491–500 of 640 posts
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SF wasn’t fun before the Pandemic. I’ve visited friends who work in tech 3 different times the past 5 years. The city lacks culture, the food and drinking scenes suck, and the people are all the same. (I spend most of my city time in miami, nyc, and montreal)
This is what tech money does to a city. Rents go up, everybody interesting leaves for places they can afford without a ludicrous salary.
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In the north central US, you have to stay indoors for a while because it's too cold. In the sunbelt, you have to stay indoors for a while because it's too hot. In CA, you have to stay indoors for a while because of the poor air quality. Take your pic. CA folks seem to think the rest of the world is an inhospitable wasteland. Sure, CA is a bit more mild, but it's not perfect.
In CA, you have to stay indoors for a while because of the poor air quality. Maybe once or twice per decade is the AQ so bad in CA you have to stay indoors. As opposed to weeks or months every winter (depending on your tolerance - I hate cold).
We definitely had stay-inside days this year and last year, and I could have sworn we did the year before as well. That blew through your per-decade quota in recent consecutive years.
I fully expect we'll have some stay-inside days next year too.
But I do agree that the number of days the air quality is bad just does not come close to the number of days where it's really cold or really hot in other places.
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What is curious to me is that NYC rents haven't seen the same crater at all (link says 15% but anecdotally most of the desirable top of market neighborhoods aren't budging). I don't buy the "SF is not very fun during the pandemic" rationale as more special than any other notable city, and NYC tends to have less space than SF. To me, that says the SF case has more complexity. IMO, the key factor here is that there app…
Perhaps the phenomenon of “X months free rent” is more pervasive in NYC. E.g. https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/market-insight/rental-buildin... What little I understand is if a landlord is leveraged (?) up the wazoo, the lending bank can make the landlord pay a lump sum if the revenue projections on which the loan is made shrink, since the risk is higher. Somehow, free months don’t count against these revenue projectio…
> The figures underscore how the pandemic has roiled property markets and changed renter preferences. With companies allowing employees to work from home, people have fled cramped and costly urban areas in droves, seeking extra room in the suburbs or cheaper cities. I am skeptical. Yes a lot of Bay Area companies are allowing work from home for now, but are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving?…
Saw friends of friends leave sf and together rent a mansion in Hawaii. If the bars, clubs, gyms, and even beaches shut down why stay if you are renting at market rate. It’s literally cheaper to move your belongings into storage and move into a vacation home with friends. Also most sf apartments don’t have office space for all the tenants.
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In the north central US, you have to stay indoors for a while because it's too cold. In the sunbelt, you have to stay indoors for a while because it's too hot. In CA, you have to stay indoors for a while because of the poor air quality. Take your pic. CA folks seem to think the rest of the world is an inhospitable wasteland. Sure, CA is a bit more mild, but it's not perfect.
NYC -> DC corridor suffers from none of that.
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The bars are restaurants available in most cities in the USA do not compare to the bars and restaurants in cities like SF, Los Angeles, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc..... I mean places like Flagstaff Arizona, or Temecula California, etc.... In the cities listed in the first paragraph there are, unique bars (not sure what word to use) and interesting restaurants. In most cites there are just places like AppleBess and the loc…
Flagstaff is a decent sized mountain town. Decent sized mountain towns have pretty good food and bars, including unique establishments. Of course they won’t please a true snob looking for a new home, but they plenty suit low key snobs like me. Last time I made a pit stop in Flagstaff it took 30 seconds on Yelp to find a great independent Cajun-creole joint with a pleasant patio, friendly staff, and delicious food and…
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Unless upper management goes full-time remote, then power (and ambitious employees) will always consolidate.
^ ever work with someone in a remote office. I’ve always seen their careers take a hit. Same for remote employees. It’s great when you have a family with kids and you’re less career focused. But I noticed my comp increased almost 2x their’s over the same timeframe.
If the commitment is there for WFH to become an option for all, corporations will promote one or more WFH VPs to send the message that it’s OK, as occurred for women and minorities. I’d guess they’d choose rising stars with personal commitments that make WFH the obvious humane and moral choice.
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Except for Italy, Peru, Mexico, Japan, France, Thailand, and many other countries where you can find top quality food in thousands of small towns and out of the way places. So probably not a great rule to go by.
You can get top-quality Japanese food in thousands of small Japanese towns, and top-quality Thai food in thousands of small Thai towns. However, rest assured you will have a very hard time finding (say) Mexican in either. The only places in either country where you have a genuinely cosmopolitan food scene are Tokyo and Bangkok respectively.
I would say the city being “closed” is the major driver. Among my group of ~40 coworkers, about 30 (including me) have left the city. As far as I know all but one were renting. Everyone who left gave the following rationale: - we can work remotely so move wherever or nomad now - SF is not very fun during the pandemic - WFH in my tiny apartment is much less enjoyable than when I was working in the office and didn’t sp…
Compared to other big tech-hub cities, I'd think SF would be one of the better ones to spend the pandemic in. There's great parks like Dolores, Lands End, etc, and they'll still be comfortable to be in during this winter. Is there more to it than that?
The hard bit is the live+work space. I was incredibly lucky that I moved to a larger place right before the shelter-in-place order hit (from a loft to a condo with walls and doors!), but I know a lot of people who have been working on dining tables and sub-optimal improvised desks for the past seven months. If you live in a loft-style place with another person, the lack of personal space can really get to you.
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Agreed, I feel like SF restaurants are relatively pricey, so in order to get the good stuff you'll have to pay a lot more than in many other places in the world.
Sf has some great hole in the wall places that aren’t too expensive. E.g. Tonga room isn’t that badly priced Dropping 50$/person on dinner & drinks in sf isn’t that much money when your rent is 50x+ that figure.
If you want a great literal hole in the wall, try Yamo in the Mission. Burmese food, grand total of 6 seats (all at the bar) in the restaurant, and the entire kitchen is right in front of you. $6 entrees.