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What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

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Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#441

Post by nostromo »

starpilot wrote: post #420
jseliger wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I just moved here from Tucson, and there's virtually no way I'd be here if not for the fact that I'm living with a medical resident in an apartment subsidized by her hospital. Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I'd choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost. BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the rem…

Everyone forgets Chicago. In the US, it's the most important financial center outside of Manhattan and is the third place city in number of Michelin starred restaurants (fewer than SF; Seattle has none). Boeing moved their corporate HQ there from Seattle because of its financial prominence. It has a world class university in U. Chicago and excellent bus/rail transit across the metro area. But the Chicago area is seri…

Michelin only provides "red guides" for 3 US cities: New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. (http://www.michelintravel.com/guides-cat/north-america-red-g...)

It's not possible for any other city in the US to get a starred restaurant, no matter the quality of the food.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#442

Post by juan_juarez »

jquery wrote: post #382
georgeorwell wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling people crack-heads and shambling zombies is pejorative. You don't casually use words like fag, dyke, tranny, bitch, ho, nigger, Indian (for native / aboriginal), and kyke, right? If you want a name, say "drug-addicted homeless person". We're talking about the most badly abused people in our society and you and the author are simply abusing them more with these words. Surprise, they aren't there to say anythin…

This comment does not belong on HN. It's angry, self-righteous, and unproductive. Comparing people who defecate, urinate, shoot-up, stink, and leave needles on your front porch to other minorities is really offensive. Especially when these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation. Often they have better apartments than the people they are begging money from.

> these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation

Perhaps you've missed the changes in the last 40 years of American funding for welfare and social services.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#443

Post by graue »

starpilot wrote: post #420
jseliger wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I just moved here from Tucson, and there's virtually no way I'd be here if not for the fact that I'm living with a medical resident in an apartment subsidized by her hospital. Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I'd choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost. BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the rem…

Everyone forgets Chicago. In the US, it's the most important financial center outside of Manhattan and is the third place city in number of Michelin starred restaurants (fewer than SF; Seattle has none). Boeing moved their corporate HQ there from Seattle because of its financial prominence. It has a world class university in U. Chicago and excellent bus/rail transit across the metro area. But the Chicago area is seri…

For me, SF and NYC have a huge advantage over Chicago and that is mild winters. New York gets cold, but not that cold and you can wait inside for the subway.

I spent two years in Minneapolis insisting I could take it, but the simple fact is that long, bitterly cold winters mean you end up inactive, indoors, cooped up at home more often than not. At least I did. It felt like wasted time, and Chicago is only marginally better.

It would take more than affordable rent and good restaurants to lure me back to a place with so many sub-20F days.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#444

Post by lacksconfidence »

jallmann wrote: post #331
beatpanda wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? What neighborhood were you in? $10 for a burrito is outrageous. I never pay more than $7, anywhere. What kind of burritos were these?

Nick's Crispy Tacos around Nob Hill. The prices seemed in line with the rest of SF though. IIRC, they charged extra for guac, and added cheese -- on a carne asada burrito! Which should never have anything but meat, guac and pico de gallo.

A carne asada burrito can have anything on it. If america has proved anything its that we can take anything in your culture, completely change it, and still call it by your name.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#445

Post by georgeorwell »

g8oz wrote: post #318
georgeorwell wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, where is the deception? "Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs, "servicing the target" for bombing [1]), making the truth less unpleasant, without denying its nature. It may also be deployed as intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning (for example, naming a state of wa…

I would argue the euphemism often has the intention not to deceive but to strong arm the listener to perceive things along the lines the speaker intends. This becomes mildly coercive and when done for a social engineering purpose qualifies as Doublespeak imo.

So are you saying that "drug-addicted homeless person" is doublespeak whereas "shambling crackhead zombie" is neutral language? Because I think those are the phrases we are talking about, and I think the first is much more neutral.

I am confused as to how my attempt to assert the use of neutral language is coercive or being used for social engineering or how it is strong arming anyone here. I certainly don't want to be doing these things, so if I am I would appreciate being told how I am.

I would say that "economically disadvantaged sporadically sheltered substance abuser" is a lot more... Orwellian.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#446

Post by dyno12345 »

yesimahuman wrote: post #319
jasonshen wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling software over the internet to strangers is only a very small part of what "doing tech" is. Like I said, you could "act" in a local volunteer theater in Nebraska but to say you can "be an actor" anywhere is inaccurate. If you want to grow beyond a 1-5 person shop, if you want to build incredible software that is used by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, you need a critical mass of great engineers, d…

That's incredibly short sighted. There are too many examples of large tech companies not in the valley or SF for that to be true. They might not be household names but that doesn't mean they aren't killing it.

I think conditional probability is more informative than number of examples

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#447

Post by greghinch »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #280
noname123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, in your opinion, what should be the net worth target for people making regular tech income in their 30's, 40's and 50's if they want to eek out comfortable living in retirement, inflation-adjusted?

Try http://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement for a fairly straightforward, income-independent answer to that question. Tell it your annual income and expenses, and it'll tell you when you can retire. Adjust the numbers and your retirement date changes. (The defaults for "return on investment" and "withdrawal rate" work pretty well.)

Whenever I see one of these retirement calculators I don't understand how people save enough to actually retire. Are most people really socking away 25%+ of their gross income every year?? I certainly enjoy motorcycles and exotic travel far too much for that to ever become a reality (not to mention pay rent in the Bay Area and try to maintain an organic/local-sourced diet which costs about double a typical grocery store).

Now you know why everyone out here wants to do startups: it's the only way to ever retire!

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#448

Post by hyperbovine »

jseliger wrote: post #434
aliston wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question -- did you have trouble adjusting to the lack of sunshine?

I've lived in Bellevue, WA, then Worcester, MA, then Seattle, WA, then Tucson, AZ, then New York, NY, and I've never had a problem with sun or its lack. Different people react differently, however, and I still a) went running most days, and b) really like the cultural / lifestyle aspects of living in cities. I prefer the Seattle experience of relatively temperate weather, year-round, to the Tucson experience of insan…

> Obviously nowhere else in the U.S. is going to rival the weather experience of the CA coast.

Did you not read the article? :-) Seriously, summers in the city (of San Francisco) can be miserable, at least insofar as your definition of summer includes wearing fewer clothes and dining outdoors. In general the coast of California north of say, Seal Beach, is not an enjoyable place to be after sunset, anywhere. Even in LA it's usually about 60 at the beach in July at night. I've never understood the massive gap between marketing and reality when it comes to the weather in coastal California, despite having spent half my life here.

Medellín, Colombia is the place I have been that comes closest to achieving what California peddles.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#449

Post by batiudrami »

softbuilder wrote: post #76
run4yourlives wrote: post #72

This seems more of a "West Coast vs. East Coast" article than it is a "San Fran" article. For the most part, the author is highlighting the differences that anybody living on the East Coast will experience in moving to one of the western coastal cities, save perhaps LA, which as everyone already knows is its own little planet. Most of these "hints" hold true for San Diego, San Fran, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. T…

You lost credibility with me by repeated use of the vulgar "San Fran". It's THE CITY. :)

Coming as an Australian, where our brand of English is inherently lazy and involves skipping syllables wherever possible, the idea that you would frown upon a simple shortening of the name is ridiculous. Frisco does sound pretty lame though, I can understand that one.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#450

Post by batiudrami »

absconditus wrote: post #226
run4yourlives wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more a west coast thing. I grew up in Toronto and I can tell you the same thing shocked me about moving to Vancouver. Crackheads/street people don't like to freeze, so they move to the warmth is. I'd imagine this is as true in the US as it is in Canada.

Chicago has a huge homeless problem. http://www.chicagohomeless.org/faq-studies/

I visited Chicago and SF recently, and (at least down town) you're talking several orders of magnitude.

Being in SF was really sad for me - sitting in a niceish cafe/restaurant and looking out the window to see a homeless person sifting through a bin. It's not at all what I'm used to.

Chicago, on the other hand, is a beautiful city. I was only in the Loop/Greektown area, but it was super clean, full of really friendly people, and lovely art installations and park areas. It was a pity that I could only stomach the food for a few days.

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