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Why San Francisco Is Not New York

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#11

Post by hoodq19 »

It's easy to confuse the negative effects of scale with cultural similarities. I've lived in both cities and you'd have to step outside the US to find two cities less like each other.

Its easy to understand why New York magazine would publish high-brow link-bait: the decreasing relevance of banking-- NY's primary economic engine.

The funny thing is that the importance of banking is cyclical. Banker misbehave, markets punish them, they pretend to cower, they quietly recover... and then they misbehave again.

These kinds of comparisons will diminish once it's misbehaving time again.

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#12

Post by wdewind »

nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

> The number and quality of restaurants in NY is unrivaled.

NYC native and mostly SF-hater here. Hate to say it but SF has us beat for food. If you want to go have a 5 star meal you're going to pay about the same and get about the same food in both cities (NYC obviously has the edge here, but not hugely), but San Francisco has NYC (especially Manhattan) absolutely dominated at the everyday eating level (ie: burritos, sandwiches, cheaper restaurants). The general ingredient quality just blows NYC away - both meat and produce.

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#13

Post by chrismonsanto »

nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

> The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare.

I've never been to California, but used to live next to NYC. Could you expand on how the transit is 'classist' ? Is it too expensive? Does it not stop at places other than the suburbs?

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#14

Post by michaelochurch »

nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

The issue is this. San Francisco used to be weird, beautiful, edgy, and affordable outside of known rich neighborhoods (Pac Heights) that, like the UES, aren't very interesting places to be, anyway, unless you live there. San Francisco used to have a lot of unique character to recommend it. It still does, to a lesser extent, but it also has douches wearing Glass and paying huge sums of money for crappy apartments, not even because they want to live there, but because they enjoy bullying the poors.

When MBA culture infected the Valley, it turned it into a shitty New York: the worst of both worlds between a sleepy, semisuburban (but still beautiful and interesting in its own right) California city and the hypercompetitive pressure-cooker of Manhattan.

In 2002 it was still conceivable that a normal person would want to live in San Francisco, just because it was still an interesting place: a genuine big city on the West Coast, with less rain than Seattle and far more character than L.A. Now, all the people I like hate what's happening to Northern California.

Even tech workers are marginalized in this brave new world. How many software engineers are there that could buy a house in San Francisco at the market rate? Seven? Twelve? At typical house-buying, setting-down ages the are... zero, plus or minus one engineer who got in early on a ridiculously lucky startup, negotiated well, and over whom the founders are still kicking themselves.

It's ridiculous. Of course, that's also the fault of the NIMBYs, who should be squashed with extreme prejudice. They deserve far more hatred than anyone on Sand Hill Road. It'd be better if the insane anger were directed at NIMBYs instead of innocent Google engineers (who are also getting ass-raped by rent, thus victims of the same thing).

I don't know what the permanent identity of San Francisco is. I hope the crash will take out the nonsense and flush the entitled, Harvard-MBA culture back into the Stygian reaches from which it came. Let's have the NIMBYs thrown under that bus as well. They're certainly trying to turn San Francisco into a shitty New York knock-off, but they haven't irreversibly won yet.

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#15

Post by qwerta »

silvestrov wrote: post #8
qwerta wrote: post #6

> The lack of diversity between social groups in San Francisco isn’t going to change anytime soon, as the number of tech employees in the Bay Area is only going to continue to rise. I am not sure I understand. Tech sector brings people from all over the world including India, China, South America and Europe.

Real diversity is not how you look or where you come from, but what's inside you and how you think and the culture you belong to.

It kind of sounds like 'No true Scotsman'. Could you explain what sort of diversity you miss in tech sector?

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#17

Post by yeukhon »

nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco.

I am a NY resident but I was in SF this past summer. Regarding cleanness it depends on which neighbors you live in. If you live in Richmond or Outer Sunset like I was the neighborhoods should be pretty clean. Where I live now in NY is considered one of the safest neighborhood but with the ever increasing population the neighborhood is getting dirtier.

San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night.

True. Most local restaurants close around 10. Even those in the city closes early too. Usually I have to drive to Daly City to look for better and bigger restaurant.

But that's fine. I wouldn't want to dine too late. Now if you are looking for late night entertainment....

New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country

Also one of the dirtiest too. The problem with SF transit (subway) is that it runs on the street so they compete with cars and buses. Also SF subway trains are smaller and shorter so it can't take that many at once. So it's unfair to say SF doesn't have a good transit system.

SF's buses are quite on time, unlike NYC. I could check nextbus.com to confirm the next arrival and usually the bus can come within 2 minutes within the estimated arrival time.

The only pet peeve I have is there is very few bus sign. Looking for yellow paint mark can be tricky. When I was new to SF I was constantly asking people and looking outside the window to check whether I was approaching my destination. The only clue I had was to look at the street sign (X ave X street) and guess. Or I have to stare nextbus.com to watch for the next bus stop.

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#18

Post by derwiki »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4
nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

A good part of SF not seeming to be a 24 hour city, is that public transit in SF doesn't run 24 hours-at least not BART, and I don't think MUNI Metro does either. The last SB Caltrain leaves at midnight, I think? EDIT: I'll give you being clean, SF can stand to be cleaned up a bit.

Buses are the only public transit that run all night, but those are limited/different than day routes. Plus many people I know who live here have an unreasonable dislike of the buses, so many just don't consider it an option. I think they're great, except for some passengers who get on in the Tenderloin.

Re: Why San Francisco Is Not New York

#19

Post by davidw »

wdewind wrote: post #12
nextstep wrote: post #3

Not to mention, New York is relatively clean compared to San Francisco. San Francisco shuts down at 10pm; New York truly is the city that never sleeps, and many neighborhoods feel busy and alive at all hours of the night. The public transportation in SF (and the larger Bay Area) is a classist, unreliable nightmare. New York has probably the best public transit systems in the country. Owning a car in NY is unusual and…

> The number and quality of restaurants in NY is unrivaled. NYC native and mostly SF-hater here. Hate to say it but SF has us beat for food. If you want to go have a 5 star meal you're going to pay about the same and get about the same food in both cities (NYC obviously has the edge here, but not hugely), but San Francisco has NYC (especially Manhattan) absolutely dominated at the everyday eating level (ie: burritos,…

To be honest, I ate better day to day when I lived in Portland, Oregon than when I lived in SF. Wouldn't know about NY - I've never been there. And I don't know about 'fine dining' options in either PDX or SF, having been in my early 20ies and not gone in for that sort of thing much.

These days, the best eating I do is when the in-laws have a big dinner, with stuff like hand-made tortellini!

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