61–70 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
San Diego and Los Angeles offer much better weather.
Especially on the coast. 100% agree. I've had months and months of continuous rain in the Bay, something I never witnessed when living down South. It's cheaper too. Much much much MUCH more diverse. And food's better as is the landscape.
"Why should we build more affordable housing? We'd rather ban development, and make these 'rich young techies' pay through the nose to landlords who just happened to buy a house here 20 years ago!"
"Who cares about ensuring reasonable quality and cost of living in SF? As the local government, we'd rather just figure out a way to tax the crap out of them!"
Enjoy the result.
As it happens, tomorrow I’m putting in my 30-day notice to terminate my lease and leave the Bay. (And I’m paying 2 additional months rent in fees to do so) Not being tied to the office fundamentally changes the calculus of choosing where to live. There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us. Even if you enjoy the area, chances are you can get a better deal by moving just a bit further away. A…
There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere out…
This is what happens when a city neglects basic quality of life issues, and allows petty crime to thrive. It happened to New York in the 1970's and took roughly three decades to recover from. Good luck, San Francisco.
Of course, it's better to have neither exploding costs nor petty crime, but at the end of the day, dealing with petty crime is more affordable.
EDIT: Getting downvoted to oblivion but I'm not wrong.
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/12/21001080/san-francisco-sf-r...
"In 2010, a two-bedroom SF apartment on Craigslist averaged $2,893 (per historic data compiled in 2016 by Eric Fischer), or $3,396 after inflation. At the end of 2019, similar units on the same site sit at a median of $4,300, up 26.6 percent."
It would have taken a lot of petty crime to amount to that $12K per year in inflation-adjusted (i.e. real) increase.
As it happens, tomorrow I’m putting in my 30-day notice to terminate my lease and leave the Bay. (And I’m paying 2 additional months rent in fees to do so) Not being tied to the office fundamentally changes the calculus of choosing where to live. There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us. Even if you enjoy the area, chances are you can get a better deal by moving just a bit further away. A…
Instead of trying to help the tech boom and the people who created it, SFBA government and locals grew ever more greedy and entitled, looking to fleece techies at every opportunity. "Why should we build more affordable housing? We'd rather ban development, and make these 'rich young techies' pay through the nose to landlords who just happened to buy a house here 20 years ago!" "Who cares about ensuring reasonable qua…
Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse ). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Better weather” I can’t help but laugh. One of five Mediterranean climates worldwide, built on apricot orchards, formerly home to one of the most diverse animal and again ecosystems before the arrival of whites. It’s really hard to beat the weather in Silicon Valley. It’s almost non seasonal, anything grows. The diversity currently of this area is very high, it’s the home of top universities, between the two cross p…
I think California has created this myth that constant sunshine = perfect weather. I personally like things like summer thunderstorms, snowy winters, mild cloudy days, and rain. It's definitely not bad weather, but the lack of variety and endless dry smoggy summer months can get pretty old.
And almost everywhere else has large numbers of days where one of the above is true.
Sure, it would be neat if we could have one snowy day a year and a summer thunderstorm or two, too.
I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere.
I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture that many people love. However the basic infrastructure and problems with SF are well known and have been documented.
I can't see at this point how the former plusses of SF outweigh the latter negatives and frankly I see no inherent plusses to the Valley.
It seems that people (technologists mostly) literally only value the valley because of technology companies and even more pointedly - because that's where the big VC money lives.