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SF and the Bay Area are two very distinct places. The Bay Area is literally a series of midwestern towns dotted by dot com campuses. SF is a cesspool of homeles
by ilovecaching 8y ago
SF and the Bay Area are two very distinct places. The Bay Area is literally a series of midwestern towns dotted by dot com campuses. SF is a cesspool of homelessness and vanity. I love the bay, hate SF.
Also San Diego has tons of homeless too, and it has none of the tech scene. People are homeless in California because A) It has weather you can be outside in year round, especially in SoCal B) Our government is corrupt and is the cause of a serious housing crisis to keep prices inflated C) Cost of living is inflated by the housing crisis.
- chrisseaton 8y ago> The Bay Area is literally a series of midwestern towns dotted by dot com campuses. Midwestern? It's as far west as you can get. And they're not towns - they're cities, all merged into one massive continuous urban sprawl for 80 miles around the bay.
- curuinor 8y agoI suppose by American standards they're cities, but if you're at all used to like, Seoul, they're basically towns.
- myrandomcomment 8y agoThe only “real” city in the USA is Manhattan. SF does not come close to qualifying as one. Let me know when I can get dinner reservations at more the 2 places at midnight. The streets roll up at around 10pm. Just for perspective I would argue the only real city in the world is Tokyo.
- ghaff 8y agoVery few cities in the world have the sort of late night options you talk about. London sure doesn't. And you start excluding cities like London from a list of "real cities" and you have to wonder if your criteria need to be adjusted a bit.
- myrandomcomment 8y agoI can get dinner at midnight in London and Paris.
- ghaff 8y agoAs someone who frequently flies into London relatively late at night, it's not easy to get a decent meal at 11pm, Of course, I'm not sure the options for a decent meal in Manhattan at that hour are great either. The number of fast food restaurants open don't really count and London is better if you know where some of the ethnic enclaves are. NYC is definitely more of a "city that never sleeps" than most but its hours are not the norm for most major world cities.
- myrandomcomment 8y agoTry these two links. A mix of food with last orders at 1130 up until 2am for some. https://www.hot-dinners.com/Features/Hot-Dinners-recommends/late-night-dining-eating-london-restaurants-eats-after-hours https://www.hot-dinners.com/Features/Hot-Dinners-recommends/... https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/restaurants/midnight-feasting-londons-best-restaurants-for-late-night-bites-9685485.html https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/restaurants/midnight-fe...
- pc86 8y agoYes, I supposed if compared to the fifth largest city in the world, San Francisco isn't a gigantic, sprawling metropolis. Come on.
- ilovecaching 8y agoThey're like small towns dude. Definitely not cities.
- chrisseaton 8y agoThey are cities. San Mateo is a city. San Jose is a city. Hayward is a city. Redwood City is... a city. Union City is... a city. Oakland isn't just a city, it's the eighth most populated city in the whole of California!
- ilovecaching 8y agoYou're taking this way to literally. Union City isn't a city. It's a small town at best. Redwood City is like a bigger town. Fremont is also town sized. San Carlos is literally a town I've visited in Indiana. None of these places are worthy of being called cities except for Oakland and maybe San Jose.
- Varcht 8y agoIt's rhetoric, look it up.
- hammock 8y agoI can see how it feels like, maybe, Ohio. That's basically what Ohio is.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoOhio is basically a few hundred miles of corn, soybeans, and woods. It's not continuous urban sprawl. Source: I grew up in the middle of it.
- Dibes 8y agoAs someone who is living there right now, I don't think that is an accurate depiction of Ohio unless you are way outside of a city. Columbus for example is basically a 10 mile circle of sprawling suburbia centered by a relatively small downtown. Your statement is analogous to saying California is just hundreds of miles of hills and mountains and forests while discounting the major epicenters that exist.
- hammock 8y agoThis is what I meant. For example, the entire corridor from Cleveland to Canton is a sprawling series of small towns with no beginning or ending. Reminds me of driving down the 101.
- Apocryphon 8y agoI’m not sure if the Bay Area are Midwestern towns anymore than they are generic American suburbs. Their culture is not Midwestern at all.
- ghaff 8y agoYeah, my description would have been more along the lines of a long line of pretty generic suburban sprawl punctuated by a few walkable town centers, a university campus, and so forth. But mostly congested sprawl.
- ilovecaching 8y agoI'm from the midwest and feel completely at home in the Bay, and no where else in Cali. It's full of transplants, lots of small towns sort of strung together, with a totally middle class feel despite the money in the area.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe kind of person who moves from the mid west and then feels at home in is not representative of the average midwesterner. The cultural values are very different and that's before you even get into politics.
- yesimahuman 8y agoThere's a pretty big difference between midwesterners that grew up in rural areas and ones that grew up in cities. The cultural values might not be that different depending on where you're actually from.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dilyevsky 8y agoPortland has almost as big of an issue with homelessness as sf and almost no tech to speak of.
- bsder 8y agoD) Unlike many states, California has the equivalent of a "citizen advocate" for someone who is involuntarily placed in a mental health facility. This is good in that those without voice are not simply trampled over. This is bad in that you probably cannot hold someone long enough for effective treatment if they continuously express the desire to leave.
- zozbot123 8y agoMost people who talk about "homelessness" in SF as an issue don't really have a beef with the homeless themselves; it comes up as complaints about clear behavioral problems such as harassment, disorderly conduct and the like. It's surprising that even when mental health is an issue, that these don't lead to some sort of court-ordered treatment.
- bsder 8y ago> It's surprising that even when mental health is an issue, that these don't lead to some sort of court-ordered treatment. Involuntarily restraining someone has a very high bar--harm to self or others. Rightfully, "being a nuisance" doesn't really cross that bar. Someone with Alzheimer's and no family is a good test--when do you force them into a facility? And what kind of facility? And how do you pay for that? And is that actually an improvement to their life?
- zozbot123 8y agoDisturbing the peace is more than simply "being a nuisance" to someone else - it's a recognized infraction, that may well lead to being detained in jail or being ordered to do some community service. Isn't that a sort of "involuntary restraint", too? Potayto, potahto.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoOn the other hand, SF is one of the most beautiful cities in the US with a vibrant culture and the rest of the bay is utterly boring ugly suburbs.
- CalRobert 8y agoBerkeley is pretty great. I actually preferred it to SF when I lived there. Lots of Oakland is fantastic too. But I agree with you for the most part. Basically all of the bay built in the last 70 years is garbage. As the writer of "Ghostride the Volvo" put it, Fremont's just a parking lot with a mayor.
- masonic 8y agowith a vibrant culture ... like a Petri dish
- tdb7893 8y agoCalling them "Midwestern towns" is really weird as they are more dense than many Midwestern cities. If you go to Des Moines (which is the most populous city in Iowa) you'll find the population significantly less dense than somewhere like Sunnyvale.