I grew up in SF in what a lot of people call "residential neighborhoods" rather than "suburbs". There are houses, with small yards, and sometimes the houses do

I grew up in SF in what a lot of people call "residential neighborhoods" rather than "suburbs". There are houses, with small yards, and sometimes the houses don't even border each other. It's very different from palo alto (which is generally regarded as a suburb), and utterly different from, say antioch (whis is part of what people often call the exurbs). You do, as a kid, see a lot that needs explaining. Some days, as we drove home from school, my brother saw a long line of men lining up outside the "nob hill male". They must, he concluded, be the dancers rather than the audience. Snort. I actually think that cities are a pretty good place for kids to grow up, largely because it cushions the impact of growing out of the lies PG has mentioned. At age 15 in SF, I found a release in coffee shops in the haight, north beach, and the mission - and I could easily get to them without a car. Sure, I did plenty of the things that parents worry about, but in the end, there were interesting and exciting ways to get away from childhood that involved expanding my mind rather than looking for trouble. When I look at the ennui of the kids growing up in the exurbs, sometimes I think that maybe the lure of drunk street racing is greater, because there's less to do.