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I went to San Jose in 2017 and was surprisingly very bored. Compared to San Francisco, San Jose seemed like a sprawling, car dense, sleepy mid sized city in Flo

I went to San Jose in 2017 and was surprisingly very bored. Compared to San Francisco, San Jose seemed like a sprawling, car dense, sleepy mid sized city in Florida with a little bit of big city characteristics thrown in. It really confused me. San Jose definitely has room for growth but I won't be surprised if low-income individuals are not taken into account with how the city council wants to zone areas and set up transportation. It'll be interesting to track SJ's growth.

mc32 8y ago
San Jose looks like a vast conglomeration of suburbs with a bolted on "downtown". It lacks charm on the surface; it's one of those places that has hidden gems that you only get to know about if you spend time there.
- amyjess 8y ago
  Yes, cities like this are designed for the benefit of residents, not tourists. It's designed to be a nice place to live, first and foremost. Now, if you know a local, you could easily get all kinds of recommendations for interesting restaurants and neighborhood bars, and probably various random festivals that are going on. But the city doesn't advertise itself to tourists.
  - 1nverseMtx 8y ago
    If San Jose was designed to benefit its residents it fails miserably at it. Most cities around the world of a similar population are easily way more pleasant and convenient to live in.
  - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
    San Jose doesn’t benefit its residents at all - its a suburban wasteland (source: I’ve lived in San Jose for the last ten years, in Campbell, Santana row, downtown and willow glen.)
    - amyjess 8y ago
      I love the suburbs. A lot of people love the suburbs. People choose to live in suburbs all across the country for a reason. Not everyone wants to live in some cramped, claustrophobic city with awful schools and constant street harassment by the homeless. The only reasons I won't live in SJ are A) because Cali is a nanny state and B) I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be degenerate, but I choose to live in a large sprawling suburb in another state, and I'd never live in any place that isn't a sprawling suburb.
      - mc32 8y ago
        I'm not sure why 'amyjess' is getting downvoted. They have a liking for different kind of city and that's alright. We don't have to like living in the same kinds of places. There is no reason to downvote on personal opinion on something. I'd like to see SJ get built up a bit more to look like a traditional city, but they don't. I don't have a problem with that. They're not even trying to impose their values on SJ --they chose to live in a place that shares their values.
        techsupporter 8y ago
        > They have a liking for different kind of city and that's alright. We don't have to like living in the same kinds of places. There is no reason to downvote on personal opinion on something. Because amyjess is using the same kind of brash language and tactics that aren't appreciated when people crap on "the flyover states" or "backwater redneck states." Slagging on an entire class of anything--whether states that happen to be located in the Midwest or cities that happen to be dense--isn't a good way to have a conversation. Nor is throwing in that California is a "nanny state," which is often perceived as coded language for "government run by Democrats." Had amyjess stuck with professing a preference for a sprawling suburb and left it at that, without also taking shots at other people's preferences, I would agree with you.
        rrdharan 8y ago
        Sprawling suburbs impose externalities on the planet: https://inhabitat.com/how-american-urban-sprawl-causes-problems-from-obesity-to-climate-change/ https://inhabitat.com/how-american-urban-sprawl-causes-probl...
  - zeruch 8y ago
    SJ has long had a problem that while it has plenty of 'stuff' (food, drinks, galleries, events) unlike other cities, it has never been remotely good at making them obvious, sometimes even to residents.
- groby_b 8y ago
  Living in Mountain View for the last 18 months now: Nope, San Jose also lacks charm below the surface. It's a pit, it's just a slightly better pit than Mountain View.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    Why is MTV a "pit"? Decent-ish downtown with a Michelin starred restaurant, plenty of parks, good library, relatively bike-able, rapidly densifying and adding housing. Caltrain goes to SF, you can drive easily north to Napa or Tahoe or south to all the beaches. It doesn't have any world-class attractions, hip nightclubs, renowned museums, or acclaimed architecture but that's not the point of the city, and honestly most cities in the world don't have those things. Overall it's a pretty good place to live if you ignore the price of housing - which is a regional problem.
    - hadlock 8y ago
      MTV just kind of blends in with every other white middle-upper class neighborhood in America, it is as bland as off-brand vanilla ice cream to the end of blunting your senses. To a lot of people living in such a place is a huge mark of success... to many other people, that is the environment they grew up in and are trying to escape. See also: the movie Pleasantville.
      - mc32 8y ago
        I don't think blandness is bad in and of itself. One could describe many places all over the world as "bland" from an insider's perspective but perhaps interesting from an outsider's perspective. Not only that, but may cities and towns which experience turmoil, econ decline, etc., would sell themselves off for "bland" success. Bland means you've made it. Singapore is "bland" Yokohama is "bland". One could say life is not "bland" in the Donbass region. Santiago might be bland, but Rio de Janeiro is not bland. I'd wager many of the non-bland places would trade an arm to be successfully bland. Busan used to be gritty. Now it's a "bland" city. Furthermore, even foreign transplants who settle in foreign places be they from India, China, Russia, Nigeria, etc., if they can, they settle in these so-called 'bland' cities, if they can. I have not yet heard anyone going to Paris saying, you know what, I'm going to settle in one of the exciting arrondisements --nevermind those other places most people gravitate to.
dekhn 8y ago
I went to San Jose in 1995 (from Santa Cruz, with experience in SF) and was really surprised. Nothing has changed, it's the same 4-cornered intersection with 2 housing complexes behind walls, a Chevron, and a strip mall with decent Korean and Indian food, tiled X times across the valley.
- dekhn 8y ago
  Heck, I should add that I visited Mountain View (Shoreline) in '91, and the SGI campus which is now Google looks almost exactly the same. Big changes: more buildings, and the monstrosity which is the PageEgoPlex that is going up now, but substantially the same. Many people who worked for Adobe, etc, say they've worked in the same building for 2-3 companies with just minor interior redecoration. So, other than making things more congested, Google hasn't really transformed MTV.
  - puzzle 8y ago
    You're forgetting the gBikes abandoned at the MTV Caltrain station or outside random stores/parks (not always by Google employees or interns). That and the new restaurants on Castro Street. The former is a net negative, the latter a positive.
    - dekhn 8y ago
      i didn't really go east of 101 for the 10 years I worked there.
    - scruffyherder 8y ago
      > gBikes bike sharing schemes are such a plague. And people were all shocked when GoBee up and died. now we have their stupid bikes littered all over the place.
      - rossng 8y ago
        Bike sharing schemes aren't all bad. Copenhagen has Donkey Republic[1] which works well and doesn't seem to cause any issues. Of course it helps that they city is flat - San Francisco is clearly more suited to electrically-assisted modes of transport. [1] https://www.donkey.bike/cities/bike-rental-copenhagen/ https://www.donkey.bike/cities/bike-rental-copenhagen/
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
It's such a weird city. I've never been to TX but it felt like TX. Lots of space and no people.
- Fins 8y ago
  Having just moved from SJ to Austin, no, SJ miserably fails at being at least like that part of Texas.
  - hadlock 8y ago
    SJ feels an awful lot like Dallas, especially far north Dallas where the tech office parks are. Except rent is different.
    - Fins 8y ago
      That I could believe. Although I think Dallas has better museums etc. And prices, of course.
- kylestlb 8y ago
  As someone who has lived in SJ for most of my life it's closer to Phoenix.
mlindner 8y ago
I live in San Jose and boring is _good_. I don't want parties up and down the street and stuff happening all night outside my windows. I don't even live in downtown San Jose, but in northern San Jose in the middle of a tech park. There's nothing around, and that's a good thing. I had an internship in San Francisco before I graduated, I'm never living in that city.
- mav3rick 8y ago
  Possibly the most boring year of my life was North San Jose.
- Fins 8y ago
  But that's San Francisco. There absolutely are large cities with far more culture than the entire Bay Area (SF included), great food, things to do, and all that, where you can live 15-20 minute walk from downtown, in a decent neighborhood, in a nice place that will cost you probably 1/3 of what a repurposed chicken coop goes for in SV, and not have any parties right out your window. Sure, you probably won't get to work on something as disruptive and world-changing as Theranos, Juicero, or whatever the latest SV hawtness is, but I think it is a pretty good trade-off.
  - samatman 8y ago
    Besides Chicago, which cities are you referring to?
    - Fins 8y ago
      Mostly Chicago, really, because I've lived there for 25 years, but Austin would work too (somewhat less culture, though). Denver, Minneapolis, probably more. After that it's probably more a matter of taste than anything. I don't think I would want to live in Omaha, but I certainly want to live in San Jose even less. And once you get to the point where a family becomes important, SV certainly is not the place where I want to raise kids, unless I wwre to win the lottery and be able to send them to a private school.
kochikame 8y ago
I was there just last year and I was amazed how empty-feeling the downtown was. No chain stores, hardly any supermarkets, just fast food joints and a few (pretty decent) bars and pubs, which only get crowded on Friday and Saturday night.
kylestlb 8y ago
Surprisingly? I'm surprised myself that you expected to be not-bored :) I am a south bay native and only recently does SJ have some cool stuff to do downtown. The beer scene in particular is fantastic.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
Am I alone in thinking this, but where did this expectation of cities to be "exciting" apparently for the sake of being "exciting" come from? I've lived in a few cities and I've never seen a difference in "excitement" specifically in Seattle vs. NYC vs. Boston. The only thing that varies is the density and level of affluence.
- mav3rick 8y ago
  Each of these cities has their own niche in nightlife and culture offerings. It's quite possible you didn't explore them in many of these aspects. They have more differences than just scale.
- gamma-male 8y ago
  Go outside the US. Cities will have wapkable historical centers and it's amazing.

mc32 8y ago

San Jose looks like a vast conglomeration of suburbs with a bolted on "downtown". It lacks charm on the surface; it's one of those places that has hidden gems that you only get to know about if you spend time there.

amyjess 8y ago
Yes, cities like this are designed for the benefit of residents, not tourists. It's designed to be a nice place to live, first and foremost. Now, if you know a local, you could easily get all kinds of recommendations for interesting restaurants and neighborhood bars, and probably various random festivals that are going on. But the city doesn't advertise itself to tourists.
- 1nverseMtx 8y ago
  If San Jose was designed to benefit its residents it fails miserably at it. Most cities around the world of a similar population are easily way more pleasant and convenient to live in.
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  San Jose doesn’t benefit its residents at all - its a suburban wasteland (source: I’ve lived in San Jose for the last ten years, in Campbell, Santana row, downtown and willow glen.)
  - amyjess 8y ago
    I love the suburbs. A lot of people love the suburbs. People choose to live in suburbs all across the country for a reason. Not everyone wants to live in some cramped, claustrophobic city with awful schools and constant street harassment by the homeless. The only reasons I won't live in SJ are A) because Cali is a nanny state and B) I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be degenerate, but I choose to live in a large sprawling suburb in another state, and I'd never live in any place that isn't a sprawling suburb.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I'm not sure why 'amyjess' is getting downvoted. They have a liking for different kind of city and that's alright. We don't have to like living in the same kinds of places. There is no reason to downvote on personal opinion on something. I'd like to see SJ get built up a bit more to look like a traditional city, but they don't. I don't have a problem with that. They're not even trying to impose their values on SJ --they chose to live in a place that shares their values.
      - techsupporter 8y ago
        > They have a liking for different kind of city and that's alright. We don't have to like living in the same kinds of places. There is no reason to downvote on personal opinion on something. Because amyjess is using the same kind of brash language and tactics that aren't appreciated when people crap on "the flyover states" or "backwater redneck states." Slagging on an entire class of anything--whether states that happen to be located in the Midwest or cities that happen to be dense--isn't a good way to have a conversation. Nor is throwing in that California is a "nanny state," which is often perceived as coded language for "government run by Democrats." Had amyjess stuck with professing a preference for a sprawling suburb and left it at that, without also taking shots at other people's preferences, I would agree with you.
      - rrdharan 8y ago
        Sprawling suburbs impose externalities on the planet: https://inhabitat.com/how-american-urban-sprawl-causes-problems-from-obesity-to-climate-change/ https://inhabitat.com/how-american-urban-sprawl-causes-probl...
- zeruch 8y ago
  SJ has long had a problem that while it has plenty of 'stuff' (food, drinks, galleries, events) unlike other cities, it has never been remotely good at making them obvious, sometimes even to residents.
groby_b 8y ago
Living in Mountain View for the last 18 months now: Nope, San Jose also lacks charm below the surface. It's a pit, it's just a slightly better pit than Mountain View.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Why is MTV a "pit"? Decent-ish downtown with a Michelin starred restaurant, plenty of parks, good library, relatively bike-able, rapidly densifying and adding housing. Caltrain goes to SF, you can drive easily north to Napa or Tahoe or south to all the beaches. It doesn't have any world-class attractions, hip nightclubs, renowned museums, or acclaimed architecture but that's not the point of the city, and honestly most cities in the world don't have those things. Overall it's a pretty good place to live if you ignore the price of housing - which is a regional problem.
  - hadlock 8y ago
    MTV just kind of blends in with every other white middle-upper class neighborhood in America, it is as bland as off-brand vanilla ice cream to the end of blunting your senses. To a lot of people living in such a place is a huge mark of success... to many other people, that is the environment they grew up in and are trying to escape. See also: the movie Pleasantville.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I don't think blandness is bad in and of itself. One could describe many places all over the world as "bland" from an insider's perspective but perhaps interesting from an outsider's perspective. Not only that, but may cities and towns which experience turmoil, econ decline, etc., would sell themselves off for "bland" success. Bland means you've made it. Singapore is "bland" Yokohama is "bland". One could say life is not "bland" in the Donbass region. Santiago might be bland, but Rio de Janeiro is not bland. I'd wager many of the non-bland places would trade an arm to be successfully bland. Busan used to be gritty. Now it's a "bland" city. Furthermore, even foreign transplants who settle in foreign places be they from India, China, Russia, Nigeria, etc., if they can, they settle in these so-called 'bland' cities, if they can. I have not yet heard anyone going to Paris saying, you know what, I'm going to settle in one of the exciting arrondisements --nevermind those other places most people gravitate to.

dekhn 8y ago

I went to San Jose in 1995 (from Santa Cruz, with experience in SF) and was really surprised. Nothing has changed, it's the same 4-cornered intersection with 2 housing complexes behind walls, a Chevron, and a strip mall with decent Korean and Indian food, tiled X times across the valley.

dekhn 8y ago
Heck, I should add that I visited Mountain View (Shoreline) in '91, and the SGI campus which is now Google looks almost exactly the same. Big changes: more buildings, and the monstrosity which is the PageEgoPlex that is going up now, but substantially the same. Many people who worked for Adobe, etc, say they've worked in the same building for 2-3 companies with just minor interior redecoration. So, other than making things more congested, Google hasn't really transformed MTV.
- puzzle 8y ago
  You're forgetting the gBikes abandoned at the MTV Caltrain station or outside random stores/parks (not always by Google employees or interns). That and the new restaurants on Castro Street. The former is a net negative, the latter a positive.
  - dekhn 8y ago
    i didn't really go east of 101 for the 10 years I worked there.
  - scruffyherder 8y ago
    > gBikes bike sharing schemes are such a plague. And people were all shocked when GoBee up and died. now we have their stupid bikes littered all over the place.
    - rossng 8y ago
      Bike sharing schemes aren't all bad. Copenhagen has Donkey Republic[1] which works well and doesn't seem to cause any issues. Of course it helps that they city is flat - San Francisco is clearly more suited to electrically-assisted modes of transport. [1] https://www.donkey.bike/cities/bike-rental-copenhagen/ https://www.donkey.bike/cities/bike-rental-copenhagen/

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

It's such a weird city. I've never been to TX but it felt like TX. Lots of space and no people.

Fins 8y ago
Having just moved from SJ to Austin, no, SJ miserably fails at being at least like that part of Texas.
- hadlock 8y ago
  SJ feels an awful lot like Dallas, especially far north Dallas where the tech office parks are. Except rent is different.
  - Fins 8y ago
    That I could believe. Although I think Dallas has better museums etc. And prices, of course.
kylestlb 8y ago
As someone who has lived in SJ for most of my life it's closer to Phoenix.

mlindner 8y ago

I live in San Jose and boring is _good_. I don't want parties up and down the street and stuff happening all night outside my windows. I don't even live in downtown San Jose, but in northern San Jose in the middle of a tech park. There's nothing around, and that's a good thing. I had an internship in San Francisco before I graduated, I'm never living in that city.

mav3rick 8y ago
Possibly the most boring year of my life was North San Jose.
Fins 8y ago
But that's San Francisco. There absolutely are large cities with far more culture than the entire Bay Area (SF included), great food, things to do, and all that, where you can live 15-20 minute walk from downtown, in a decent neighborhood, in a nice place that will cost you probably 1/3 of what a repurposed chicken coop goes for in SV, and not have any parties right out your window. Sure, you probably won't get to work on something as disruptive and world-changing as Theranos, Juicero, or whatever the latest SV hawtness is, but I think it is a pretty good trade-off.
- samatman 8y ago
  Besides Chicago, which cities are you referring to?
  - Fins 8y ago
    Mostly Chicago, really, because I've lived there for 25 years, but Austin would work too (somewhat less culture, though). Denver, Minneapolis, probably more. After that it's probably more a matter of taste than anything. I don't think I would want to live in Omaha, but I certainly want to live in San Jose even less. And once you get to the point where a family becomes important, SV certainly is not the place where I want to raise kids, unless I wwre to win the lottery and be able to send them to a private school.

kochikame 8y ago

I was there just last year and I was amazed how empty-feeling the downtown was. No chain stores, hardly any supermarkets, just fast food joints and a few (pretty decent) bars and pubs, which only get crowded on Friday and Saturday night.

kylestlb 8y ago

Surprisingly? I'm surprised myself that you expected to be not-bored :) I am a south bay native and only recently does SJ have some cool stuff to do downtown. The beer scene in particular is fantastic.

akhilcacharya 8y ago

Am I alone in thinking this, but where did this expectation of cities to be "exciting" apparently for the sake of being "exciting" come from? I've lived in a few cities and I've never seen a difference in "excitement" specifically in Seattle vs. NYC vs. Boston. The only thing that varies is the density and level of affluence.

mav3rick 8y ago
Each of these cities has their own niche in nightlife and culture offerings. It's quite possible you didn't explore them in many of these aspects. They have more differences than just scale.
gamma-male 8y ago
Go outside the US. Cities will have wapkable historical centers and it's amazing.