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Y'all talk about all these different cities as if the distance is that big a deal. Help me understand. In Texas, everything is 10-20 miles from everything else.

by lhnn 14y ago

Y'all talk about all these different cities as if the distance is that big a deal. Help me understand. In Texas, everything is 10-20 miles from everything else. In other words, y'all phrase it as if these cities are very distinct and unique. All of Palo Alto, MV, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara can fit in the northern half of San Antonio. SF vs. Silicon Valley is one thing.. but Palo Alto vs. Mountain view sounds like complaining about one side of the street vs. another.

jroll 14y ago
With the traffic out here, driving from Mountain View to SF takes anywhere from 45-90 minutes. The other reason is that socially, all of these communities are vastly different.
- BadassFractal 14y ago
  Even driving from one side of the city to the other can get real interesting at times. I don't know what I'd do without the BART.
wickedchicken 14y ago
> Palo Alto vs. Mountain view sounds like complaining about one side of the street vs. another. Here is a fun word: 'microclimate.' "Due to [SF]'s varied topography and influence from the prevailing summer marine layer, weather conditions can vary by as much as 9°F (5°C) from block to block." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate
chao- 14y ago
I agree to an extent, in that people from the Bay Area are funny about distances (as are people in the Northeast). But at the same time, I have to add a data point against: I live in the Montrose neighborhood in Houston. If you live here, and people ask where you live, you say "I live in Houston." I grew up in a suburb called Sugar Land (so idyllic that it's creepy, incidentally. Not recommended). Yet while traveling, and asked where you lived, someone from Sugar Land would say "I live in Houston." The cultures, mentalities and lifestyles separating the two places could not be more different, yet they all would say they live in Houston. Tiny geographic distances can translate into massive cultural distances. The difference with the Bay Area is that they take the little names of their sub-regions and stick to them. I guess because they assume that people will know who they are or care? That's the best I can figure. Every once in a while I run into someone talking about sub-regions of SF as if I really, truly have committed every last one of them to memory: "So we moved our company out to a house in Milpitas."
joshAg 14y ago
it's not the distance, it's the time it takes to get from A to B (during rush hour) and the distinct cultures. The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant culture that locals can differentiate between cities. In another world, these town might just have been different districts in a super city (there is literally no separation between cities; buildings and suburbia go right up to the town borders), but each of the cities used to be separated by miles of orchards and farmlands before the tech boom, so each town had a chance to develop a slightly unique culture (if you think of the finches Darwin discovered in the galapogos islands, it's bout the same). Because the entire area is suburbia, this leads to interesting transit situations. Ignoring public transit for a minute, estimating time to go from A to B becomes less of a function of distance, and more a function of how close each endpoint is to an arterial route. Sometimes, let me throw some numbers at you, to help explain the situation. I work in sunnyvale near highway 101 and maude. I am in the process of moving from Campbell (union and campbell ave, if you want to google map it) to cupertino (homestead and de anza). This reduces my commute from about 14 miles down to about 6 miles. Geographically, I'm going from driving through 5 separate towns (campbell->san jo->sc->cupertino->sunnyvale), to literally just driving across sunnyvale (ok, and a 1/4 mile into cupertino as my car drives not as the crow flies). From the campbell apartment to work with no traffic takes about 20 minutes if you tend to drive at the speed of traffic instead of the posted limit. If I were to commute during rush hour, this would be closer to a half hour or 40 minutes (i've only done it like twice because it is so horrid). From my new apartment to work will take about 10 to 20 minutes without traffic (slower roads, more stop lights, &c.). So despite cutting my commute distance by a factor of roughly 3, I only reduced my time spent commuting by about 0-50%. For reference, going from my campbell apartment to my company's sf hq (soma) will take about 80 minutes when commuting during rush hour on public transit (door to door via the caltrain from tamien to sf). And we haven't even talked about the differences in weather, yet, which due to microclimates can be 10 to 20 degrees different in the space of a few miles.
- lhnn 14y ago
  Interesting. In Texas, location matters in transit (arteries and such) in a similar manner, esp. in San Antonio. That's why I choose to live a mile from work, so my commute is 10 minutes on a really bad day. But ya, Texan neighborhoods might have their own style and some unique places, but not a totally distinct culture. BTW, I'm in San Francisco for the first time this week, and it's an amazing city.

by lhnn 14y ago

jroll 14y ago

With the traffic out here, driving from Mountain View to SF takes anywhere from 45-90 minutes. The other reason is that socially, all of these communities are vastly different.

BadassFractal 14y ago
Even driving from one side of the city to the other can get real interesting at times. I don't know what I'd do without the BART.

wickedchicken 14y ago

> Palo Alto vs. Mountain view sounds like complaining about one side of the street vs. another. Here is a fun word: 'microclimate.' "Due to [SF]'s varied topography and influence from the prevailing summer marine layer, weather conditions can vary by as much as 9°F (5°C) from block to block." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate

chao- 14y ago

I agree to an extent, in that people from the Bay Area are funny about distances (as are people in the Northeast). But at the same time, I have to add a data point against: I live in the Montrose neighborhood in Houston. If you live here, and people ask where you live, you say "I live in Houston." I grew up in a suburb called Sugar Land (so idyllic that it's creepy, incidentally. Not recommended). Yet while traveling, and asked where you lived, someone from Sugar Land would say "I live in Houston." The cultures, mentalities and lifestyles separating the two places could not be more different, yet they all would say they live in Houston. Tiny geographic distances can translate into massive cultural distances. The difference with the Bay Area is that they take the little names of their sub-regions and stick to them. I guess because they assume that people will know who they are or care? That's the best I can figure. Every once in a while I run into someone talking about sub-regions of SF as if I really, truly have committed every last one of them to memory: "So we moved our company out to a house in Milpitas."

joshAg 14y ago

it's not the distance, it's the time it takes to get from A to B (during rush hour) and the distinct cultures. The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant culture that locals can differentiate between cities. In another world, these town might just have been different districts in a super city (there is literally no separation between cities; buildings and suburbia go right up to the town borders), but each of the cities used to be separated by miles of orchards and farmlands before the tech boom, so each town had a chance to develop a slightly unique culture (if you think of the finches Darwin discovered in the galapogos islands, it's bout the same). Because the entire area is suburbia, this leads to interesting transit situations. Ignoring public transit for a minute, estimating time to go from A to B becomes less of a function of distance, and more a function of how close each endpoint is to an arterial route. Sometimes, let me throw some numbers at you, to help explain the situation. I work in sunnyvale near highway 101 and maude. I am in the process of moving from Campbell (union and campbell ave, if you want to google map it) to cupertino (homestead and de anza). This reduces my commute from about 14 miles down to about 6 miles. Geographically, I'm going from driving through 5 separate towns (campbell->san jo->sc->cupertino->sunnyvale), to literally just driving across sunnyvale (ok, and a 1/4 mile into cupertino as my car drives not as the crow flies). From the campbell apartment to work with no traffic takes about 20 minutes if you tend to drive at the speed of traffic instead of the posted limit. If I were to commute during rush hour, this would be closer to a half hour or 40 minutes (i've only done it like twice because it is so horrid). From my new apartment to work will take about 10 to 20 minutes without traffic (slower roads, more stop lights, &c.). So despite cutting my commute distance by a factor of roughly 3, I only reduced my time spent commuting by about 0-50%. For reference, going from my campbell apartment to my company's sf hq (soma) will take about 80 minutes when commuting during rush hour on public transit (door to door via the caltrain from tamien to sf). And we haven't even talked about the differences in weather, yet, which due to microclimates can be 10 to 20 degrees different in the space of a few miles.

lhnn 14y ago
Interesting. In Texas, location matters in transit (arteries and such) in a similar manner, esp. in San Antonio. That's why I choose to live a mile from work, so my commute is 10 minutes on a really bad day. But ya, Texan neighborhoods might have their own style and some unique places, but not a totally distinct culture. BTW, I'm in San Francisco for the first time this week, and it's an amazing city.