9 ms·

On Leaving California and the Silicon Valley

71 points by jashkenas 5y ago

rmk 5y ago
The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA. Ultimately, he could not / did not adjust, and decided to move to NY. Main complaints: - Weather: The Bay Area has none. The changing seasons and large variations in weather they brought was something the writer missed. - Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort. - Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. This means that many weekend hours are spent getting to a particular place where the leisure activity (which is already not to the taste of the writer) will occur, and this also entails advance planning! - Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery. - Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive. - Politics: Even though the writer is ostensibly of a similar persuasion as most Bay Area residents (left-leaning liberal), the actual policies and attitudes of Bay Area residents are heavily arrogant, technocratic, plutocratic and short-sighted. All of the observations ring true. But the overall impression I got was that the author really did not or could not change himself, and expected something the Bay Area never offered in reality.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Appreciate the summary.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Weather: The Bay Area has none. I experienced this same feeling in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Every day the sky and air are almost exactly the same, day-in-day-out. I was very ready for some seasons and weather when I got back to the UK.
  - sooheon 5y ago
    You can visualize this: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/557~23912/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-San-Francisco-and-New-York-City https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/557~23912/Comparison-of-t...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  I’d push back on weather and culture. There are entirely different microbiomes within short driving distances of any city in the Bay. And if you look for it, you’ll find tons of underground art shows, theatre, music and film. It just isn’t organised and marketed the way it is in Europe or New York. On variety of conversations, Oakland, Berkeley, Vallejo, Fremont, Cupertino, Mountain View, San Jose, Belmont, South San Francisco and Sausalito offer drastically different bar talk with friendly strangers.
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    The music scene is notoriously bad in SF and has been for decades. You’ll find better music shows in third tier cities throughout the country. Oakland and Berkeley keep the area just above fourth tier.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      You can also get to this conclusion axiomatically just by following Jamie Zawinsky's DNA Lounge blog and reading about how hostile SF is to nightlife, and also how hard it is to book shows in SF.
    - psanford 5y ago
      If you are talking about musicians coming out of SF, then I agree. If you are talking about tours coming to SF/Oakland, I don't see this at all. I can't think of an artist I care about that hasn't been through.
      - legerdemain 5y ago
        I mean, I can see Beyonce at Levis Stadium and the Foo Fighters at Shoreline. I don't think this even remotely counts as a local music scene. Compare this to the era that gave us that little-known Palo Alto band, the Grateful Dead.
        psanford 5y ago
        I don't know what you want. I find bands I like, I add them to Song Kick. I get emails when they come to SF. Music venues have been expanding in the last 10 years, not contracting. I've never seen a show a Levi's or Shoreline. I guess your complaint is there aren't more artists coming out of Palo Alto? Yeah, sure, I'll concede that if I lived in Palo Alto I'd probably be unhappy with its music scene.
- gamblor956 5y ago
  Indeed, for the writer to blithely assume that CA has no weather, culture, public transportation, variety, affordability, or politics ignores that the Bay Area is a tiny portion of the state, and that Silicon Valley is but a small portion of the Bay Area.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  This is a "dangerous" summary. Not in the sense that I think it may cause significant harm to anyone, but that I consider it misleading for everyone reading your comment, thinking that it sums the article up accurately, and then ignoring to read it. I'm not Polish, but I'm another European living in the Bay Area as well, and I don't think your comment reproduces what the author is trying to say, most likely through no intention of your own. I won't repeat the same mistake by giving my own summary, but I understand too well the weirdness and isolation that suburbs and zoning laws give compared to European cities. It's totally weird, but I live in San Francisco, a dense city, and the zoning laws and "built for cars" layout[1], as well as spreading the population over California style suburbs, still make me feel more like I'm living in some backwater village. After close to a decade of living here now. [1] I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - robomartin 5y ago
    > I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans. Yes. That's it. This is what a lot of people critical of the design (or execution) of US cities don't seem to understand. This also applies to the many failed attempts to make mass public transportation --and the reduction of automobile-based transportation-- a thing. Cities evolve. And these cities are no exception. By the time they reached scale it became pretty much impossible to re-engineer them to fit a new vision of how things should be. The best example I have is the absolutely failed California high speed train. We are about a hundred billion dollars into it and have nothing usable in place. I believe they built about ten miles of low speed track that you can't even use yet. To make things even more interesting, it was supposed to cost ten billion (that's how it was sold to voters). This high speed train goes through so many towns and counties, each with it's own rules and issues, that the probability of it ever approximating something like the TGV or the Eurail ICE I usually take from Amsterdam to Munich during my visits is kind of laughable at best. We'll see what happens at a trillion dollars, I guess.
- colin_mccabe 5y ago
  The Bay Area has weather. What it doesn't have is winter. There is plenty of live music in the Bay. Example: https://thefillmore.com/ https://thefillmore.com/ Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none Wrong. The South Bay has Caltrain, the East Bay has BART. SF has... a few systems, but mostly Muni. Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery. Very untrue. Try visiting Oakland, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Santa Cruz and see if you think they are the same. Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive. The situation is the same in NYC. Housing is expensive.
  - Redoubts 5y ago
    > There is plenty of live music This is the lowest expectation one could have for a music scene. > The South Bay has Caltrain Damning with faint praise.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > The South Bay has Caltrain The Caltrain is literally a single railway line. I think this reasonably approximates to no public transport system.
    - kajecounterhack 5y ago
      On top of that it isn't available all the time (how can last train be at midnight -- that means everyone has to wrap up their thing and head out between 11pm and 11:45pm depending on where they are. So it's impossible to not live in SF, not own a car, and say attend any normal house party. Like even one that ends on the early side, at 12am, you'd have to leave before it's over. It is entirely accurate to say that there is literally _no_ public transport for major routes, for part of the day. Also within the city, to access most parts you have no BART or other train, you only have Muni. And if you've ever tried to take it without the help of an app like Transit (or even with the help of the app) it's pretty unreliable and can be difficult to figure out. Compare to Taipei or even NYC where you can more or less jump on a train that arrives at regular intervals, at any time, and get to most parts of the city.
- JamilD 5y ago
  Regarding culture, variety, and politics, I think it’s more a consequence of the Bay Area being socioeconomically segregated. My neighbors are all artists, and have great and vibrant communities around their work — but of course, no one in tech mixes with those people! Fewer people in SF work in tech than is often perceived, but the social circles are very clique-y and exclusive. It creates perceptions about the entire city that are really only true for one’s friend groups. I wonder what it is about the design/culture of SF that makes that the case.
  - ironman1478 5y ago
    I think the poor public transportation really hurts the city. The time to arrival is a crapshoot and discourages it's use. It's also not a walkable city or bikeable unless you stick to certain parts of the city. I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side. It's not really a city, or at least not on the level of NYC. You are just surrounded by people in Manhattan at all times and I bet that helps promote socializing. You just don't really meet people in SF unless you stick to certain pockets of the city.
    - bigyikes 5y ago
      > I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side. This is a great take. I was driving back into SF this week. As always, the green population sign stuck out to me. There are fewer than 1 million SF residents. Part of this is because it’s only 49 square miles, but the fact is you’re exactly right. SF may be urban, but it isn’t dense.
  - analyst74 5y ago
    > social circles are very clique-y and exclusive This rings true to my experience as well. I only managed to make friends with some fellow engineers after living there for a few years. And it's not for lack of trying, I joined sports teams, wide variety of meetups, social clubs and tried to chat to strangers I encounter. It seems people are generally not interested in adding another engineer to their friend circle, except fellow engineers. It's quite ironic because my interests are actually more athletic and artistic than geeky.
- mint2 5y ago
  I really disagree with those points about Variety, public transport, culture, and weather but I suppose if ones frame of reference is NY or a large euro city then perhaps some of them may be that way. But variety? That one just is weird. Within a couple hours driving distance is a vast array of hugely different environments. Within bart-ing distance is a huge variety of very distinct neighborhoods and cultures. And the comparison of living in Poland and being able to walk from the suburb across city districts to having to drive or take a long train ride from Palo alto to Sf doesn’t make sense. I doubt he walked 25 miles back in Poland. I lived in a small German town for while, it also took 1.5 hours to train into cologne. I could walk across cologne like I do SF. But I could not walk to cologne from Juliche. And driving would have been much faster than taking the train, just like driving from PA to SF is. His points about suburbs are mostly accurate, but sounds like he was in the wrong spot in the bay. Oakland/Berkeley/sf are better than Palo Alto or the South Bay for actually walking to bars and places. He also doesn’t like the brown looks Mediterranean climates have, so NY does sound like a better fit.
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- type_enthusiast 5y ago
  The comment about the lack of seasons was odd to me. I grew up in the Bay Area, but spent about 10 years in Southern California where there truly is no such thing (based on my schema) as autumn and winter. When we were moving back to the Bay, my wife (an LA native) and I were looking at neighborhoods during January or something, and she remarked, "everything is dead here!" It's winter. We have deciduous trees in Northern California... In autumn they turn orange, and they spend winter without leaves! A foreign concept in LA, where most of the trees are palms or coral trees or other evergreens. It's true that we don't get snow like many European cities. But I guess the presence or lack of "seasons" depends on what you're used to.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    Sort of a strange comment since January is when everything turns green in the Bay Area.
  - rmk 5y ago
    For people who come from tropical climes, such as Hawaii, Singapore, or subtropical Australia and India, the Bay Area does indeed have "seasons". But the majority of Americans and Europeans hail from places that have much more delineated (and varying) weather across the four seasons, the Bay Area seems lacking in comparison.
  - bartwr 5y ago
    My point of reference is very European. In most of Europe you get very distinctive four seasons - cold, sometimes snowy, almost always frosty and depressing winter, fresh and optimistic spring bringing some change, muggy and sweaty, but exciting summer that you spend outdoors with your friends and 'white nights', nostalgic, colorful and beautiful smelling autumn reminding you of passage of time. And all of those are sometimes dry, sometimes muggy, often raining/snowing. To me (growing up in central-eastern Europe) it's essential to add some "rhythm" of life, otherwise I get into "day of the groundhog" workaholic mode. I'm sure though that people who grew up in those non-seasonal climates have internalized some different ways of marking the passage of time. :)
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  > The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA. I think this is pretty unfair, he's just giving context for the things he's experienced elsewhere. It could have been anywhere. It's hard to say what you like and dislike about a place without having another experience for contrast. The story is not, "I came from Warszawa, SF was not like Warszawa, so I went back to Warszawa." The story is, "I came to SF, and I loved it, but we think NYC is a better fit for the lifestyle my wife and I want to live."
- khazhoux 5y ago
  > - Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort. Wrong. Plenty of music in SF. Lots in Oakland too. Great shows at the Greek in Berkeley, or big acts at Shoreline (kinda meh the last few years though), Levi's Stadium, or San Jose. If you enjoy chamber or symphonic music, you get it year-long at Stanford, Music@Menlo, and more.
RyanGoosling 5y ago
California to New York? I would’ve gone to a place with more nature and less concrete
- sushid 5y ago
  Sure, but the author specifically addresses the fact that he is not a big nature guy. Looks like a great decision given that's the case for him.
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agent_simon 5y ago
100% agree with author, 3 years ago I quit cold turkey and left sfbay for NYC. Now thinking about moving to Europe for even more developed urban lifestyle, like Amsterdam.
arram 5y ago
I empathize with most of what he writes, but an irritatingly common pattern I notice when people criticize SV is pointing at destitute people next to wealthy people - as if proximity is the same as causality. California has more than its share of destitution, but fifty years of NIMBYs and catastrophically bad housing policy are a better candidate for blame. If you make housing expensive you shouldn't be surprised when people go unhoused and when everything becomes expensive because labor (which has to be housed) is expensive.
- fishermansporch 5y ago
  Having lived there, I don't think you need to blame the people living in the houses to be disheartened to see that kind of wealth disparity in such stark contrast, regardless of the reasons. It's sad to live in a place which has so much money flying around and so many wealthy people that can't find a way to help the most vulnerable or the working class.
  - pas 5y ago
    They found a way: not actively hunt and harm them.
- elefanten 5y ago
  It's not just housing supply, despite YIMBYs being the loudest voice in the room and housing supply is the most common presumptive scapegoat for all the poverty woes of SF. There's another side. California is also much friendlier to the homeless and devotes way more resources to even trying to care for them. Meanwhile, the rest of America ships their homeless to a handful of destinations, with California's major population centers being top targets.
et-al 5y ago
Kinda surprised Jeremy Askenas (Backbone/CoffeeScript creator) shared what is yet another "cali sux, i'm leaving" goodbye note. Feeling the SF Bay burnout, too?
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tolbish 5y ago
The chorus almost always goes: Silicon Valley in particular has been known for boring suburbs (with the rare except being SF with its $5000 rents), massive wealth disparities, and general lack of livability and inability to get around easily. These are well documented issues of living in the bay. What's with the surprise? Do people not do research before uprooting?
- JamilD 5y ago
  The trope that SF is more expensive than the rest of the Bay Area isn’t even true, at least not anymore. I pay $1650 for a studio apartment in a decent neighborhood near a tech shuttle stop. That’s cheaper than Stanford’s student housing in Palo Alto.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    Palo Alto is certainly that way as of late
    - JamilD 5y ago
      And Atherton, and Mountain View, and Cupertino, and Los Altos, … ;)
      - tolbish 5y ago
        The rest of the bay is catching up indeed
        legerdemain 5y ago
        It's not "catching up," it was built for and by business elites. For example, Los Altos Hills incorporated specifically to avoid raising taxes or building any kind of civic infrastructure. Saratoga has dispensed with its police department. None of these places are even remotely affordable (or reachable without a car), and they have never been.
      - 5y ago
okareaman 5y ago
> South Bay terrible > Unfortunately, suburbs typically mean zero walkability I grew up in the Bay Area so I think I know how to do it: An electric bike makes most of the pain go away. I've been exploring South Bay since moving here and finding all kinds of cool things on my bike that are invisible by car (walking is not an option, author is right about that.) Just the other day I rode to the San Jose Diridon train station, threw my bike on Caltrans and spent the day riding my bike around San Francisco. Electric bike is the only way to explore SF in my opinion. I'm going to buy a second battery for my bike soon, then put my bike on Bart and go to Berkeley where I went to University. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. You don't need a car to avoid being stuck in the suburbs. tldl; Get an electric bike and learn the public transport system
- standardUser 5y ago
  I lived as a pedestrian for 15 years in SF and I can attest that it is a perfectly, fabulously walkable city, at least the Northeastern quadrant where most of the stuff is located. But I was always dismayed when I would walk around elsewhere, even in urban areas like Oakland, and find some gargantuan highway interchange sprawling between me and my destination, practically daring me to try to find my way through at my own physical risk. It's an absolute failure of urban design that plagues the Bay Area and is one of the things that ultimately led me to leave. And yes, bikes are great, but some of us prefer to galavant around without a multi-thousand dollar liability to keep locked up. Also, I was usually at least half drunk.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I met a guy in British Columbia who got arrested driving while intoxicated on a horse (I gave up drinking, so no longer a problem) I'm mapping the bike lockers in the Bay Area. Slide your card and put your bike in a steel box.
Lammy 5y ago
> Also, I think I haven’t really met in person even a single person (openly) into this stuff, so maybe it’s an exaggerated myth, or maybe simply much more common in just VC/startup/big money circles? Or maybe you caught them on a macrodose day
likeabbas 5y ago
Thanks for posting this. I felt the same way about SF and the Bay Area and ended up leaving for NYC as well. Maybe I’ll see you around!
bobsil1 5y ago
I loved living in NYC for city stuff, but came to miss Mexican and South Indian food, hikes, surf, Fry’s (RIP), talking with other techies rather than being a curio for finbros. Flavor in the Bay, well, Oakland/Berkeley.
- screye 5y ago
  > South Indian food Just saying, the best regional Indian food of all types is right across the river in NJ.
  - bobsil1 5y ago
    PATH’s slow and annoying, runs an inconvenient weekend route to Hoboken, and except for downtown Hoboken, you need a car after the train. It works when you have relatives in NJ.
- m_ke 5y ago
  You can get great authentic Mexican and Indian food in Queens. The tech scene in NYC is solid these days without being in your face 24/7 like SF. Finance bros are confined to a few shitty areas of New York and can easily be avoided.
legerdemain 5y ago
I don't understand the author's focus on himself and his personal happiness, even though he is obviously entitled to it. This really illustrates the entire Millennial focus on "do what makes you happy" to me. People don't live in the suburbs because they want access to museums and night clubs for themselves. They give up their own happiness for the sake of their children. They buy a more expensive home to put their children into a higher-achieving school. They live in a remote cul-de-sac so their children can safely ride bicycles and shoot hoops in the driveway. Their idea of "going out" is a drab, desiccated local park in the foothills because it is safe and healthy, not because it's fun or diverse. They put pressure on their kids to succeed so they can afford to live in this area when they grow up and repeat the cycle to become well-paid professionals and suburban parents. People pursue this stressful and family-focused lifestyle away from big, busy cities precisely because they want the same for their children, or better. When the author says that there is no clubbing or spontaneity in Silicon Valley, he demonstrates just how out of touch he is with our local communities, and how little he understood the motivations of the people living here. It makes all the sense in the world for him to move away and find a better fit for his personality! I hope he likes New York better! People live here because they are executing a very precise and demanding life plan for the sake of the next generation, not because they want to be spontaneous and fun. We don't need that here.
- davidivadavid 5y ago
  Oh boy, I have no idea what Silicon Valley really is like but you sure manage to make it sound absolutely horrifying. Sounding that smug, boring, authoritarian and exclusionary at the same time is impressive.
- fridif 5y ago
  I bought a house in the burbs for my own happiness, I will never tolerate city living ever again.
- deleted 5y ago
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- emerged 5y ago
  Basically none of what you just described rings true to me, for what it’s worth. I moved away from the big city because I love the quieter life in suburbia. I can stand to visit cities for a few days but much more and it really wears on me. Different strokes for different folks.
watersb 5y ago
Left 1 Jan 1998. Not sure I'm better for it. But there are certainly green pastures elsewhere...
- Hublium 5y ago
  quite literally probably
gnicholas 5y ago
> walking from one suburb town – Mountain View – to an adjacent one, Palo Alto, would take 1.5 uninspiring hours to walk with many intersections on busy highway streets. Even a drive would be ~half an hour! In bad traffic, this might be true if you're measuring from downtown PA to downtown MV. But that's because downtown PA is at the northern tip of PA (there's Cal Ave and Midtown further south, and much closer to MV) and downtown MV is toward the southern end of MV. If you were to cherry-pick an alternative stat, you'd point out that downtown Palo Alto is just a 5 minute drive from downtown Menlo Park. There's also Caltrain, that takes 10 mins to get from MV to PA or PA to MP.
- legerdemain 5y ago
  Palo Alto has terrible access to highways, areas of pretty bad congestion because of an excess of concentrated office space, and a 25mph speed limit on most streets, even arterial ones (Middlefield, Alma, Charleston). A trip between any number of destinations in Palo Alto and Mountain View is 15-20 minutes without traffic.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    Yeah, there are a surprisingly small number of 40+ MPH zones in the area, and this does add to travel time. I think the reason is that most streets (including all of the ones you mentioned) are in residential areas, and neighbors don't want to have high-speed traffic right in front of their homes.
cowpig 5y ago
Lots of negative comments here but the author's personal experience resonates with my own. I would add that I found it personally stifling to be in an environment where there's a lot of pressure to be constantly upbeat and positive. It feels related to the culture of competition, but not feeling free to express anything negative made me feel socially suffocated when I was in California. Maybe it's in part because I grew up in an environment where sardonic humor was a go-to coping mechanism, but pretending that bad things aren't there makes me feel worse about them. I think there's a balance to be had: I'm grateful that the experience forced me to think more about when I use negative humor (or just complaining/saying negative things that aren't funny), how it can affect people in different ways based on their personal backgrounds and personality. But I don't think California is for me.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  I live in So Cal, but, I remember getting an unusual activity alert for my Amex-- someone had just charged $2000. I step into a conference room to call my wife to ask if she had done it, and she says, "Yes, it was a retainer, I'm divorcing you." The weirdest thing was going back to work and pretending nothing was going on. I was dead inside for two weeks at least. Couldn't take time off. Couldn't afford to quit. Just had to sort of sit there and pretend everything was fine.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    That's so rough. I lost my dog while in training for a job as a young man. I stayed through tears to finish this stupid test as I had been told if we left we would be fired no questions asked during the training and OJT part of intake which was about one month. I was supremely pissed when I saw people being allowed to leave/not show up for various reasons with no problem. My dog had been my best friend for my entire life until that point and I was broken inside. I decided to never again let a job come between my life and my happiness/health. No job I've ever had was worth that, even when I owned my own company. My ex-wife did me dirty, ended up closing up shop to focus on getting myself right. Still think it was the right decision. I hope you are in a better place now, but if not, you'll get there.
bradlys 5y ago
It is quite funny how remarkably similar some of the seasons have been the last few years. One of the cooler summer days feels no different than the warmer days in winter. Contrast that to other areas and you know immediately what season it is... Here, it can be hard to tell and sometimes does make things blur together a bit. Sometimes I feel like seasons leads to novelty and leads to a better sense of time and memory. Maybe that's why some of the last years seem to be a bit of a blur and why some novelty has been lost.
fishermansporch 5y ago
This feels accurate to me. I recently moved back to Portland from Silicon Valley, and the extreme cost of living, the lack of culture, lack of good food, and workaholic culture were a big part of it. If you live in Cupertino, Campbell, Sunnyvale, I struggle to even think of things like a decent bar.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  It has gotten a smidge better in Cupertino because of the "Main Street" area that popped up, but it's all in only one place, a tiny one compared to how big Cupertino is. Before that, there was pretty much nothing.
  - legerdemain 5y ago
    "Main Street, Cupertino" is mostly condos, high-end Asian family restaurants, a Meet Fresh (a cavernous chain business selling Taiwanese slushie desserts to kids), and a high-end chain bar. Oh, and a Philz. My mind boggles at the thought that Main Street is an improvement over the panoply of mom-and-pop businesses that dot Cupertino all over.
- bradlys 5y ago
  > If you live in Cupertino, Campbell, Sunnyvale, I struggle to even think of things like a decent bar. I mean - is anyone really looking for that in places that are definitely known as places that people move to in order to raise children? It's a really weird complaint. If you wanted booze and the kid vibes - guess you could move to San Carlos. I wonder if the people complaining about lack of good food are mostly talking about good food at a certain price point or just certain cuisines - because I don't have many issues finding good restaurants here whereas in some other major cities it can be a real struggle to find anything that is at the same level.
bjornsing 5y ago
I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bay Area, and I too hate that it’s not like Europe. Europe is so much better (except that we are stuck in our low paying shit jobs of course). /s :)
- fmajid 5y ago
  That's silly. I am a Frenchman, moved to SF in 2000, moved to London in 2019 (for family reasons). California living is very different from European, or even most American lifestyles. That does not make it inferior. And sweltering as I am here in 32˚C weather without AC at the moment, San Francisco's perfect weather is one of the things I miss the most...
  - bjornsing 5y ago
    I’m kidding. The /s is for satire/sarcasm. :)
josephdviviano 5y ago
A lot has already been said. I can add that I grew up in a very nice suburb and will do anything to avoid them for the rest of my days.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  Why? I grew up in a rural area, moved to a city for a few years and hated it, and now live happily in a suburb. I get fresh air, see trees regularly, don't hear neighbors fighting or stomping, and can still drive into the city if/when needed.
chmod600 5y ago
A lot of pro-urban discussions come from the perspective of single people and young couples. Exciting, spontaneous, etc. I would appreciate more perspectives from parents and families. Do you use strollers (and take them on the bus) or just carry babies everywhere? If you need to buy things at the market, do you take your two-year-old or leave them at home? Do you buy furniture or only rent furnished places? If you have a big family how do you find a big enough place? Do kids practice their musical instruments at home, or does that bother the neighbors?
- pas 5y ago
  European cities: yes, strollers and baby carriers, babies are everywhere; some countries are mostly empty flats and buy/bring your own furniture, but the Easter you go the less this is prevalent (cost savings); define big enough, but there are usually a lot of sizes on the market, if you need bigger you move, usually out from the center, and you pay the same. Yes kids bother neighbors, but it's the same everywhere (in rural areas dogs bark, neighbors wake up at the first crack of dawn to just do an hour of chainsawing, etc..)
sneak 5y ago
The suburbs are a vampire that sucks the life and fun out of everything. Most americans that tolerate them have never lived in a walkable city before, so they don't know that there is a better way.
eddy_chan 5y ago
Thank you for writing this. It resonated deeply with me, I spent 2 years in the SFBA and left in the end because I had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right but could not verbalise as clearly as you have. Your blog post has given me some sort of catharsis. Much like there are some people in this society/world that we will have personality clashes with regardless I believe there are cities in this world that we will have the same personality clashes with. It grates, it wears you down and after a while you have to leave. I often feel affinity or antipathy within minutes of leaving the airport of a particular city. The SFBA was a 'wtf have I done by moving here, ok I'll give it a couple of years to warm to it' and although there was lots to love I never connected on a deep level. It's a subjective personal thing for which there is no wherefore.

71 points by jashkenas 5y ago

rmk 5y ago

The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA. Ultimately, he could not / did not adjust, and decided to move to NY. Main complaints: - Weather: The Bay Area has none. The changing seasons and large variations in weather they brought was something the writer missed. - Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort. - Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. This means that many weekend hours are spent getting to a particular place where the leisure activity (which is already not to the taste of the writer) will occur, and this also entails advance planning! - Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery. - Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive. - Politics: Even though the writer is ostensibly of a similar persuasion as most Bay Area residents (left-leaning liberal), the actual policies and attitudes of Bay Area residents are heavily arrogant, technocratic, plutocratic and short-sighted. All of the observations ring true. But the overall impression I got was that the author really did not or could not change himself, and expected something the Bay Area never offered in reality.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Appreciate the summary.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Weather: The Bay Area has none. I experienced this same feeling in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Every day the sky and air are almost exactly the same, day-in-day-out. I was very ready for some seasons and weather when I got back to the UK.
- sooheon 5y ago
  You can visualize this: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/557~23912/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-San-Francisco-and-New-York-City https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/557~23912/Comparison-of-t...
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
I’d push back on weather and culture. There are entirely different microbiomes within short driving distances of any city in the Bay. And if you look for it, you’ll find tons of underground art shows, theatre, music and film. It just isn’t organised and marketed the way it is in Europe or New York. On variety of conversations, Oakland, Berkeley, Vallejo, Fremont, Cupertino, Mountain View, San Jose, Belmont, South San Francisco and Sausalito offer drastically different bar talk with friendly strangers.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  The music scene is notoriously bad in SF and has been for decades. You’ll find better music shows in third tier cities throughout the country. Oakland and Berkeley keep the area just above fourth tier.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    You can also get to this conclusion axiomatically just by following Jamie Zawinsky's DNA Lounge blog and reading about how hostile SF is to nightlife, and also how hard it is to book shows in SF.
  - psanford 5y ago
    If you are talking about musicians coming out of SF, then I agree. If you are talking about tours coming to SF/Oakland, I don't see this at all. I can't think of an artist I care about that hasn't been through.
    - legerdemain 5y ago
      I mean, I can see Beyonce at Levis Stadium and the Foo Fighters at Shoreline. I don't think this even remotely counts as a local music scene. Compare this to the era that gave us that little-known Palo Alto band, the Grateful Dead.
      - psanford 5y ago
        I don't know what you want. I find bands I like, I add them to Song Kick. I get emails when they come to SF. Music venues have been expanding in the last 10 years, not contracting. I've never seen a show a Levi's or Shoreline. I guess your complaint is there aren't more artists coming out of Palo Alto? Yeah, sure, I'll concede that if I lived in Palo Alto I'd probably be unhappy with its music scene.
gamblor956 5y ago
Indeed, for the writer to blithely assume that CA has no weather, culture, public transportation, variety, affordability, or politics ignores that the Bay Area is a tiny portion of the state, and that Silicon Valley is but a small portion of the Bay Area.
anyfoo 5y ago
This is a "dangerous" summary. Not in the sense that I think it may cause significant harm to anyone, but that I consider it misleading for everyone reading your comment, thinking that it sums the article up accurately, and then ignoring to read it. I'm not Polish, but I'm another European living in the Bay Area as well, and I don't think your comment reproduces what the author is trying to say, most likely through no intention of your own. I won't repeat the same mistake by giving my own summary, but I understand too well the weirdness and isolation that suburbs and zoning laws give compared to European cities. It's totally weird, but I live in San Francisco, a dense city, and the zoning laws and "built for cars" layout[1], as well as spreading the population over California style suburbs, still make me feel more like I'm living in some backwater village. After close to a decade of living here now. [1] I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans.
- deleted 5y ago
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- robomartin 5y ago
  > I think European cities are just "lucky" that they've mostly been built when cars weren't a thing yet, and also organically grew over much longer timespans. Yes. That's it. This is what a lot of people critical of the design (or execution) of US cities don't seem to understand. This also applies to the many failed attempts to make mass public transportation --and the reduction of automobile-based transportation-- a thing. Cities evolve. And these cities are no exception. By the time they reached scale it became pretty much impossible to re-engineer them to fit a new vision of how things should be. The best example I have is the absolutely failed California high speed train. We are about a hundred billion dollars into it and have nothing usable in place. I believe they built about ten miles of low speed track that you can't even use yet. To make things even more interesting, it was supposed to cost ten billion (that's how it was sold to voters). This high speed train goes through so many towns and counties, each with it's own rules and issues, that the probability of it ever approximating something like the TGV or the Eurail ICE I usually take from Amsterdam to Munich during my visits is kind of laughable at best. We'll see what happens at a trillion dollars, I guess.
colin_mccabe 5y ago
The Bay Area has weather. What it doesn't have is winter. There is plenty of live music in the Bay. Example: https://thefillmore.com/ https://thefillmore.com/ Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none Wrong. The South Bay has Caltrain, the East Bay has BART. SF has... a few systems, but mostly Muni. Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery. Very untrue. Try visiting Oakland, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Santa Cruz and see if you think they are the same. Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive. The situation is the same in NYC. Housing is expensive.
- Redoubts 5y ago
  > There is plenty of live music This is the lowest expectation one could have for a music scene. > The South Bay has Caltrain Damning with faint praise.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > The South Bay has Caltrain The Caltrain is literally a single railway line. I think this reasonably approximates to no public transport system.
  - kajecounterhack 5y ago
    On top of that it isn't available all the time (how can last train be at midnight -- that means everyone has to wrap up their thing and head out between 11pm and 11:45pm depending on where they are. So it's impossible to not live in SF, not own a car, and say attend any normal house party. Like even one that ends on the early side, at 12am, you'd have to leave before it's over. It is entirely accurate to say that there is literally _no_ public transport for major routes, for part of the day. Also within the city, to access most parts you have no BART or other train, you only have Muni. And if you've ever tried to take it without the help of an app like Transit (or even with the help of the app) it's pretty unreliable and can be difficult to figure out. Compare to Taipei or even NYC where you can more or less jump on a train that arrives at regular intervals, at any time, and get to most parts of the city.
JamilD 5y ago
Regarding culture, variety, and politics, I think it’s more a consequence of the Bay Area being socioeconomically segregated. My neighbors are all artists, and have great and vibrant communities around their work — but of course, no one in tech mixes with those people! Fewer people in SF work in tech than is often perceived, but the social circles are very clique-y and exclusive. It creates perceptions about the entire city that are really only true for one’s friend groups. I wonder what it is about the design/culture of SF that makes that the case.
- ironman1478 5y ago
  I think the poor public transportation really hurts the city. The time to arrival is a crapshoot and discourages it's use. It's also not a walkable city or bikeable unless you stick to certain parts of the city. I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side. It's not really a city, or at least not on the level of NYC. You are just surrounded by people in Manhattan at all times and I bet that helps promote socializing. You just don't really meet people in SF unless you stick to certain pockets of the city.
  - bigyikes 5y ago
    > I think this + lack of density in certain parts of the city means that SF is largely a suburb with tall buildings on one side. This is a great take. I was driving back into SF this week. As always, the green population sign stuck out to me. There are fewer than 1 million SF residents. Part of this is because it’s only 49 square miles, but the fact is you’re exactly right. SF may be urban, but it isn’t dense.
- analyst74 5y ago
  > social circles are very clique-y and exclusive This rings true to my experience as well. I only managed to make friends with some fellow engineers after living there for a few years. And it's not for lack of trying, I joined sports teams, wide variety of meetups, social clubs and tried to chat to strangers I encounter. It seems people are generally not interested in adding another engineer to their friend circle, except fellow engineers. It's quite ironic because my interests are actually more athletic and artistic than geeky.
mint2 5y ago
I really disagree with those points about Variety, public transport, culture, and weather but I suppose if ones frame of reference is NY or a large euro city then perhaps some of them may be that way. But variety? That one just is weird. Within a couple hours driving distance is a vast array of hugely different environments. Within bart-ing distance is a huge variety of very distinct neighborhoods and cultures. And the comparison of living in Poland and being able to walk from the suburb across city districts to having to drive or take a long train ride from Palo alto to Sf doesn’t make sense. I doubt he walked 25 miles back in Poland. I lived in a small German town for while, it also took 1.5 hours to train into cologne. I could walk across cologne like I do SF. But I could not walk to cologne from Juliche. And driving would have been much faster than taking the train, just like driving from PA to SF is. His points about suburbs are mostly accurate, but sounds like he was in the wrong spot in the bay. Oakland/Berkeley/sf are better than Palo Alto or the South Bay for actually walking to bars and places. He also doesn’t like the brown looks Mediterranean climates have, so NY does sound like a better fit.
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type_enthusiast 5y ago
The comment about the lack of seasons was odd to me. I grew up in the Bay Area, but spent about 10 years in Southern California where there truly is no such thing (based on my schema) as autumn and winter. When we were moving back to the Bay, my wife (an LA native) and I were looking at neighborhoods during January or something, and she remarked, "everything is dead here!" It's winter. We have deciduous trees in Northern California... In autumn they turn orange, and they spend winter without leaves! A foreign concept in LA, where most of the trees are palms or coral trees or other evergreens. It's true that we don't get snow like many European cities. But I guess the presence or lack of "seasons" depends on what you're used to.
- dasil003 5y ago
  Sort of a strange comment since January is when everything turns green in the Bay Area.
- rmk 5y ago
  For people who come from tropical climes, such as Hawaii, Singapore, or subtropical Australia and India, the Bay Area does indeed have "seasons". But the majority of Americans and Europeans hail from places that have much more delineated (and varying) weather across the four seasons, the Bay Area seems lacking in comparison.
- bartwr 5y ago
  My point of reference is very European. In most of Europe you get very distinctive four seasons - cold, sometimes snowy, almost always frosty and depressing winter, fresh and optimistic spring bringing some change, muggy and sweaty, but exciting summer that you spend outdoors with your friends and 'white nights', nostalgic, colorful and beautiful smelling autumn reminding you of passage of time. And all of those are sometimes dry, sometimes muggy, often raining/snowing. To me (growing up in central-eastern Europe) it's essential to add some "rhythm" of life, otherwise I get into "day of the groundhog" workaholic mode. I'm sure though that people who grew up in those non-seasonal climates have internalized some different ways of marking the passage of time. :)
nickysielicki 5y ago
> The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA. I think this is pretty unfair, he's just giving context for the things he's experienced elsewhere. It could have been anywhere. It's hard to say what you like and dislike about a place without having another experience for contrast. The story is not, "I came from Warszawa, SF was not like Warszawa, so I went back to Warszawa." The story is, "I came to SF, and I loved it, but we think NYC is a better fit for the lifestyle my wife and I want to live."
khazhoux 5y ago
> - Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort. Wrong. Plenty of music in SF. Lots in Oakland too. Great shows at the Greek in Berkeley, or big acts at Shoreline (kinda meh the last few years though), Levi's Stadium, or San Jose. If you enjoy chamber or symphonic music, you get it year-long at Stanford, Music@Menlo, and more.

RyanGoosling 5y ago

California to New York? I would’ve gone to a place with more nature and less concrete

sushid 5y ago
Sure, but the author specifically addresses the fact that he is not a big nature guy. Looks like a great decision given that's the case for him.
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agent_simon 5y ago

100% agree with author, 3 years ago I quit cold turkey and left sfbay for NYC. Now thinking about moving to Europe for even more developed urban lifestyle, like Amsterdam.

arram 5y ago

I empathize with most of what he writes, but an irritatingly common pattern I notice when people criticize SV is pointing at destitute people next to wealthy people - as if proximity is the same as causality. California has more than its share of destitution, but fifty years of NIMBYs and catastrophically bad housing policy are a better candidate for blame. If you make housing expensive you shouldn't be surprised when people go unhoused and when everything becomes expensive because labor (which has to be housed) is expensive.

fishermansporch 5y ago
Having lived there, I don't think you need to blame the people living in the houses to be disheartened to see that kind of wealth disparity in such stark contrast, regardless of the reasons. It's sad to live in a place which has so much money flying around and so many wealthy people that can't find a way to help the most vulnerable or the working class.
- pas 5y ago
  They found a way: not actively hunt and harm them.
elefanten 5y ago
It's not just housing supply, despite YIMBYs being the loudest voice in the room and housing supply is the most common presumptive scapegoat for all the poverty woes of SF. There's another side. California is also much friendlier to the homeless and devotes way more resources to even trying to care for them. Meanwhile, the rest of America ships their homeless to a handful of destinations, with California's major population centers being top targets.

et-al 5y ago

Kinda surprised Jeremy Askenas (Backbone/CoffeeScript creator) shared what is yet another "cali sux, i'm leaving" goodbye note. Feeling the SF Bay burnout, too?

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tolbish 5y ago

The chorus almost always goes: Silicon Valley in particular has been known for boring suburbs (with the rare except being SF with its $5000 rents), massive wealth disparities, and general lack of livability and inability to get around easily. These are well documented issues of living in the bay. What's with the surprise? Do people not do research before uprooting?

JamilD 5y ago
The trope that SF is more expensive than the rest of the Bay Area isn’t even true, at least not anymore. I pay $1650 for a studio apartment in a decent neighborhood near a tech shuttle stop. That’s cheaper than Stanford’s student housing in Palo Alto.
- tolbish 5y ago
  Palo Alto is certainly that way as of late
  - JamilD 5y ago
    And Atherton, and Mountain View, and Cupertino, and Los Altos, … ;)
    - tolbish 5y ago
      The rest of the bay is catching up indeed
      - legerdemain 5y ago
        It's not "catching up," it was built for and by business elites. For example, Los Altos Hills incorporated specifically to avoid raising taxes or building any kind of civic infrastructure. Saratoga has dispensed with its police department. None of these places are even remotely affordable (or reachable without a car), and they have never been.
    - 5y ago

okareaman 5y ago

> South Bay terrible > Unfortunately, suburbs typically mean zero walkability I grew up in the Bay Area so I think I know how to do it: An electric bike makes most of the pain go away. I've been exploring South Bay since moving here and finding all kinds of cool things on my bike that are invisible by car (walking is not an option, author is right about that.) Just the other day I rode to the San Jose Diridon train station, threw my bike on Caltrans and spent the day riding my bike around San Francisco. Electric bike is the only way to explore SF in my opinion. I'm going to buy a second battery for my bike soon, then put my bike on Bart and go to Berkeley where I went to University. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. You don't need a car to avoid being stuck in the suburbs. tldl; Get an electric bike and learn the public transport system

standardUser 5y ago
I lived as a pedestrian for 15 years in SF and I can attest that it is a perfectly, fabulously walkable city, at least the Northeastern quadrant where most of the stuff is located. But I was always dismayed when I would walk around elsewhere, even in urban areas like Oakland, and find some gargantuan highway interchange sprawling between me and my destination, practically daring me to try to find my way through at my own physical risk. It's an absolute failure of urban design that plagues the Bay Area and is one of the things that ultimately led me to leave. And yes, bikes are great, but some of us prefer to galavant around without a multi-thousand dollar liability to keep locked up. Also, I was usually at least half drunk.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I met a guy in British Columbia who got arrested driving while intoxicated on a horse (I gave up drinking, so no longer a problem) I'm mapping the bike lockers in the Bay Area. Slide your card and put your bike in a steel box.

Lammy 5y ago

> Also, I think I haven’t really met in person even a single person (openly) into this stuff, so maybe it’s an exaggerated myth, or maybe simply much more common in just VC/startup/big money circles? Or maybe you caught them on a macrodose day

likeabbas 5y ago

Thanks for posting this. I felt the same way about SF and the Bay Area and ended up leaving for NYC as well. Maybe I’ll see you around!

bobsil1 5y ago

I loved living in NYC for city stuff, but came to miss Mexican and South Indian food, hikes, surf, Fry’s (RIP), talking with other techies rather than being a curio for finbros. Flavor in the Bay, well, Oakland/Berkeley.

screye 5y ago
> South Indian food Just saying, the best regional Indian food of all types is right across the river in NJ.
- bobsil1 5y ago
  PATH’s slow and annoying, runs an inconvenient weekend route to Hoboken, and except for downtown Hoboken, you need a car after the train. It works when you have relatives in NJ.
m_ke 5y ago
You can get great authentic Mexican and Indian food in Queens. The tech scene in NYC is solid these days without being in your face 24/7 like SF. Finance bros are confined to a few shitty areas of New York and can easily be avoided.

legerdemain 5y ago

I don't understand the author's focus on himself and his personal happiness, even though he is obviously entitled to it. This really illustrates the entire Millennial focus on "do what makes you happy" to me. People don't live in the suburbs because they want access to museums and night clubs for themselves. They give up their own happiness for the sake of their children. They buy a more expensive home to put their children into a higher-achieving school. They live in a remote cul-de-sac so their children can safely ride bicycles and shoot hoops in the driveway. Their idea of "going out" is a drab, desiccated local park in the foothills because it is safe and healthy, not because it's fun or diverse. They put pressure on their kids to succeed so they can afford to live in this area when they grow up and repeat the cycle to become well-paid professionals and suburban parents. People pursue this stressful and family-focused lifestyle away from big, busy cities precisely because they want the same for their children, or better. When the author says that there is no clubbing or spontaneity in Silicon Valley, he demonstrates just how out of touch he is with our local communities, and how little he understood the motivations of the people living here. It makes all the sense in the world for him to move away and find a better fit for his personality! I hope he likes New York better! People live here because they are executing a very precise and demanding life plan for the sake of the next generation, not because they want to be spontaneous and fun. We don't need that here.

davidivadavid 5y ago
Oh boy, I have no idea what Silicon Valley really is like but you sure manage to make it sound absolutely horrifying. Sounding that smug, boring, authoritarian and exclusionary at the same time is impressive.
fridif 5y ago
I bought a house in the burbs for my own happiness, I will never tolerate city living ever again.
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emerged 5y ago
Basically none of what you just described rings true to me, for what it’s worth. I moved away from the big city because I love the quieter life in suburbia. I can stand to visit cities for a few days but much more and it really wears on me. Different strokes for different folks.

watersb 5y ago

Left 1 Jan 1998. Not sure I'm better for it. But there are certainly green pastures elsewhere...

Hublium 5y ago
quite literally probably

gnicholas 5y ago

> walking from one suburb town – Mountain View – to an adjacent one, Palo Alto, would take 1.5 uninspiring hours to walk with many intersections on busy highway streets. Even a drive would be ~half an hour! In bad traffic, this might be true if you're measuring from downtown PA to downtown MV. But that's because downtown PA is at the northern tip of PA (there's Cal Ave and Midtown further south, and much closer to MV) and downtown MV is toward the southern end of MV. If you were to cherry-pick an alternative stat, you'd point out that downtown Palo Alto is just a 5 minute drive from downtown Menlo Park. There's also Caltrain, that takes 10 mins to get from MV to PA or PA to MP.

legerdemain 5y ago
Palo Alto has terrible access to highways, areas of pretty bad congestion because of an excess of concentrated office space, and a 25mph speed limit on most streets, even arterial ones (Middlefield, Alma, Charleston). A trip between any number of destinations in Palo Alto and Mountain View is 15-20 minutes without traffic.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Yeah, there are a surprisingly small number of 40+ MPH zones in the area, and this does add to travel time. I think the reason is that most streets (including all of the ones you mentioned) are in residential areas, and neighbors don't want to have high-speed traffic right in front of their homes.

cowpig 5y ago

Lots of negative comments here but the author's personal experience resonates with my own. I would add that I found it personally stifling to be in an environment where there's a lot of pressure to be constantly upbeat and positive. It feels related to the culture of competition, but not feeling free to express anything negative made me feel socially suffocated when I was in California. Maybe it's in part because I grew up in an environment where sardonic humor was a go-to coping mechanism, but pretending that bad things aren't there makes me feel worse about them. I think there's a balance to be had: I'm grateful that the experience forced me to think more about when I use negative humor (or just complaining/saying negative things that aren't funny), how it can affect people in different ways based on their personal backgrounds and personality. But I don't think California is for me.

oceanghost 5y ago
I live in So Cal, but, I remember getting an unusual activity alert for my Amex-- someone had just charged $2000. I step into a conference room to call my wife to ask if she had done it, and she says, "Yes, it was a retainer, I'm divorcing you." The weirdest thing was going back to work and pretending nothing was going on. I was dead inside for two weeks at least. Couldn't take time off. Couldn't afford to quit. Just had to sort of sit there and pretend everything was fine.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  That's so rough. I lost my dog while in training for a job as a young man. I stayed through tears to finish this stupid test as I had been told if we left we would be fired no questions asked during the training and OJT part of intake which was about one month. I was supremely pissed when I saw people being allowed to leave/not show up for various reasons with no problem. My dog had been my best friend for my entire life until that point and I was broken inside. I decided to never again let a job come between my life and my happiness/health. No job I've ever had was worth that, even when I owned my own company. My ex-wife did me dirty, ended up closing up shop to focus on getting myself right. Still think it was the right decision. I hope you are in a better place now, but if not, you'll get there.

bradlys 5y ago

It is quite funny how remarkably similar some of the seasons have been the last few years. One of the cooler summer days feels no different than the warmer days in winter. Contrast that to other areas and you know immediately what season it is... Here, it can be hard to tell and sometimes does make things blur together a bit. Sometimes I feel like seasons leads to novelty and leads to a better sense of time and memory. Maybe that's why some of the last years seem to be a bit of a blur and why some novelty has been lost.

fishermansporch 5y ago

This feels accurate to me. I recently moved back to Portland from Silicon Valley, and the extreme cost of living, the lack of culture, lack of good food, and workaholic culture were a big part of it. If you live in Cupertino, Campbell, Sunnyvale, I struggle to even think of things like a decent bar.

anyfoo 5y ago
It has gotten a smidge better in Cupertino because of the "Main Street" area that popped up, but it's all in only one place, a tiny one compared to how big Cupertino is. Before that, there was pretty much nothing.
- legerdemain 5y ago
  "Main Street, Cupertino" is mostly condos, high-end Asian family restaurants, a Meet Fresh (a cavernous chain business selling Taiwanese slushie desserts to kids), and a high-end chain bar. Oh, and a Philz. My mind boggles at the thought that Main Street is an improvement over the panoply of mom-and-pop businesses that dot Cupertino all over.
bradlys 5y ago
> If you live in Cupertino, Campbell, Sunnyvale, I struggle to even think of things like a decent bar. I mean - is anyone really looking for that in places that are definitely known as places that people move to in order to raise children? It's a really weird complaint. If you wanted booze and the kid vibes - guess you could move to San Carlos. I wonder if the people complaining about lack of good food are mostly talking about good food at a certain price point or just certain cuisines - because I don't have many issues finding good restaurants here whereas in some other major cities it can be a real struggle to find anything that is at the same level.

bjornsing 5y ago

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bay Area, and I too hate that it’s not like Europe. Europe is so much better (except that we are stuck in our low paying shit jobs of course). /s :)

fmajid 5y ago
That's silly. I am a Frenchman, moved to SF in 2000, moved to London in 2019 (for family reasons). California living is very different from European, or even most American lifestyles. That does not make it inferior. And sweltering as I am here in 32˚C weather without AC at the moment, San Francisco's perfect weather is one of the things I miss the most...
- bjornsing 5y ago
  I’m kidding. The /s is for satire/sarcasm. :)

josephdviviano 5y ago

A lot has already been said. I can add that I grew up in a very nice suburb and will do anything to avoid them for the rest of my days.

TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
Why? I grew up in a rural area, moved to a city for a few years and hated it, and now live happily in a suburb. I get fresh air, see trees regularly, don't hear neighbors fighting or stomping, and can still drive into the city if/when needed.

chmod600 5y ago

A lot of pro-urban discussions come from the perspective of single people and young couples. Exciting, spontaneous, etc. I would appreciate more perspectives from parents and families. Do you use strollers (and take them on the bus) or just carry babies everywhere? If you need to buy things at the market, do you take your two-year-old or leave them at home? Do you buy furniture or only rent furnished places? If you have a big family how do you find a big enough place? Do kids practice their musical instruments at home, or does that bother the neighbors?

pas 5y ago
European cities: yes, strollers and baby carriers, babies are everywhere; some countries are mostly empty flats and buy/bring your own furniture, but the Easter you go the less this is prevalent (cost savings); define big enough, but there are usually a lot of sizes on the market, if you need bigger you move, usually out from the center, and you pay the same. Yes kids bother neighbors, but it's the same everywhere (in rural areas dogs bark, neighbors wake up at the first crack of dawn to just do an hour of chainsawing, etc..)

sneak 5y ago

The suburbs are a vampire that sucks the life and fun out of everything. Most americans that tolerate them have never lived in a walkable city before, so they don't know that there is a better way.

eddy_chan 5y ago

Thank you for writing this. It resonated deeply with me, I spent 2 years in the SFBA and left in the end because I had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right but could not verbalise as clearly as you have. Your blog post has given me some sort of catharsis. Much like there are some people in this society/world that we will have personality clashes with regardless I believe there are cities in this world that we will have the same personality clashes with. It grates, it wears you down and after a while you have to leave. I often feel affinity or antipathy within minutes of leaving the airport of a particular city. The SFBA was a 'wtf have I done by moving here, ok I'll give it a couple of years to warm to it' and although there was lots to love I never connected on a deep level. It's a subjective personal thing for which there is no wherefore.