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Re: San Francisco

#61

Post by abalone »

batbomb wrote: post #48
spikels wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years. The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing: Persons under 18 (2…

I think Rent Control tends to hold people hostage from having new families (as turnover in larger houses is much smaller as a result, and there's no real benefit to waiting to have a family), and that's a part of it. While I'll agree that most families don't need a huge house to live, you at least need a 2 or 3BR house (especially as the become teenagers) to raise 2 children. At current market rates, you'd need $3k a…

Rent control is the ONLY reason we were able to stay in the city and have a child recently. It gives renters the housing security they need to put roots down and start families.

Re: San Francisco

#62

Post by [deleted] »

jurassic wrote: post #15
bherms wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don'…

28k for food and random living expenses is a lot of money unless you are eating out for every meal; that's more that some people's entire paycheck (like grad students.) If you can't make room for savings in there, it definitely shows a lack of priorities.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco

#63

Post by Yhippa »

This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there).

What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?

Re: San Francisco

#64

Post by keiferski »

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.

Re: San Francisco

#65

Post by spitx »

Flying_Dwarf wrote: post #58
spitx wrote: post #55

kryten: Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children... Does your experience of life in London in recent years (since around late nineties) reflect that of this writer? I think this is one of the few writers (on the topic) I've found balanced and non-alarmist. That's the reason I've used her piece to moot a point that has been posited by many others in a more judgmental and accusative tone. So…

I'm struggling to find what this has to do with San Francisco? Are you saying SF has been taken over by hipsters and is no longer recognizable as it once were?

You needn't struggle so much to find parallels, if you were to even glance cursorily.

While the general validity and the degree to which this writer's experience is shared by others can certainly be debated (which is the reason I tabled it in the first place), the fact that there are strong parallels cannot be contested.

The agents and parties affected in the two settings, London and S.F., could indeed be different. Nonetheless, the theme remains the same.

Re: San Francisco

#66

Post by ryandrake »

michael_miller wrote: post #29
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #20

I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.

The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great. The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will re…

Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income:

$5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary

I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the 'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer.

Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16 years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!

Re: San Francisco

#67

Post by weston »

david927 wrote: post #21
austinz wrote: post #9

I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.

The nearby town of Taormina is awesome .

I can confirm both: Taormina and Catania are gorgeous, amazing cities. The whole island of Sicily is also a wonderful place to visit.... I highly recommend it!

Re: San Francisco

#68

Post by lakethun »

2pasc wrote: post #59
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…

I think that this argument about kids in San Francisco is totally wrong. There are tons of kids in San Francisco...just not in the neighborhood that he went! Go to the Richmond, the Sunset, the Marina, Cole Valley, or especially Noe Valley...and you will see tons of kids. But sure, in SOMA or Union Square/Financial District...not so much. Why is that ? Because San Francisco is a very neighborhood-focused city - where…

Your impressions are incorrect. From a comment above:

   Persons under 18 (2010 Census)
   US 23.7% [2]
   SF 13.5% [3]
[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

Re: San Francisco

#69

Post by cmccabe »

2pasc wrote: post #59
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…

I think that this argument about kids in San Francisco is totally wrong. There are tons of kids in San Francisco...just not in the neighborhood that he went! Go to the Richmond, the Sunset, the Marina, Cole Valley, or especially Noe Valley...and you will see tons of kids. But sure, in SOMA or Union Square/Financial District...not so much. Why is that ? Because San Francisco is a very neighborhood-focused city - where…

There is a lot of truth in this. SOMA and the Financial District are very much places to work, not places to live. I remember being in SOMA a week or two ago on Saturday at 5pm and everything was closed. I was there for an event at the museum of modern art (MOMA). Even Starbucks had shut down! It's a ghost town on the weekends. In fact, some San Franciscans don't think that SOMA is a real neighborhood, for exactly these reasons. The Embarcadero area is also kind of touristy, because the docks are there. If you want to see the real SF, you're better off going to someplace like Haight-Ashbury or the Mission.

The weird thing is that the west part of the city is effectively a suburb of the east part (but "suburb" is a dirty word in SF). Yes, I am oversimplifying here-- so sue me. I guess one nice thing is that the commuters can walk to work rather than driving.

Re: San Francisco

#70

Post by abalone »

spikels wrote: post #14
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…

Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years. The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing: Persons under 18 (2…

That's comparing it to the US average. To compare it to other cities, Manhattan is 17.1% and that's considered a "baby boom" (source: NYT article from a few years ago).

Anecdotally I see a lot more young families popping up in my neighborhood (Nopa / lower haight) over the past few years. Though i'm not sure if everyone can stay if the market stays this way when they need more space.

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