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It takes some time to get a feel of the culture of a new place, but trust me as someone that has lived in a few other states, it eventually makes a big differen

It takes some time to get a feel of the culture of a new place, but trust me as someone that has lived in a few other states, it eventually makes a big difference. California has dramatically out performed other states, and is more expensive because it was working, in part because of the culture that is unique to California.

jelling 6y ago
I live in NYC and lots of friends have left town for upstate New York or similar places. But I'm waiting to see how great they think these places are after they have eaten at the same 5 restaurants for a year. And once live culture returns to NYC and other places, how will they feel then? Of course, the other way to look at the de-campers is that they were going to move to the burbs inevitably. Which good for them, but cities are injured, not dead.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  I feel like comments like this often lack perspective. Upstate NY, especially Buffalo and Rochester have plenty of things to do in them and far more than five restaurants. It strikes a nerve with me because in Massachusetts a similar sentiment is expressed by Boston-Cambridge folks about Lowell, Worcester, and other periphery cities. Its simply mot true that these places are devoid of culture snd cuisine and in the age of Yelp and Google Maps it takes almost no time to find it.
  - mattj 6y ago
    I think the grandparent is probably referring to upstate in the Hudson Valley sense of the phrase. Plenty of cute towns, but Hudson / Woodstock / Kingston are definitely in the O(tens) of great restaurant options, comparable to a slice of any single Manhattan / Brooklyn neighborhood most tech people live in.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    As someone who moved from a large small city (300k residents, 100k students, 300k daily commuters) to San Francisco ... yeah the density is totally worth it. Back home we had restaurants and cuisine and all that. It wasn’t a wasteland. But SF has more high quality restaurants within a 20min walk of my apartment than my hometown had in total. Average restaurant quality is higher too. Just because there’s more competition. Another fun example: in SF we have 5 grocery stores within a 10min walk. Back home the nearest grocery store was a 3min walk away, great. But the next one after that was 10min. To get to a proper supermarket size grocery store ... that’s a car trip. In SF it’s a 15min walk. Density is wonderful. There’s economies of scale that you get at 18,400 people per square mile that you just can’t pull off at 4,500. The ultimate test for a city is this: Do you have 5 “asian restaurants” or do you have 5 south vietnamese, 3 north vietnamese, 10 cantonese, 5 ramen, 6 japanese grill, 3 sushi, 4 dimsum, etc For example back home we had the mexican restaurant, here you have 10 for each type of mexican food.
    - asiachick 6y ago
      The way you feel about SF vs your 300k residents town is how I feel about Tokyo vs SF. When I'm in SF it's sad how few choices I have and how bad most of them are. And all those asian restaurants you mention are not remotely "good". You can find a few descent asian restaurants in the south bay like say Fremont but LA does them all significantly better and in far higher quantity
      - Swizec 6y ago
        Correct. Both of those cities are larger than SF. Less walkable due to lower density, though. If it weren’t for SF’s high concentration of my industry (tech), I’d likely move to NYC, London, or Paris.
        asiachick 6y ago
        I find Tokyo far more walkable than SF. I don't like the public transportation in SF. It's dirty, gross, and slow and have to walk over homeless people and smell piss everywhere and even without transportation most areas in Tokyo are super walkable with access to almost everything you could need just a few minutes walk away. I'd say Paris and London (and most > 1m people cities in Europe and many in Asia) are also more walkable than SF.
  - lsllc 6y ago
    The reality is, unless you're really in the sticks, there are probably some reasonable, if not pretty good restaurants around. Case in point: Amherst MA, college town, tons of great restaurants that probably equal Cambridge or Somerville (not in quantity, but maybe quality). Also some pretty interesting places in both Holyoke and Northhampton MA. In fact some of the best food & drink I've had was in parts of Nebraska & Missouri and Wisconsin. You absolutely don't need to be in the city to get good food & entertainment.
dannyw 6y ago
If Californians move in bulk the culture will diffuse out; especially in tech hub cities.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  That’s an interesting observation that’s normally only made about political affiliations. I wonder if there is precedent with the migration out of NYC and the like in the post-WWII/mid Century period. It was a real boom time for the West...California in particular. A lot of folks came from back East or the Midwest... Not many tried to explicitly recreate their East Coast/Midwest life in the West...in fact they made a point of trying to create a unique California “lifestyle”. That new California lifestyle was the hot US cultural trend from, say, 1960 to 1990. May happen again, but in the reverse direction, Californians creating a new Montanan/Utahn/Ohioan/etc. culture by engaging in the roots of their new not-California and building something better, bringing their creativity while leaving behind their California. Of course, if they try merely to graft a California-lite onto their new rootstock...well, they could be an important new source of protein for the locals... I don’t think this creative dynamic could happen in other “tech hub cities”, because, frankly, there is no essential culture there to work with. Austin may be nice, but it seems more parasite on Texas culture than symbiont. (Which has been a slam against California over the years too. What’s the difference between California and yogurt? Yogurt has an active living culture. More people outside of California believe that than you might think. It’s been 30 years since CA has been a dominant nationwide cultural thing, Hollywood as almost a metaculture notwithstanding. Silicon Valley? That’s getting onto 25 years old now...that’s senescent in US cultural terms.)
  - ardit33 6y ago
    haha.... here you are posting on a California based website/forum, and pretty much use California based products without even knowing (facebook, reddit, google, youtube, iPhone, Android, Macs), they are all California culture, in digital form. CA, like it or not, has an outsized influence to the whole world, to the point that it kinda becomes 'undistinguishable' as it is everywhere. I am talking about tech/SF/SV and Hollywood. They have risen to the 'metaculture' level which few places/countries have. ps, HN, reddit, FB, started in the east coast, but had to move in the west in order to flourish. Same with the Movie industry. It started in the NYC and New Jersey suburbs, but had to move West in order to flourish.

jelling 6y ago

I live in NYC and lots of friends have left town for upstate New York or similar places. But I'm waiting to see how great they think these places are after they have eaten at the same 5 restaurants for a year. And once live culture returns to NYC and other places, how will they feel then? Of course, the other way to look at the de-campers is that they were going to move to the burbs inevitably. Which good for them, but cities are injured, not dead.

meddlepal 6y ago
I feel like comments like this often lack perspective. Upstate NY, especially Buffalo and Rochester have plenty of things to do in them and far more than five restaurants. It strikes a nerve with me because in Massachusetts a similar sentiment is expressed by Boston-Cambridge folks about Lowell, Worcester, and other periphery cities. Its simply mot true that these places are devoid of culture snd cuisine and in the age of Yelp and Google Maps it takes almost no time to find it.
- mattj 6y ago
  I think the grandparent is probably referring to upstate in the Hudson Valley sense of the phrase. Plenty of cute towns, but Hudson / Woodstock / Kingston are definitely in the O(tens) of great restaurant options, comparable to a slice of any single Manhattan / Brooklyn neighborhood most tech people live in.
- Swizec 6y ago
  As someone who moved from a large small city (300k residents, 100k students, 300k daily commuters) to San Francisco ... yeah the density is totally worth it. Back home we had restaurants and cuisine and all that. It wasn’t a wasteland. But SF has more high quality restaurants within a 20min walk of my apartment than my hometown had in total. Average restaurant quality is higher too. Just because there’s more competition. Another fun example: in SF we have 5 grocery stores within a 10min walk. Back home the nearest grocery store was a 3min walk away, great. But the next one after that was 10min. To get to a proper supermarket size grocery store ... that’s a car trip. In SF it’s a 15min walk. Density is wonderful. There’s economies of scale that you get at 18,400 people per square mile that you just can’t pull off at 4,500. The ultimate test for a city is this: Do you have 5 “asian restaurants” or do you have 5 south vietnamese, 3 north vietnamese, 10 cantonese, 5 ramen, 6 japanese grill, 3 sushi, 4 dimsum, etc For example back home we had the mexican restaurant, here you have 10 for each type of mexican food.
  - asiachick 6y ago
    The way you feel about SF vs your 300k residents town is how I feel about Tokyo vs SF. When I'm in SF it's sad how few choices I have and how bad most of them are. And all those asian restaurants you mention are not remotely "good". You can find a few descent asian restaurants in the south bay like say Fremont but LA does them all significantly better and in far higher quantity
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Correct. Both of those cities are larger than SF. Less walkable due to lower density, though. If it weren’t for SF’s high concentration of my industry (tech), I’d likely move to NYC, London, or Paris.
      - asiachick 6y ago
        I find Tokyo far more walkable than SF. I don't like the public transportation in SF. It's dirty, gross, and slow and have to walk over homeless people and smell piss everywhere and even without transportation most areas in Tokyo are super walkable with access to almost everything you could need just a few minutes walk away. I'd say Paris and London (and most > 1m people cities in Europe and many in Asia) are also more walkable than SF.
- lsllc 6y ago
  The reality is, unless you're really in the sticks, there are probably some reasonable, if not pretty good restaurants around. Case in point: Amherst MA, college town, tons of great restaurants that probably equal Cambridge or Somerville (not in quantity, but maybe quality). Also some pretty interesting places in both Holyoke and Northhampton MA. In fact some of the best food & drink I've had was in parts of Nebraska & Missouri and Wisconsin. You absolutely don't need to be in the city to get good food & entertainment.

dannyw 6y ago

If Californians move in bulk the culture will diffuse out; especially in tech hub cities.

onecommentman 6y ago
That’s an interesting observation that’s normally only made about political affiliations. I wonder if there is precedent with the migration out of NYC and the like in the post-WWII/mid Century period. It was a real boom time for the West...California in particular. A lot of folks came from back East or the Midwest... Not many tried to explicitly recreate their East Coast/Midwest life in the West...in fact they made a point of trying to create a unique California “lifestyle”. That new California lifestyle was the hot US cultural trend from, say, 1960 to 1990. May happen again, but in the reverse direction, Californians creating a new Montanan/Utahn/Ohioan/etc. culture by engaging in the roots of their new not-California and building something better, bringing their creativity while leaving behind their California. Of course, if they try merely to graft a California-lite onto their new rootstock...well, they could be an important new source of protein for the locals... I don’t think this creative dynamic could happen in other “tech hub cities”, because, frankly, there is no essential culture there to work with. Austin may be nice, but it seems more parasite on Texas culture than symbiont. (Which has been a slam against California over the years too. What’s the difference between California and yogurt? Yogurt has an active living culture. More people outside of California believe that than you might think. It’s been 30 years since CA has been a dominant nationwide cultural thing, Hollywood as almost a metaculture notwithstanding. Silicon Valley? That’s getting onto 25 years old now...that’s senescent in US cultural terms.)
- ardit33 6y ago
  haha.... here you are posting on a California based website/forum, and pretty much use California based products without even knowing (facebook, reddit, google, youtube, iPhone, Android, Macs), they are all California culture, in digital form. CA, like it or not, has an outsized influence to the whole world, to the point that it kinda becomes 'undistinguishable' as it is everywhere. I am talking about tech/SF/SV and Hollywood. They have risen to the 'metaculture' level which few places/countries have. ps, HN, reddit, FB, started in the east coast, but had to move in the west in order to flourish. Same with the Movie industry. It started in the NYC and New Jersey suburbs, but had to move West in order to flourish.