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Re: San Francisco

#151

Post by upquark »

eli wrote: post #120
jcdavis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rent comparison isn't exactly fair - you are looking at the rent in the city of SF vs the entire Greater Washington area. There are certainly cheaper places than SF to live in the Bay Area. Also, almost all apartments in SF proper have rent control meaning that rent pretty much never goes up.

$1,400 isn't going to get you your dream apartment, but it's a reasonable budget for a one bedroom apartment that's in DC and not in a bad neighborhood. It's also pretty common to live outside the city and commute in on Metro (DC's Metro is built more like a commuter rail than a urban subway system).

I wouldn't say 1.4k is a reasonable rent in DC, not in my experience at least. Not even if you move out to the nearby suburbs.

Re: San Francisco

#152

Post by rdouble »

davidw wrote: post #53
bifrost wrote: post #5

> The coffee is very different than the Italian one I've heard this many times :) His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and…

One of the things that I really noticed when I moved from San Francisco to Italy was that here (Padua, Italy), there are young people, old people, rich people, and people not so well off. San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist. No kids, no old people, no people with sort of average jobs. I didn't like it, it felt too strange to me. I pr…

There are actually a lot of kids, and people with average jobs in SF. They just aren't white so tech people don't notice them.

Regarding old people, retired people are actually the fastest growing demographic in the city.

Re: San Francisco

#153

Post by potatolicious »

ryanSrich wrote: post #80

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a yea…

Your math is reasonably fair, IMO. That being said, the type of work being done in DC and SF is vastly different. I attended an iOS conference in DC a few months ago (I'm based out of NYC) and was shocked at how few "tech company" people were present. Nearly everyone was working for a government agency, a government contractor, or freelancing with a primarily government client-base.

Personally I don't think I can do it. Nearly everyone I talked to came from gigantic, monstrous organizations (either private or public) with huge, massive layers of management. I might just die in that environment.

At the end of the day, the spiraling cost of living in SF is a serious problem, and one that threatens the well-being of our industry if we can't curb it. Unfortunately, in the city being pro-development is almost as bad as pushing your grandma down the stairs.

Re: San Francisco

#154

Post by kroger »

keiferski wrote: post #64
danmaz74 wrote: post #47

"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more." One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (…

My guess is that foreigners are used to hearing American English from TV shows and movies, and thus find it easier to understand.

This is true. As someone who speaks English as a second language living in London, I can understand both "standard" American English and "BBC" British English very well.

The problem is that in a London alone you are exposed to all kinds of accents, including Queen's English, Cockney, Scottish English, and Irish.

This video is a good example of how a Cockney accents sounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w

Re: San Francisco

#155

Post by thwest »

pfarrell wrote: post #107
Throwadev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.

Oakland has about 600 police officers for a population which requires around 1,100. There have been five robberies on my street in upper rockridge, where we rent. It's an incredibly beautiful neighborhood and we pay a pretty high rent to live there. In 2010, the police announced that for a long list of crimes (including burgularies) they will not come out. We have caught people casing our neighborhood, strangers sitt…

Sit on your porch with a shotgun more.

Re: San Francisco

#156

Post by lelandbatey »

I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time to write this all down!

Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68

It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.

Re: San Francisco

#157

Post by fibbery »

jechen wrote: post #42

On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling, ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and manage to live in SF for $20k a year ( http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-... ). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly resourceful. In the end, if yo…

The person in your link had a room in SF for $575 per month. She also does not have student loans, and the spreadsheet has no list item for health insurance. It's a nice story but not really an option for many/most people living here.

Re: San Francisco

#158

Post by rdouble »

jusben1369 wrote: post #150
rdouble wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never very foggy east of Fillmore street, even in the summer. YMMV but SF weather is only miserable to people from LA.

SMH. You know you're drinking the Kool Aid when you try and go neighborhood by neighborhood. SF is terrible, Oakland/Berkeley better but not much (Berkeley gets nailed by the finger coming straight in from the GG Bridge) If you grew up somewhere else where summer meant putting your coat away for 3 months then "Two blocks over here the wind is still biting but the sun is out" isn't much of a consolation. Now, if you h…

I don't know what you mean. The microclimates there are just a fact of life. The sunset is going to be cooler and foggier than the Mission simply because of the topography. Berkeley and Oakland are actually 10 degrees warmer with only occasional fog all year round. The whole area gets like 300 days of sun per year. I just wonder where people are from when they say that the bay areas weather is "terrible." It seems highly relative. For reference, I've lived in Minneapolis, Tokyo, Tucson, Atlanta, Boston and NYC and thought SF's weather was better than all of those places. They all had at least one season where it was miserable to be outside.

Re: San Francisco

#159

Post by larrykubin »

rdouble wrote: post #146
jusben1369 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF people have to stop quoting the weather. The summer's are miserable with fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.

It's never very foggy east of Fillmore street, even in the summer. YMMV but SF weather is only miserable to people from LA.

As someone who lives in Portland, I would love to have SF's weather.

Re: San Francisco

#160

Post by jseliger »

davidw wrote: post #53
bifrost wrote: post #5

> The coffee is very different than the Italian one I've heard this many times :) His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and…

One of the things that I really noticed when I moved from San Francisco to Italy was that here (Padua, Italy), there are young people, old people, rich people, and people not so well off. San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist. No kids, no old people, no people with sort of average jobs. I didn't like it, it felt too strange to me. I pr…

San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist

I've dropped this link many times before, but it's still relevant here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... . There's not really a "weird bubble" so much as basic economics at work: SF is a desirable place to live in many respects, but it's virtually impossible to build new housing there for reasons discussed at the link. In the face of exploding demand and constant supply, prices rise.

Regular people move to the sunbelt, where development is easy and real estate prices more reasonable, and the people who have the money and/or need to be in SF stay/move there.

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