he was able to afford more space and shorten his commute. You managed to turn no commute into increased pollution and moving to a less densely populated place as "driving up price"?
  - tomkarlo 9y ago
    He didn't use a car to commute before (I'd hope) given he was in the middle of SF. But now he likely needs one to get to the grocery, take his kids to school, etc even if he's WFH. And he's likely also using more energy at home, too. So yes, more pollution - and if a lot of other people moved there, higher prices too.
    - foo101 9y ago
      Well, if a neighbourhood is good and convenient, it is only natural that more people would like to move there, more energy would be consumed and prices would rise. Besides this obvious thing, what exactly is your point?
      - tomkarlo 9y ago
        The point is you haven't solved the problem. You've just moved it to a different place. Urban sprawl is pretty well acknowledged to be a bad thing (TM) - it increases pollution, is bad for people's health, bad for the social fabric, etc etc. Saying "it's crowded here, let's go move somewhere else and make that crowded" is not just kicking the can, it's making the problem worse because often those areas have even less mass transit.
- airstrike 9y ago
  Of course someone from SF would have to call it "orthogonal"...
  - tomkarlo 9y ago
    I'm from New York.
- Feniks 9y ago
  The alternative is America getting its act together and change their cities into Singapore/Tokyo/Hong Kong. Good luck waiting for that. Infrastructure is not something the average citizen seems to give a fig about.
guiomie 9y ago
I live in Lower Haight, and takes me 10-20 minutes. But I agree with you SF or just city life can take a toll.
diogenescynic 9y ago
You left out some other frequent experiences: having your car broken into, bums pooping on your fire escape, used needles all over, BART general unsanitary and unsafe conditions, bad service and crowded restaurants, I could go on and on. San Francisco is the most expensive and over-priced shithole. I’ve lived here for 10 years and I’m completely over it. I can’t wait for some startup or tech company to use this as a disruptive opportunity. I only live here because my job is here. I’d move if my job would let me.
- swendoog 9y ago
  I think this goes without saying but... if you're a software developer, there's never been a better time to find a new job, at a different company.
Mz 9y ago
Fresno is really a great place. I was there for over two years. I don't know why it gets badmouthed so much. And, yes, compared to coastal big cities in California, it is dramatically cheaper. They are starting a high speed rail line there. It is 500,000 people and much more spread out than the coastal big cities, so it is not nearly as dense. The bus system is the best I have ever seen in the US, so you can live without a car there, even though it sprawls. I have lived without a car for years and Fresno was a big improvement over previous experiences. I considered doing a website* as an ode to the city/to promote a walkable lifestyle there. It didn't get off the ground and now I have moved out of state. But, if you want to stay in California and want to get away from some of the insanity in places like SF, I will second "just move to the Central Valley if you can arrange it." http://pedestrianfresno.blogspot.com/ http://pedestrianfresno.blogspot.com/
- jacobolus 9y ago
  The weather is miserable for half the year, and there’s less to do. A bunch of my extended family lives in Fresno and elsewhere in the Central Valley, but I can’t imagine living there. The politicians they elect throughout the Central Valley are also absolutely bonkers.
  - Mz 9y ago
    So, serious question, explain to me why you think the weather is "miserable" and what is it you "do" all the time that you can't imagine living in Fresno? I don't get it. There are national forests there. Woodward Park is huge. There is an international airport. What kinds of activities are you into that you can't get your needs met in a city of 500,000 people, about the 36th largest city in the US IIRC, which means there are entire states that don't have a city that big in them.
    - fizx 9y ago
      110 degrees in August.
      - 9y ago
ben_jones 9y ago
Not talked about: you're married. Having worked from home while being single it has its ups and downs. Sure you can get to the gym more but unless you're a natural extrovert you're going to meet way less people - and you'll be less likely to "find someone" (if thats what you're after) compared to the huge number of single people in the city. I feel like this is a hidden motivation for many people. Maybe just me.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. You'd still meet people at every other place people meet, which is where people look for dates anyway.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. Traditionally, work has been a very common place to meet future spouses. I believe the rate has dropped in recent decades, but I would be surprised if it was so low as to be inconsequential, especially when considering something as important as many people view this.
    - rovolo 9y ago
      According to 'Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary' (2010) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050 , around 10% of (hetero) couples met at work as of 2010, down from a peak of 20% in 1990. It is the fourth most common method behind friends, bars, and online. Just the graph: https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/internet-dating.png https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/internet-dating.pn...
      - kbenson 9y ago
        I figured it was probably sub 20%. 10% is still quite high, in my eyes.
chrisseaton 9y ago
> lived 3 miles from work Huh? So why weren't you just walking in the first place? That's like a 45 minute brisk walk. That doesn't sound like any kind of hardship.
- cmontella 9y ago
  It's a 570 ft elevation difference between where I lived and work. Yeah, maybe I need to work out more, but that was just too much for me 5 days a week. Also I didn't like walking through mid market.
- carb 9y ago
  A 45 minute brisk walk to and from work every day is excessive. By no means is 7.5 hrs of walking every week a commute I would call "just walking".
  - Buttes 9y ago
    That's a very ordinary amount of walking for many people.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
acchow 9y ago
> I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni Was a great deal of that time spent walking? Because taking the N from Cole Valley to downtown normally takes 15 minutes.

tomkarlo 9y ago

That's great, but it seems kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?

cmontella 9y ago
> kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. The problem can be attacked from two angles. Either ramp up housing development to take care of the population influx, or slow down the population influx to match the rate of housing development. Obviously, the people of the area have a vested interest in keeping the area attractive; but for the rest of us, I think it's important to remember there are other places to live and you can be just as happy or happier elsewhere. I'm someone who could have used that reminder a year ago. There's a lot of justification that goes into paying $3000 per month to live in a one bedroom apartment. You have to recoup that value elsewhere. A lot of it has to do with the job opportunities available to tech workers. That's undeniable. But some of the other justifications I used were more or less lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay. > Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) It's already happening, so maybe we should embrace it as a valid option. The town I'm living in has become sort of a telecommuter town, precisely because of rents in SF. > and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? I actually went about 8 months without a car in SF. I took Uber, bike, and muni as my get around. Between me and my wife, we were spending $700 per month on transportation, so we ended up buying a car to get around -- it was just more convenient. Out in the valley, we actually put fewer miles on it, because it's easier to bike out here, and things are actually closer to us than they were in the city (both in miles and minutes).
- swendoog 9y ago
  > lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay. care to elaborate?
  - xapata 9y ago
    He mentioned how awful the commute was and that he needed a car despite being in the city. For me, enabling a carless lifestyle is an important feature of a city.
eip 9y ago
>What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely? I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote. Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.
- sushid 9y ago
  It's not that they are unable to do the work remotely, it might be frowned upon or straight up not allowed for some workers.
- exolymph 9y ago
  Yeah, but you also need to work for a company that will let you work remote. Or find another job.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  edit: I phrased this originally in a way that the community didn’t care for. Plenty of people work on, and require physical access to, computer systems that can’t practically be made available to remote workers.
- tomkarlo 9y ago
  The folks who are having the most trouble living in SF - the ones who don't work in tech - often don't spend all day looking at a computer, and have to be physically present at a specific location to do their work. They're teachers, firefighters, nurses, chefs, mechanics, contractors, etc. Generally the tech crowd is impacted the least by housing prices, because they have higher incomes and more job mobility.
- gozur88 9y ago
  Employers are still leery of too much work-from-home. My company allows it, but only one day a week. Even people who are ostensibly working from home full time typically have to show up to the office occasionally for meetings and such, so they can't move too far.
ryguytilidie 9y ago
"Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)?" I don't know where you came up with this. The OP implied that by moving away from a heavily populated area and working remotely, he was able to afford more space and shorten his commute. You managed to turn no commute into increased pollution and moving to a less densely populated place as "driving up price"?
- tomkarlo 9y ago
  He didn't use a car to commute before (I'd hope) given he was in the middle of SF. But now he likely needs one to get to the grocery, take his kids to school, etc even if he's WFH. And he's likely also using more energy at home, too. So yes, more pollution - and if a lot of other people moved there, higher prices too.
  - foo101 9y ago
    Well, if a neighbourhood is good and convenient, it is only natural that more people would like to move there, more energy would be consumed and prices would rise. Besides this obvious thing, what exactly is your point?
    - tomkarlo 9y ago
      The point is you haven't solved the problem. You've just moved it to a different place. Urban sprawl is pretty well acknowledged to be a bad thing (TM) - it increases pollution, is bad for people's health, bad for the social fabric, etc etc. Saying "it's crowded here, let's go move somewhere else and make that crowded" is not just kicking the can, it's making the problem worse because often those areas have even less mass transit.
airstrike 9y ago
Of course someone from SF would have to call it "orthogonal"...
- tomkarlo 9y ago
  I'm from New York.
Feniks 9y ago
The alternative is America getting its act together and change their cities into Singapore/Tokyo/Hong Kong. Good luck waiting for that. Infrastructure is not something the average citizen seems to give a fig about.

guiomie 9y ago

I live in Lower Haight, and takes me 10-20 minutes. But I agree with you SF or just city life can take a toll.

diogenescynic 9y ago

You left out some other frequent experiences: having your car broken into, bums pooping on your fire escape, used needles all over, BART general unsanitary and unsafe conditions, bad service and crowded restaurants, I could go on and on. San Francisco is the most expensive and over-priced shithole. I’ve lived here for 10 years and I’m completely over it. I can’t wait for some startup or tech company to use this as a disruptive opportunity. I only live here because my job is here. I’d move if my job would let me.

swendoog 9y ago
I think this goes without saying but... if you're a software developer, there's never been a better time to find a new job, at a different company.

Mz 9y ago

Fresno is really a great place. I was there for over two years. I don't know why it gets badmouthed so much. And, yes, compared to coastal big cities in California, it is dramatically cheaper. They are starting a high speed rail line there. It is 500,000 people and much more spread out than the coastal big cities, so it is not nearly as dense. The bus system is the best I have ever seen in the US, so you can live without a car there, even though it sprawls. I have lived without a car for years and Fresno was a big improvement over previous experiences. I considered doing a website* as an ode to the city/to promote a walkable lifestyle there. It didn't get off the ground and now I have moved out of state. But, if you want to stay in California and want to get away from some of the insanity in places like SF, I will second "just move to the Central Valley if you can arrange it." http://pedestrianfresno.blogspot.com/ http://pedestrianfresno.blogspot.com/

jacobolus 9y ago
The weather is miserable for half the year, and there’s less to do. A bunch of my extended family lives in Fresno and elsewhere in the Central Valley, but I can’t imagine living there. The politicians they elect throughout the Central Valley are also absolutely bonkers.
- Mz 9y ago
  So, serious question, explain to me why you think the weather is "miserable" and what is it you "do" all the time that you can't imagine living in Fresno? I don't get it. There are national forests there. Woodward Park is huge. There is an international airport. What kinds of activities are you into that you can't get your needs met in a city of 500,000 people, about the 36th largest city in the US IIRC, which means there are entire states that don't have a city that big in them.
  - fizx 9y ago
    110 degrees in August.
    - 9y ago

ben_jones 9y ago

Not talked about: you're married. Having worked from home while being single it has its ups and downs. Sure you can get to the gym more but unless you're a natural extrovert you're going to meet way less people - and you'll be less likely to "find someone" (if thats what you're after) compared to the huge number of single people in the city. I feel like this is a hidden motivation for many people. Maybe just me.

chrisseaton 9y ago
Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. You'd still meet people at every other place people meet, which is where people look for dates anyway.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. Traditionally, work has been a very common place to meet future spouses. I believe the rate has dropped in recent decades, but I would be surprised if it was so low as to be inconsequential, especially when considering something as important as many people view this.
  - rovolo 9y ago
    According to 'Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary' (2010) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050 , around 10% of (hetero) couples met at work as of 2010, down from a peak of 20% in 1990. It is the fourth most common method behind friends, bars, and online. Just the graph: https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/internet-dating.png https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/internet-dating.pn...
    - kbenson 9y ago
      I figured it was probably sub 20%. 10% is still quite high, in my eyes.

chrisseaton 9y ago

> lived 3 miles from work Huh? So why weren't you just walking in the first place? That's like a 45 minute brisk walk. That doesn't sound like any kind of hardship.

cmontella 9y ago
It's a 570 ft elevation difference between where I lived and work. Yeah, maybe I need to work out more, but that was just too much for me 5 days a week. Also I didn't like walking through mid market.
carb 9y ago
A 45 minute brisk walk to and from work every day is excessive. By no means is 7.5 hrs of walking every week a commute I would call "just walking".
- Buttes 9y ago
  That's a very ordinary amount of walking for many people.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

acchow 9y ago

> I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni Was a great deal of that time spent walking? Because taking the N from Cole Valley to downtown normally takes 15 minutes.