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As a European with as lot of US connections, the most striking thing is that strangers will talk to you. Pleasantly. You can just chat with someone, often of yo

As a European with as lot of US connections, the most striking thing is that strangers will talk to you. Pleasantly. You can just chat with someone, often of you're in an eatery it feels like the people next to you think they are invited to the conversation. Which is fine for me, maybe not everyone. Size of the people, I think this guy is at university in an affluent place. America is the only place I've ever regularly seen people who wouldn't fit through a standard sized door in Europe. It's very rare over here, hey common over there, by my anecdotal counting. Infrastructure. The US version sucks. SF has what, 4m people? There's quite small cities with better underground train connections. NYC has one but the whole experience is a bit gross to be honest. Looks like it's never been updated, and it's kept pretty dirty. I drove around Milwaukee, and there were mattresses and burnt out wrecks on the damned highway, and it's stayed there for my whole trip. The roadway itself is made of slabs of something that makes a clunk-clunk noise as you drive from one to the next. I'll have to go to India to see about class. I thought it was interesting that he thought it was less obvious in America. My impression, and the impression of my 6 year old, was that there's massive differences between people there. Go to Scandinavia if you want to see minimal class differences. Some of my friends who are mega rich (owns an island etc) you will not know from looking or talking to them. Generally in the UK you can hear class when people talk, and I would guess so in the US to a degree, especially as it's tied in with race.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> SF has what, 4m people? That's like saying "London has, what, 50 million people"? We have left the realm of plausible errors and are far into "no idea what is talked about" territory. SF is a 7 mile x 7 mile box with mostly flat, single family homes. It's ~850,000 people. Within that box is a small 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer square that has the big buildings. Here you can see an aerial view of the top half of SF, with the downtown area seen as a little section in the midst of a pool of single family homes: https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/07-Aerial-View-of-San-Francisco-One-of-the-Hottest-Housing-Markets-in-America-1024x461.jpg https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0... The subway runs through that square underground, and then a few above ground lines connect to it - there is no need to go underground anywhere except that small downtown area. You can walk across the entire downtown area from north to south in about 15 minutes. The corresponding city in the U.K. would be something like Newcastle.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  The greater SF area is much more than the the area called San Francisco. I mean I might as well tell you that the City of London is a tiny square a mile on three side with a few tens of thousands of residents.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    "SF" is not used to refer to the "greater SF area", which is rather "the bay" or "SF bay area", a reference to the San Francisco bay which all these areas adjoin. Think of all the cities along a river. What they have in common is the river. They are not all called by the name of just one of the cities. The SF Bay is 4000 km^2 and there are hundreds of cities all along that bay. The east bay has berkeley, and Oakland, the south bay has Palo Alto and the cities along the Peninsula and then Santa Clara county with San Jose (which has more people than SF). The North bay has Marin. These are all independent regions with their own history, economy, and demographics, and identity. They do not call themselves, nor are they commonly referred to, as "SF", nor does the SF muni service these areas, they have their own separate muni and lightrail. BART (bay area rapid transit) is the regional lightrail throughout the bay. Economically, SF is not even the most dominant of the regions along the bay -- Santa Clara county is much richer and home to more businesses and more people. Back to your point, just because you are aggregating across a very big region, adding up all the people that live in that region, does not mean you can meaningfully compare that 4000km^2 area with a city and then complain about the differences in urban amenities between an actual city and the large geographic region. The various cities along the bay are quite small - only San Jose cracks a million -- and none of them are dense. It is almost entirely single family homes with backyards, interspersed with very large parks and nature preserves.
  - oogali 5y ago
    The greater San Francisco area is specifically referred to as the "Bay Area". When I see "San Francisco", it is not unreasonable for me to assume you are only talking about San Francisco. If you were to refer to the surrounding areas of Oakland and San Jose as San Francisco, you would potentially upset those residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
Markoff 5y ago
> I'll have to go to India to see about class. I thought it was interesting that he thought it was less obvious in America. You won't see it, spent travelling around India for few weeks on my own, obviously you will see the lowest class, dirtiest poorest people, many not even wearing shoes, but above that it's very hard to distinguish classes for foreigner in India. Local sure can distinguish them by bracelets/necklaces etc, since they live in that caste crap since birth, but it's not that obvious for foreigner.

rsj_hn 5y ago

> SF has what, 4m people? That's like saying "London has, what, 50 million people"? We have left the realm of plausible errors and are far into "no idea what is talked about" territory. SF is a 7 mile x 7 mile box with mostly flat, single family homes. It's ~850,000 people. Within that box is a small 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer square that has the big buildings. Here you can see an aerial view of the top half of SF, with the downtown area seen as a little section in the midst of a pool of single family homes: https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/07-Aerial-View-of-San-Francisco-One-of-the-Hottest-Housing-Markets-in-America-1024x461.jpg https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0... The subway runs through that square underground, and then a few above ground lines connect to it - there is no need to go underground anywhere except that small downtown area. You can walk across the entire downtown area from north to south in about 15 minutes. The corresponding city in the U.K. would be something like Newcastle.

lordnacho 5y ago
The greater SF area is much more than the the area called San Francisco. I mean I might as well tell you that the City of London is a tiny square a mile on three side with a few tens of thousands of residents.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  "SF" is not used to refer to the "greater SF area", which is rather "the bay" or "SF bay area", a reference to the San Francisco bay which all these areas adjoin. Think of all the cities along a river. What they have in common is the river. They are not all called by the name of just one of the cities. The SF Bay is 4000 km^2 and there are hundreds of cities all along that bay. The east bay has berkeley, and Oakland, the south bay has Palo Alto and the cities along the Peninsula and then Santa Clara county with San Jose (which has more people than SF). The North bay has Marin. These are all independent regions with their own history, economy, and demographics, and identity. They do not call themselves, nor are they commonly referred to, as "SF", nor does the SF muni service these areas, they have their own separate muni and lightrail. BART (bay area rapid transit) is the regional lightrail throughout the bay. Economically, SF is not even the most dominant of the regions along the bay -- Santa Clara county is much richer and home to more businesses and more people. Back to your point, just because you are aggregating across a very big region, adding up all the people that live in that region, does not mean you can meaningfully compare that 4000km^2 area with a city and then complain about the differences in urban amenities between an actual city and the large geographic region. The various cities along the bay are quite small - only San Jose cracks a million -- and none of them are dense. It is almost entirely single family homes with backyards, interspersed with very large parks and nature preserves.
- oogali 5y ago
  The greater San Francisco area is specifically referred to as the "Bay Area". When I see "San Francisco", it is not unreasonable for me to assume you are only talking about San Francisco. If you were to refer to the surrounding areas of Oakland and San Jose as San Francisco, you would potentially upset those residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

Markoff 5y ago

> I'll have to go to India to see about class. I thought it was interesting that he thought it was less obvious in America. You won't see it, spent travelling around India for few weeks on my own, obviously you will see the lowest class, dirtiest poorest people, many not even wearing shoes, but above that it's very hard to distinguish classes for foreigner in India. Local sure can distinguish them by bracelets/necklaces etc, since they live in that caste crap since birth, but it's not that obvious for foreigner.