Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

jasonevanish.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 573 posts

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

#471

Post by me2i81 »

wooster wrote: post #361
bherms wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give it to you that those special days where it remains 75 throughout the entirety of the day are pretty awesome. However, in 18 months here, I can count those on two hands, and the days where it was comfortable in shorts/tshirt until 8-10 at night number at probably 2.

Did you miss this summer? It was really nice from August through most of October.

It was, but still, evenings are almost never warm (i.e. above 70) except for a few days in July/August. That makes it easier to sleep, but I do miss warm summer evenings outside.

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

#472

Post by mtalantikite »

potatolicious wrote: post #237
jrockway wrote: post #215

Manhattan is a lot more expensive than San Francisco. Even Brooklyn is more expensive, just not by much.

Moved from SF to Manhattan 6 months ago, this characterization is no longer entirely accurate. Manhattan now is barely more expensive than SF, and most of SF is more expensive than most of Brooklyn. People aren't really aware of just how fast cost of living is going up in SF. Manhattan averaged, what, 5-6% year over year, and we think that's high. Some neighborhoods in SF have experienced >100% YoY rent growth, but m…

It'll be interesting to see the numbers after this boom, SF certainly is getting a lot more expensive. Latest figures though did put the order: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Honolulu, and then SF:

http://gothamist.com/2012/09/01/manhattan_and_brooklyn_are_t...

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

#473

Post by absconditus »

brandnewlow wrote: post #350
GiselleDarlene wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must "hide" them well. I've lived in Chicago all of my life and there's no comparison to SF.

Agreed 100%. I lived on Division and Wells for 4 years and never saw homelessness like I see walking from our startup office in SF to visit our bank. That said, Chicago's true poor are cached away far south of the places where people who read Hacker News would likely live.

I live in Chicago and see them every single day. They are usually on buses and trains or at the stops and stations. I also see them digging through the trash in the alley behind my building.

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

#474

Post by bilbo0s »

ry0ohki wrote: post #282
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.

It's half warmth, half social services/laws. You see way more homeless people in Seattle and San Francisco then you'll see in Houston or Jacksonville. The social services and laws for homeless people are way more generous on the west coast.

There are HUGE numbers of homeless in Houston. The city center is crawling with them. Homelessness is just another one of those difficult problems.

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

#475

Post by tsotha »

afterburner wrote: post #352
tsotha wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the state with the surplus. The weather in Texas isn't anything to write home about, but in every way that matters it's a more competently run state.

They probably have a surplus because they underfund health care system, among other things... (I remember being surprised at the full-time firefighting budget cuts not long before the huge fires two years ago) EDIT: Oh and apparently there is no surplus http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-st...

2011? Try to keep up.

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

#476

Post by mtalantikite »

ghc wrote: post #466
mtalantikite wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 million? That seems like a lot. As a New Yorker formally from Boston, I tend to think of the city as the places that the subway can get you. Coming from wikipedia: Boston: 625,087 Cambridge: 105,162 Brookline: 58,732 Somerville: 75,754 Newton: 85,146 Chelsea: 35,177 Revere: 51,755 Which is 1,036,813. Any others I'm missing?

Actually, there's quite a few, if you you by what you get get to via the subway. That means Everett, Braintree, Quincy, Newton, Medford and several others. But there's a more systematic way city size is measured: MSA and CSA. Boston's MSA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston-Cambridge-Quincy,_MA-NH_... ) is 4.5 million, with 4 million being defined as "urban" population. These are all places served by MBTA (which cl…

Yeah, it probably has to do with what we consider urban, or feel to be urban.

The MSA for New York includes places no one would ever consider parts of NYC -- if I'm out on long island or in connecticut I'm not in the city. Just like if you're out in the Boston suburbs you're not really in Boston/Cambridge.

If it really is technically 4 million that's cool, but when I'm in Boston it doesn't feel like a city of 4 million. Just like NYC doesn't feel like a city of 19 million, even if that's what its MSA is.

Boston feels like a small place, just like SF. Nothing wrong with that, it just is what it is.

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

#477

Post by mattw »

jessedhillon wrote: post #453
noname123 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson I will take is: 1) Save like mad. 2) If buy a house, buy with 10%-20% down-payment and financed with aggressive mortgage payback timeline. 3) Climb the ladder and take the money.

It make no sense for most people to pay off their house aggressively. Refinance periodically if you want to lower your payments, but blowing a lump sum on your mortgage principal over a compressed time period is almost always more expensive in opportunity costs. Quick question: I put $100k in your pocket right now. Would your life be more improved if your mortgage principal was reduced by $100k, or if you went and di…

If you completely ignore risk then what you say is true (especially with interest rates so ridiculously low). However, if we're talking about improving lives, I personally find value in eliminating debt (including the mortgage) as quickly as possible because such obligations represent risk. I could apply all these extra mortgage payments to other things (rental property, stock market, etc.), but then I stand a varying (but non-zero) chance of losing money on those things and still being stuck with a mortgage. I'd rather wait a few years and take those risks with my own money instead of money borrowed from the bank, and I think that economic woes of late suggest we'd be better off if a few more people thought this way.

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

#478

Post by afterburner »

tsotha wrote: post #475
afterburner wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have a surplus because they underfund health care system, among other things... (I remember being surprised at the full-time firefighting budget cuts not long before the huge fires two years ago) EDIT: Oh and apparently there is no surplus http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-st...

2011? Try to keep up.

Meh, original comment about shitty services holds

http://www.texasobserver.org/how-the-budget-got-cut/

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

#479

Post by polarix »

bilbo0s wrote: post #474
ry0ohki wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's half warmth, half social services/laws. You see way more homeless people in Seattle and San Francisco then you'll see in Houston or Jacksonville. The social services and laws for homeless people are way more generous on the west coast.

There are HUGE numbers of homeless in Houston. The city center is crawling with them. Homelessness is just another one of those difficult problems.

Difficult? Call it houselessness and you'll start to see that no, it's not actually hard to solve.

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

#480

Post by Spooky23 »

bluekite2000 wrote: post #133
sakopov wrote: post #98

In my opinion the high cost of living kills everything else on that list. I'd much rather have a comfortable living, travel the world and be optimistic that i will have no problems buying a nice house for me and my spouse/family if i need to/should i want to. I don't really see this possible based on what i hear from a couple of friends living and working there. Both consumed by their tech jobs, some cool things to d…

The same goes w/ NYC. I have been here for a while now and have met so many young girls following Sex in the City dream, which invariably turned out badly.

NYC is different because you can live an urban lifestyle without living in Manhattan at significantly lower cost. You can do this by living in Brookyln or Queens or even Jersey. When the urban thing gets old, there are plenty of detached single family neighborhoods in the city, early 20th century inner suburbs, or you can flee to the suburbs.

I've only been to California a couple of times to visit, but it seemed to me that everything is "newer" than your typical east coast city, and there's an immediate transition from urban environment to 1960+ suburbia.

Post reply on HN