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Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

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Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#61

Post by nols »

pkinsky wrote: post #41
timr wrote: post #18

The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San F…

>Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute whe…

It's been the best place for homosexuals for decades. I can remember a character from The Way of the Gun calling it a "Mecca for homosexual migration".

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#62

Post by _delirium »

zinssmeister wrote: post #20
rebelidealist wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a hefty sun burn tax in Texas. 100 degree weather for sometimes 30 straight days. May - Sept are all 90 degrees+ without fail. The winter is colder than the bay area.

I lived in both states and the weather in the Bay Area isn't enough to justify the heavy income tax, sales tax and cost of housing. It's great that it's in the 60s and 70s year round but with zero rain fall you got other cons making up for pros in that category. Sure Texas is hot and that is a downside but agreeing that the weather in the Bay Area is worth an insane amount of extra cash isn't correct.

If you have large housing needs (family/etc.) I can see that, but as a single person renting I didn't find the pricing difference large enough to be worth choosing Texas just for the housing savings. Paid about $700/mo to rent a 1-bd in Houston, vs $1100 to rent a nicer 1-bd in Santa Cruz, near the beach. Sure, that's almost $5k savings over a year in Houston, but you're not going to retire on an extra $5k. Well more like $4k savings overall once you take into account the extra electric bill I had in Houston, running the A/C for 7-8 months of the year.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#63

Post by [deleted] »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #59
[deleted] wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

What you're missing is that when people say an area is "becoming increasingly Black" they usually are talking about it going from 0% to 5%, or from 5% to 10%. Parts of San Francisco (at least certain businesses) are moving towards 100% white. It's a fundamentally different phenomenon.

[deleted]

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#64

Post by debt »

[deleted] wrote: post #57
debt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is becoming quite homogenous here. There's just a ton of really wealthy, well-paid business/engineer types. I've heard varied reports on dating. Some friends are very successful, others no so much. This seems to be more a personal situation then dependent on the culture of the city as a whole. You just gotta get on that tinders or cupes or grindr if that's your thing and play the game just like any other city. It'…

[deleted]

While I agree that race should have nothing to do with it, culturally it's much more acceptable to talk about white gentrification then gentrification by any other race. Also, in this case I'm not interesting removing the white designator because it really is predominantly white males.

Also the gentrification happening in the Mission is very much a race thing. "Keep the Mission brown" is a slogan used by many in this neighborhood. I'm assuming it's not new and it's also racist. So I don't really know where to draw the line. I am a white "techie" male gentrifying a "brown" neighborhood; at least that's how those who live in the Mission see me. And, to be honest, that's what is going on all over San Francisco so I can't really disagree with their assessment.

It's a fascinating and complicated and very sad situation for everyone involved.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#65

Post by [deleted] »

debt wrote: post #64
[deleted] wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

While I agree that race should have nothing to do with it, culturally it's much more acceptable to talk about white gentrification then gentrification by any other race. Also, in this case I'm not interesting removing the white designator because it really is predominantly white males. Also the gentrification happening in the Mission is very much a race thing. "Keep the Mission brown" is a slogan used by many in this…

[deleted]

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#67

Post by NoPiece »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #59
[deleted] wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

What you're missing is that when people say an area is "becoming increasingly Black" they usually are talking about it going from 0% to 5%, or from 5% to 10%. Parts of San Francisco (at least certain businesses) are moving towards 100% white. It's a fundamentally different phenomenon.

If you look at real numbers, the white population of San Francisco has been declining for at least for the last 22 years (up until 2012). It is possible that in the last 2 years it has stopped, or even grown a little but it was 41.7% in 2012, and it is likely still under 50%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Demographics

edit: just looked at the census data, and in 1960, SF was 81% white. I think that adds some context to the "white tech nerds took over the city" idea.

http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty5...

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#68

Post by belovedlasher »

ashwinaj wrote: post #32
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #6

Right now it is noon in St. Louis and 19 degrees. Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees. I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.

I would also add that people the bay area in general, have a "let's get it done" attitude. In the south and mid west people are a lot more laid back and generally more interested in football, Bud light/Miller light/Coors light and liberal bashing rather than putting in all-nighters. It was an eye opening change when I moved to the SF bay area. I maybe an exception to the stereotypical software engineer, but I work be…

Woah woah. As a St. Louisian, I'd like to point out that we have an amazing selection of craft breweries.

As for the other statements, come to a hackathon or a Startup Weekend and see how motivated we really are.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#69

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

mjn wrote: post #31
carsongross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, man. I'd move in a heartbeat if it weren't for family in the area.

Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actual…

I live near Boulder, one of the "hot" cities to create a start-up. In December Inc. magazine named it the top city for start-ups in fact. [1]

Winters are only occasionally cold (it hit the 60s twice in the last week, and typically we get "warm" stretches throughout the winter, with only a couple of weeks of hard cold) and summers are dry.

And a friend of mine just bought a 3-bedroom house near here for ~$90k (about 30 minutes from downtown Boulder). My neighborhood (not in Boulder) goes for 3x that, and Boulder proper goes from twice that up to SF-level prices ($4.3M for a condo [2]), depending on the exact part of Boulder. There's a crazy steep price gradient.

On the other hand you can buy a 2 bedroom mobile home for less than $30k and live IN Boulder, if you want to really operate on a shoestring. [3] Depends on how you want to spend your money. :)

[1] http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/boulder-colorado-fast-gro...

[2] http://is.gd/MPZl88 -- the most expensive condo in Boulder as of today, according to Zillow. You can get into the $10's of millions for a house. But you can also pay less than a half million for a house. Like I said above, crazy price gradient.

[3] http://boulder.craigslist.org/reo/4275249378.html

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#70

Post by eliteraspberrie »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #6

Right now it is noon in St. Louis and 19 degrees. Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees. I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.

In the Toronto area this week, temperatures are about -20 degrees Celsius (-4 F) with 40-60 km/h (25-40 mph) wind. ;)
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