Ask HN: What's it like to live in San Francisco?

I lived there 2014-2017 in the Inner Richmond + Outer Sunset. Rent was ~$1.5k/room, getting to Financial District took about 40 minutes on express bus (2BX) or Muni metro (L).

A lot of internal US migrants find SF really eye-opening: the wider variety of food & culture, the reasonable public transit, the influence of the strong cultures (LGBT+, black, hispanic, asian, hippie) that have thrived in the city. It really is very European for a NA city. SF has lots of great places to see, in the city & around the Bay Area and North California. The Presidio & Golden Gate Park are fantastic close natural escapes from urbanity.

Coming from Europe, I was shocked by the horrible transport (tiny Muni buses with 5 steps to get in), the crime (petty and serious, like scavanging recyclables from restaurant waste into the back of a pickup outside my window at 2am or shootings on Market St), the weird flavour combinations in mid-scale lunch places (I'm calling you out, Golden West), the extremely visible wealth inequality + the "I'm alright, Jack" attitudes, the unimaginable mental health crisis in the homeless population, dealing with private health insurance, taxes and immigration, finding out co-workers on insane salaries were almost destitute from paying off student loans, and the ridiculous housing situation, in the city and in East Bay (people forced out of SF by gentrification and now being forced out of Oakland, Alameda is the deepest white-flight suburb). Oh, and paying more than $10/month for a phone plan.

Coming from Australia, I found the cost-of-living was reasonable (food & rent) and the coffee was terrible, awful. I gave up on the Russian roulette of $5 barista/espresso burnt coffee + boiled milk, and stuck with filter/drip, which was consistently not great and not expensive. There are a few places you can reliably get a good cappuccino for $3-4…

A lot of the comments here focus on the anti-tech sentiment & monoculture of tech: they're relaying their experience of not being a part of the community, as being a overpaid 20-year-old in their first job out of college hasn't prepared them for inviting neighbours over for coffee. The "other US cities transport their homeless to SF" trope is indicative of this attitude: it's not my fault there's so many homeless here, other people are making the decisions that inconvenience my day-to-day, nothing I can do to change their behaviour, so I don't need to do anything to improve it.

Weather was fine, summers were cool (cold at night) & foggy, spring and '''fall''' warm and sunny. Earthquakes were fine, you have to have some supplies and at least know about what to expect when the big one hits. Traffic is normal I guess? Kind of bad when the 49ers/Warriors/Giants have a home game and you want to go across the Bay Bridge.

I left becuase I got fed up with feeling like part of the problem & not having any say in elections + not waiting to raise an American family (eventually). I miss the amazing library system, 24-hour donut places, and the strangly serene driving culture.

I interned there in 2012. My roommate and I got super lucky his family friend hooked us up with $1200/month for a condo at the top of Lombard St in Russian Hill. So my experience is slightly biased since I miraculously avoided the ludicrous rent. I don’t know what we would have done had we not secured that place.

In general, I really liked it. My favorite part was feeling like I was living in the future, since every new app launches in SF first. For example, back then Uber was quite new and I used it for the first time there. My least favorite part was the monoculture of tech (that’s not even considering the political monoculture). While there are a lot of interesting non-tech people in SF, you have to go out of your way to meet them. Otherwise the default is to be surrounded 24/7 by clones of yourself.

I interned in SF, Seattle and Houston. After school I lived in NYC for a year. Now I’m in the UK, but if I had to choose between those cities I would pick New York every time.

New York has plenty of problems but a monoculture is not one of them; it’s still fairly homogenous, but far less than SF simply because the NYC economy is more diversified. In SF, tech is the dominant and basically only industry. In NYC, tech is one of many industries in a city dominated by finance and law.

Put another way, of all my friends in college, 100% of them living in SF are in tech. But many of them live in NYC, and of those people, only some are in tech and the rest are in finance/law/school (nyc has top schools in the city proper unlike SF). I much prefer living near friends in other fields, because the last thing I want to talk about when I get home from work is work.

It can be very attractive in the beginning, but in the long term:

- Prices are high (rent, groceries, services, you name it).

- Transport: public transport is meh, driving/parking sucks, non-recreational cycling experience is mediocre and unsafe.

Unless you make enough money (after expenses) it is not worth it.

Less so, because in reality most "artists" actually end up doing normal jobs to make a living in a variety of fields and just keep art as a side interest. A city of hobbyist programmers wouldn't necessarily be a monoculture either.

In practice, it becomes an artist/yuppie duoculture within a decade :)