11 ms·

Congratulations. I am curious. Why is Palo Alto a better place to raise kids? The weather? schools?

by ChaitanyaSai 18y ago

ph0rque 18y ago
Even if it is the schools, the won't have to worry about that for at least 5-6 years.
- brianm 18y ago
  Cambridge itself isn't famous for great schools, but right around there (Newton, Lexington, etc) have the best schools in the country by most measures. When you include private schools, though, I don't know how things stack.
  - dgabriel 18y ago
    Cambridge is doing better. My son is in the first grade at a public Montessori school here in Cambridge, and it's stellar.
pg 18y ago
Number 1, it's a small town-- embedded in suburbia that arrived later, but large parts of it are much as they were before. Cambridge is too urban. If you let your kid ride his bike in the street in front of your house, he'd last about 10 minutes. The other option in Boston is suburbs like Lexington and Concord, but though luxurious they have the usual suburban problems (not walkable, deadly dull). Number 2, the weather.
- fuzzmeister 18y ago
  As a Concord resident, it seems like a great place to raise kids (fantastic schools, accessible town, etc), but it certainly doesn't provide the opportunities that Palo Alto does.
- sanj 18y ago
  re: Number 2 Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? I've lost half my family to that coast and they all complain about the sort of weather that is optimal for sledding. Doesn't anyone else miss having seasons?
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? Yes. I'll probably never be able to live in the UK again, to be honest.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    Me. I fled Silicon Valley for Boston and I don't miss it. Of course, I didn't have the budget (or the correct commute) to live in Palo Alto when I was in CA. Palo Alto is a fine place, no question.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - azanar 18y ago
    From someone who was only able to handle Boston's climate until he graduated from college, we have seasons on the West coast too. We just don't experience them all in one day as often. :-D In all seriousness, there is seasonal variation both in temperature (which the East coast also has) and in precipitation (which the East coast doesn't have), but they tend not to vary so severely, and there also tends to be less intra-seasonal variance, either. You won't find Seattle going from 80 degrees and muggy to 30 degrees and snowing over the course of 12 hours -- this happened while I was in Boston in April of a year that hopefully someone else here can fill in. It might be a bit soft, but I think of it as removing weather from the list of things that distract you from more important work.
    - sanj 18y ago
      I'm assuming you meant that the west coast doesn't have precipitation variation. I quite like snow! Then again, my earliest memories are from here: http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Not to second-guess your choice... but what happened to Arlington, MA in this analysis? ;) I liked Arlington when I lived there: Short bus ride to Cambridge, walk to the Red Line in good weather, bike path, wide streets, walkable, not too urban, not too suburban, not too expensive... But Palo Alto has most of that plus startups and sun, so it certainly makes sense.
  - sanj 18y ago
    Another Arlingtonian? Crazy! Perhaps not so crazy. Last year I discovered two other Ruby programmers (one at another startup, one at a more established firm) among the parents in my son's kindergarten class. And this was a reasonably sized class of ~20 kids. Is time for an Arlington YC meetup?
    - pwk 18y ago
      Is time for an Arlington YC meetup? I work in Arlington, and live just one town over. Yup, Ruby. An Arlington meetup might be fun, I never seem to be able to make the Boston Ruby events in Cambridge.
    - pg 18y ago
      VisiCalc was written in Arlington. Tipjoy's there too.
    - ivankirigin 18y ago
      There is a biweekly YC meetup at Tipjoy HQ: http://bit.ly/startup_poker http://bit.ly/startup_poker We had a good crowd last night. I need to buy more chairs.
      - brlewis 18y ago
        Has it grown to where some people come just to socialize, not to play poker?
        ivankirigin 18y ago
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Lexington/Bedford/Concord are reasonably walkable if you live in a house close to the downtown area (which admittedly can be hard to find & rather expensive). I used to walk to the library, post office, bank, & 2 supermarkets in Bedford, which is the least walkable of the three. Lexington & Concord have downtown areas that are just as walkable as Mountain View or Palo Alto. The food sucks in suburban Massachusetts though. There're like no decent restaurants in any of those town centers, and you've got a point about them being dull. Some decent places in Cambridge, but then you're back to being too urban. The one thing I really like about the Boston suburbs is the abundance of greenery. A lot of houses are built on an acre or more, with buffer forests because the streets never run straight in Massachusetts. AFAICT these just don't exist in Silicon Valley until you get out to the foothills, and those communities don't really have downtown areas at all.
  - mpc 18y ago
    I need to speak up for my local restaurants in the areas you just mentioned....Great spots in Arlington where I live, not as many options as the squares in Cambridge but there's some great eats.
    - nostrademons 18y ago
      Yeah, Arlington has some good ones, as does Newton & Waltham. It's really the Bedford/Burlington/Lexington/Concord/Carlisle/Lincoln area that has a dearth of good restaurants. The only one I can think of that we regularly eat at is Luigi's in Bedford. Other than that, we usually go over to Billerica or Arlington or Littleton (there are some good ones in the Littleton/Acton/Westford area) to eat.
SwellJoe 18y ago
Why is Palo Alto a better place to raise kids? I think I would have liked growing up around the bay area better than any other place I've lived. Skate parks are everywhere (I would have killed for a decent skate park when I was a kid), there's an ocean an hour drive away, mountains not much further, a big and really interesting city is an hour train ride away, the weather is nice enough to go outside almost year round (it's maybe a little chilly for me now, since I spent 10+ years in Texas, but I would have loved it when I was a kid growing up on the east coast), there's a reasonable music and arts scene (mainly in the city, but near enough to feel it and take part), the small towns around here are extremely walkable/bikeable, and there's good mass transit for the places you can't get on foot or bike. Palo Alto is not a suburban wasteland, and yet, there are lots of places where it's quiet and low traffic.

Congratulations. I am curious. Why is Palo Alto a better place to raise kids? The weather? schools?

ph0rque 18y ago

Even if it is the schools, the won't have to worry about that for at least 5-6 years.

brianm 18y ago
Cambridge itself isn't famous for great schools, but right around there (Newton, Lexington, etc) have the best schools in the country by most measures. When you include private schools, though, I don't know how things stack.
- dgabriel 18y ago
  Cambridge is doing better. My son is in the first grade at a public Montessori school here in Cambridge, and it's stellar.

pg 18y ago

Number 1, it's a small town-- embedded in suburbia that arrived later, but large parts of it are much as they were before. Cambridge is too urban. If you let your kid ride his bike in the street in front of your house, he'd last about 10 minutes. The other option in Boston is suburbs like Lexington and Concord, but though luxurious they have the usual suburban problems (not walkable, deadly dull). Number 2, the weather.

fuzzmeister 18y ago
As a Concord resident, it seems like a great place to raise kids (fantastic schools, accessible town, etc), but it certainly doesn't provide the opportunities that Palo Alto does.
sanj 18y ago
re: Number 2 Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? I've lost half my family to that coast and they all complain about the sort of weather that is optimal for sledding. Doesn't anyone else miss having seasons?
- abstractbill 18y ago
  Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? Yes. I'll probably never be able to live in the UK again, to be honest.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Me. I fled Silicon Valley for Boston and I don't miss it. Of course, I didn't have the budget (or the correct commute) to live in Palo Alto when I was in CA. Palo Alto is a fine place, no question.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- azanar 18y ago
  From someone who was only able to handle Boston's climate until he graduated from college, we have seasons on the West coast too. We just don't experience them all in one day as often. :-D In all seriousness, there is seasonal variation both in temperature (which the East coast also has) and in precipitation (which the East coast doesn't have), but they tend not to vary so severely, and there also tends to be less intra-seasonal variance, either. You won't find Seattle going from 80 degrees and muggy to 30 degrees and snowing over the course of 12 hours -- this happened while I was in Boston in April of a year that hopefully someone else here can fill in. It might be a bit soft, but I think of it as removing weather from the list of things that distract you from more important work.
  - sanj 18y ago
    I'm assuming you meant that the west coast doesn't have precipitation variation. I quite like snow! Then again, my earliest memories are from here: http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Not to second-guess your choice... but what happened to Arlington, MA in this analysis? ;) I liked Arlington when I lived there: Short bus ride to Cambridge, walk to the Red Line in good weather, bike path, wide streets, walkable, not too urban, not too suburban, not too expensive... But Palo Alto has most of that plus startups and sun, so it certainly makes sense.
- sanj 18y ago
  Another Arlingtonian? Crazy! Perhaps not so crazy. Last year I discovered two other Ruby programmers (one at another startup, one at a more established firm) among the parents in my son's kindergarten class. And this was a reasonably sized class of ~20 kids. Is time for an Arlington YC meetup?
  - pwk 18y ago
    Is time for an Arlington YC meetup? I work in Arlington, and live just one town over. Yup, Ruby. An Arlington meetup might be fun, I never seem to be able to make the Boston Ruby events in Cambridge.
  - pg 18y ago
    VisiCalc was written in Arlington. Tipjoy's there too.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    There is a biweekly YC meetup at Tipjoy HQ: http://bit.ly/startup_poker http://bit.ly/startup_poker We had a good crowd last night. I need to buy more chairs.
    - brlewis 18y ago
      Has it grown to where some people come just to socialize, not to play poker?
      - ivankirigin 18y ago
nostrademons 18y ago
Lexington/Bedford/Concord are reasonably walkable if you live in a house close to the downtown area (which admittedly can be hard to find & rather expensive). I used to walk to the library, post office, bank, & 2 supermarkets in Bedford, which is the least walkable of the three. Lexington & Concord have downtown areas that are just as walkable as Mountain View or Palo Alto. The food sucks in suburban Massachusetts though. There're like no decent restaurants in any of those town centers, and you've got a point about them being dull. Some decent places in Cambridge, but then you're back to being too urban. The one thing I really like about the Boston suburbs is the abundance of greenery. A lot of houses are built on an acre or more, with buffer forests because the streets never run straight in Massachusetts. AFAICT these just don't exist in Silicon Valley until you get out to the foothills, and those communities don't really have downtown areas at all.
- mpc 18y ago
  I need to speak up for my local restaurants in the areas you just mentioned....Great spots in Arlington where I live, not as many options as the squares in Cambridge but there's some great eats.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    Yeah, Arlington has some good ones, as does Newton & Waltham. It's really the Bedford/Burlington/Lexington/Concord/Carlisle/Lincoln area that has a dearth of good restaurants. The only one I can think of that we regularly eat at is Luigi's in Bedford. Other than that, we usually go over to Billerica or Arlington or Littleton (there are some good ones in the Littleton/Acton/Westford area) to eat.

SwellJoe 18y ago

Why is Palo Alto a better place to raise kids? I think I would have liked growing up around the bay area better than any other place I've lived. Skate parks are everywhere (I would have killed for a decent skate park when I was a kid), there's an ocean an hour drive away, mountains not much further, a big and really interesting city is an hour train ride away, the weather is nice enough to go outside almost year round (it's maybe a little chilly for me now, since I spent 10+ years in Texas, but I would have loved it when I was a kid growing up on the east coast), there's a reasonable music and arts scene (mainly in the city, but near enough to feel it and take part), the small towns around here are extremely walkable/bikeable, and there's good mass transit for the places you can't get on foot or bike. Palo Alto is not a suburban wasteland, and yet, there are lots of places where it's quiet and low traffic.