Would you ever live in San Francisco?

doesn't san francisco have a high suicide rate?

 

AwesomGaytheist:

A lot of people move there. Some stay and some come back. What I've seen is that those who move from a big city are more likely to stay than those who come from more rural areas, but that's my sample of friends and acquaintances. It's a beautiful place with so much to do, both in the city and in the area, and I've been there in February and wore shorts, so you can't argue with that! However, it is really expensive and it is really crowded. It's a great place to visit, and I know it well, but it's over the top for me for everyday living.

 

If I had the money to do so, sure, why wouldn't I want to? However it's expensive. Not as expensive as New York, but still expensive.

Plus the fact that it's so expensive has priced out a lot of interesting and artistic people as well as younger gays, so it's mostly just rich old people who are able to afford to live there. That's a common phenomenon across many American cities these days, unfortunately.

Gays, isolated from mainstream society, move in and gentrify a run-down, low-income area, make it desirable to live in, and eventually all the Yuppies and annoying rich families with their strollers show up to take advantage of what other people created, along with corporate businesses swooping in and taking over, pricing out the original gay hipster community. That's gentrification for you!

 

I actually love the weather there. As well as the weather in Vancouver BC, Seattle, Portland (outside of their month of Summer in August, anyways) - but I sense I'm in a minority .



If I can find a job with a salary that does enough to compensate the high living cost, I will absolutely be there, in the future.

And I've heard the most wonderful stories from San Fran people I've met - about its social tolerance combined with "eccentricity/weird factor." [I do not necessarily equate liberals with those factors, by the way] Those are traits I find highly desirable...and it sounds like it's as good as you can get in America (when I include other countries, Amsterdam usually gets the highest amount of votes...per planet Earth ).

 

Well, I live in a city that's about 45 minutes away from San Francisco, but I have been living in SF for the past three years since I go to college there. As liberal and gay-friendly as it is here, I would never actually want to live here.

1) As you mentioned, the weather is terrible. I'm very sensitive to the cold, so SF is like hell for me. The mornings are like 40 degrees and highs are low 60s; the average weather is about mid 50s. Once in a blue moon, it will actually reach 70 and the sun will show. Fog isn't that much of an issue; it just makes the sky look gloomy as hell...and it already looks gloomy to begin with. It's usually dark with grey clouds and barely any sun showing. And even if the weather gets a bit warmer, there's always strong winds blowing. It also rains often.

2) Housing is ridiculously expensive for places that aren't even nice. Most of the buildings here are so old and run down and small, but they still cost a fortune to live in. The older houses have no insulation, so as if it wasn't already cold enough, you'll be even colder inside. Plus, you can hear everything going on in the house...there's no sound proofing in these buildings. On days that are 70 degrees outside and I'm in my room inside the house, I still have to turn on my space heater and sit right next to it while I'm bundled in sweats/sweaters/socks.

3) Driving and parking are a nightmare. If you have a car, you better know how to parallel park really well and be ready to have your car dinged by other drivers. If you park in the city, you have to feed the meter. If you park in the residential areas, you have to buy a residential parking permit. You also have to constantly be aware of the signs on every street that state all the restrictions for parking there. There are certain hours during which you can't park on each street. There are street cleaning days where you also can't park there during certain times. If you park outside, you'll also have to defrost or even scrape ice off your windshield every morning since nights are so cold. There is a lot of public transportation, but they are not always that reliable, not usually on time, and it costs a lot and adds up.

4) While it may seem that there are a lot of fun things to do, I personally don't like the city that much. It just looks very old and dirty in most places. It's very crowded and just not an environment that I like. It's fun to visit all those tourist places like Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, Golden Gate Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, Castro, Haight-Ashbury, Union Square, etc. but the novelty of those places wear off quickly, and I wouldn't want to stay living in the city permanently.

I'm not trying to bash San Francisco, but I'm just giving you my honest view of the city from my experience. I've lived near it and have gone to it for almost 21 years and have lived directly in it for the past 3. After college, I'm anxious to get out of there. Despite all the cons I've listed, I still do appreciate that the city is liberal and gay-friendly. There is definitely a lot of diversity here, and you'll see some of the craziest things you've ever seen here. But sometimes, there are also a lot of crazy people, too (just look up "san francisco bart naked man" on YouTube for an example haha; you probably wouldn't see that anywhere else but SF).

 

Since I have always lived in California, I have been there plenty of times. Its very nice and not always chilled or foggy. Though I have never really had a strong desire to live there.

My personal favorites in California are San Diego and LA. San Diego is absolutely beautiful and it is very calm there. There isn't hundreds of people everywhere you look. LA is just a great social center and would offer me the most career opportunities. Its essentially like a west coast New York, they aren't specifically beautiful, but there is something beautiful about them.

Anyway, I will be studying in LA next year, but yes they are all expensive. Though they all have very prominent LGBT populations.


Edit: What Musikk has pointed out is very true, but when it comes down to it the city is definitely one of those Love It or Hate It situations. For instance, New York City is essentially like living in a damn dumpster when you pick it apart, but it definitely has a strange allure to it.

 

40-70 degrees year round is cold?

(Hehe can't help but rib anyone that thinks that...coming from someone who used to routinely spend weeks without getting above 0F. ).

 

Well, anything below 65 is just too far for Californians. lol

 

Erm, how is (living in) New York City like living in a damn dumpster?

I mean, granted NYC isn't perfect, but I'd still rather live here than 99% of the places in the world that people get stuck living in. There are many many much worse places to live than NYC.

 

Spoil't.

Well, the trash does tend to pile up at a certain point of day. And if you're not used to East Coast cities the lack of anything green in Manhattan is going to feel bizarre Edit (Well, ok you've got the one park ). (Just outsiders looking in here, Rakkaus).

It'd certainly get my East Coast vote though... And of course there are much worse places to live. Even if you had a "Switzerland standard" for cleanliness, NYC is bound to have something on "the list" for absolutely anyone.

 

I would definitely consider it. I'm open to living most anywhere - weather isn't an issue for me. I grew up in Minnesota where hell freezes over, and now I live in Florida where just thinking of going outside makes me sweat.

The high cost of living could certainly be an issue, so I wouldn't move there unless I could get a good job. Fortunately there are a lot of high tech jobs in the area, and since I want to do something in software development anyway it could work out great.

However, I've never been there before so I suppose I don't really know. I would have to visit to see if I would really like it.

 

I've never been there, but from what I've heard, I wouldn't want to live there.

 

Oh, of course. Although New York is not on the top of my list, I would still live there. I'm just saying that if you picked it apart in the same format of the previous post than no one "should" want to live there, but New York is more amusing/alluring, then aesthetically pleasing.

I wasn't at all insinuating that it was a bad thing.

 

Love California, would love to move there but I prefer LA to SoCal. San Francisco is nice but not my thing.

 

the weather is perfect for me. I grew up in oregon, 65 and fog isnt that bad.

I would live there if I had the means. that, or new york city; I am a theatre nut, and san fransico is one of the main places they do pre-broadway runs of musicals.

 

Honestly, I have no desire to live anywhere in California mainly because of the cost of living.

 

Actually, most of California's inland areas are comparably priced to many other parts of the U.S. That's where a lot of people end up when the prices in big cities on the coast become too expensive. Some seem to do ok with the move and others whine as to what they left behind. However, there's negligible humidity throughout California.

 

Well perhaps it depends on what an individual is looking for. But I think a lot of perceptions of NYC are outdated.

New York City of 20, 30, 40 years ago took great pride in being the capital of grime and crime, where American society's rejects could go to have a good time on the cheap, hop the turnstiles to ride a graffiti-filled broken-down subway car to 42nd street to see a peep show and pick up hookers and drugs....and many New Yorkers treasured the excitement of living in their 'dumpster'.

But nowadays New York City, post-Giuliani, post-Bloomberg, is pretty clean and green, and by some measures downright sterile. Gentrification has transformed it into something more European, more like San Francisco than like its former self. That's why after decades of urban decline it's become a trendy destination for hipsters (and then the yuppies that follow). Entire neighborhoods of Brooklyn have been taken over by hipsters, and the costs of living there have risen astronomically as a result.

I recently read an article about how the borough of Brooklyn, once the humble destination for people who couldn't afford to live in Manhattan, had become the 2nd most expensive city in the U.S., after Manhattan, pushing San Francisco into 3rd place. :eek:

I'm not sure whether NYC and SF are really comparable though. NYC has a population of 8.3 million people, while SF is more like 820,000. The Borough of Manhattan alone has twice the population of SF. So it's naturally going to be a different feel, depending on how big a city you want to live in. There are advantages and disadvantages to living in a mega metropolis versus a cozier environment.

---------- Post added 15th Jun 2013 at 05:08 PM ----------

Except inland California is mostly a miserable place to live, the economy is terrible, and it certainly lacks the excitement and queer culture of the Bay Area or LA. And for people coming from SF or LA, the inland areas of CA are as conservative as if moving to Utah or Oklahoma.

Which is why most of the refugees fleeing soaring costs of the San Francisco Bay Area in the past few decades have moved to cities in other states like Washington, Oregon, Colorado. And consequently driven the costs of living up in places like Seattle, Portland, Boulder.

 

No.