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What are some examples of Bay Area towns? It seems like everyone in my friend circle in tech lives in San Francisco and puts up (or used to) with the long commu
by ssequeira 6y ago
What are some examples of Bay Area towns? It seems like everyone in my friend circle in tech lives in San Francisco and puts up (or used to) with the long commute.
- haram_masala 6y agoAlameda comes to mind. Completely walkable, charming, great community feel. It's an island, so going over bridges or through the tube to go anywhere can be a bit of a hassle, but it's well worth it.
- randycupertino 6y agoThe pinball museum in Alameda is one of my favorite spots! I hope it survives the shutdown, they always seem to be operating on a shoestring budget. Super cool place if anyone hasn't checked it out before, highly recommend!
- alex_g 6y agoI second this, spent my birthday there last year and it was a blast!
- ghaff 6y agoQuite a few of the towns in the South Bay have walkable cores: Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo... You also have smaller cities all over the country. Now, you get into truly small towns in places like New England and there really isn't a lot in the town center and it's unlikely you'll be living walking distance from it.
- baddox 6y agoThe towns in the peninsula are nice, even the smaller ones like Burlingame or even San Carlos. But apartment rents are barely cheaper there in SF for comparable nice units, and you’ll almost certainly need a car, and you of course lose many of the benefits of a big city like SF if you value those things.
- renewiltord 6y agoNo way, man. You have to pay like $1.5 mil for a home in Palo Alto and Mountain View. You do all that and you get a glorified suburb. No way. The city is like 400x as city life for like 1.1x the price.
- refurb 6y agoI would be shocked if one could find a liveable single family home in Palo Alto or Mountain View for $1.5M. Last I looked empty lots went for that much.
- swimfar 6y agoBy home, do you mean house? Sub-million dollar homes show up all the time in Mountain View, even before Covid. Thinking anything less than a house is unlivable for a family is not the norm in most other parts of the world.
- jessaustin 6y agoBy home-not-a-house, do you mean an apartment? Duplex? Tent?
- refurb 6y agoI assumed you meant "single family home", but yes, you can find sub-$1M apartments.
- opportune 6y agoLol love how we're talking about the core cities of silicon valley as towns... have you guys even been there? They have a town vibe only because they have essentially made development outside of office buildings impossible for decades. There is a ton of pent up demand to live there (meaning it's super, super expensive) and there is a lot of traffic and a surprising population density given the development pattern (because there are a LOT of people working there relative to living there). They're really all a contiguous metropolitan region of the Bay Area from SF-SJ-Oakland, the fact that they're separate political entities is at this point a historical relic
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoCome on, Mountain View’s downtown degrades into there-is-not-even-trees-to-shade-you after like two blocks sideways, and no grocery store. Palo Alto is better, but unless you live in downtown south you won’t be walking distance from a grocery store, and you can basically not walk for more than 20 minutes without being in boring ass McMansion suburbia.
- gwillen 6y ago> no grocery store I can't tell if you forgot about Ava's, or if you've never actually _been_ to downtown Mountain View, or if you only consider chain supermarkets to count.
- dmode 6y agoI responded above, but look into Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, Kensington, Albany. You can also north to Novato, San Rafael, Petaluma. Also, along the coast Pacifica, Moss Bay, Montarra, Half Moon Bay, Pescadero. I would also explore Oakland and Berkeley hills
- closeparen 6y agoSuburbs, particularly old growth / inner ring suburbs, often have walkable cores and even rail connections to the city. They are not all the postwar Levittown kind. “Town” as distinct from “suburb” usually implies standing alone, being surrounded by farmland and not particularly connected to the nearest metro area.
- chrisseaton 6y agoHalf Moon Bay for example looks like a nice little place? I had dinner there once passing through. Wasn't an Applebees. https://www.visithalfmoonbay.org/ https://www.visithalfmoonbay.org/ Go much further north of the Bay and you can live in Yountville and I think you'll have a 3-star restaurant in your town, which is a level of culture you can't even get in most US megacities. Again not Applebees. https://yountville.com/ https://yountville.com/
- baddox 6y agoI doubt you want to live in Half Moon Bay unless your schedule allows you to get outside during the week and hunker down to avoid the weekend traffic when the weather is decent.
- cam0 6y agoYountville is nice and it's also dripping in wealth - if you aren't driving a Porsche and carrying a black AmEx you'll feel out of place.