Hm. I guess because everything I've built is out here. I know I have a TechShop membership that if my car breaks down, I have tools, I can prototype hardware there, etc. I have a good solid 6 years here in the city for friends and community that I could tap into if I needed to. It's just nice to see the people that I care and love for. Also for startups this seems to be the place to be.

I salute you and your cyberpunk lifestyle.

In terms of major cities, San Francisco is among the best choices in terms of year-round weather. Snow, subzero temperatures, and associated clothing needs would definitely be much more problematic in your suggested cities.

Yeah, even sleeping through the winter down in Palo Alto was a little tough with a sleeping bag + comforter.

Equivalently, being outside during the day in areas hotter than Palo Alto is ludicrously taxing in pretty much every way.

The Bay is very kind to Homo sapiens, in terms of climate.

[Atlanta native here] Tell me about it, and don't forget to mention the humidity--a factor 5x more important than temperature per se, in my eyes. If I had to be in the hot sun, I'd take 100F in Phoenix over even 70F in Atlanta _any_ day.

Except if you don't have 3k rents you might be able to just find a place to live.

This is not "I've lost everything and am homeless with no way out" it's "I wanna build a startup so I'm going to go live in a van".

This is a pretty important point. You can get a very small apartment in Austin, TX, for $500 (and many other non-SF cites). If you're able to, spending ~$16 a day versus living in a van makes a lot of sense. Completely different if you don't have that $16.

Except when you can't.

Landlords very often just won't take you on at all if you don't show evidence of preëxisting stability. No proof of stable income? No housing—you can even offer to pay up-front or whatever, and they just won't bother dealing with you as a special case, because why would they deal with the special case when there's a dozen other safe, predictable, normal people in line behind you?

Got an income, but can't prove it to be consistently enough? Congratulations, no housing for you. And thus begins the downward spiral.

Yep. I have bad personal credit (< 600) due to a cash-strapped entrepreneurial background and a strategic default, and it took over 10+ apartment tours before we found someone willing to rent to us--at any price, and with any amount of up-front deposit--once the credit check came back.

I doubt most of the folk we dealt with would have taken us on even if I had offered to pay a full year's rent up front. It's just not worth the bother when there's a dual-income, no-kids couple with good credit next in line.

Ah yeah, I forgot about this.

I had to get my parents to co-sign on a lease... at 27, with a PhD, proof of employment, and "excellent" credit. It's pretty insane.

Just FYI, I know some great people in Cleveland. West Cleveland is a fine place to hang out and think in reclusion. I've camped out there several times, and if you wanted to stay longer, you could find a decent house to buy for under $20k. I'm sure one could find an extended-stay situation with room and board for $1 a day, or so. The city is relatively walkable. Food is cheap enough. Lots of shit to do.

I so want to do it again, but now I have kids.

I'm from the rust belt and went to college in Cleveland, hence my comment. I think it is a great place to live because the city was built before the car was invented and has a surplus of infrastructure.

I would definitely move back there instead of living in a van in SF. It would probably even be cheaper.

Because the type of person who would move into a van because STARTUP LIFE! can't contemplate moving out of one of the most expensive cities in the country.

There's lots of tech jobs in those places, and places like those, even if it means throwing out your expectations and program in something like Java for a large corporation.

As an aside - I think we should start a ground-up movement to buy up as much of detroit as possible and create 'Silicon Detroit' as the land value is ridiculously low - and tech could move in where the biggest expense would be bringing in only strong connectivity.

Other initiatives like urban farming could be done as well. I think detroit is super fertile.

Imagine what just a billion dollar fund could do for tech in that region.

Got to be careful with urban farming in those areas - lots of lead ended up in the ground during the 20th century.

That said, I'm in on the concept. For a few months a year (at most), I just need a small, private, quiet room with net, electric, and heat. Other amenities can be shared.

With a good plan and some solid leadership, I'd put money into it. But, there'd have to be some sort of contractual way to slow gentrification, if it took off.

Good point about the lead.

Alameda naval station chose to just try to build a big metal wall in the ground to capture the leakage as opposed to spending the money to clean up the toxicity...

> Imagine what just a billion dollar fund could do for tech in that region.

Lots of good for tech.

Should we send buses or just have some people go through and chase the current residents away on foot?

Honestly, in large swaths of Detroit, there are no current residents. There are entire blocks that are vacant.

"circuit-board-green shirts"

I would suggest it's so he doesn't move out of the potential area for users/testing/investor meetings/hiring, but if he's living out of a van, that's probably adding more challenges than it's resolving.

Because intellectual community is extremely hard to get. Unless you're moving to Ithaca, it's hard to find a place that is full of interesting people and ideas. This pushes you in ways you wouldn't get in places like Buffalo and so on - the culture of a city like San Francisco or Boston is full of smart people with a certain background (i.e., people who are interested in tech) who can stimulate you. You're far more likely to overhear a conversation about Claude Shannon or minimum spanning trees in SF than you are in Buffalo.

Detroit is not lacking for interesting people and ideas. We may differ on the what the word interesting means, though.

Absolutely not, I agree; I'd just say that "interesting" varies widely with the context. If what you're interested in is running a tech startup, Detroit is less "interesting". There are many, many terms on which San Francisco is less "interesting" than the rest of the country.

Do you lump Ann Arbor in with Detroit? Just curious.

Huh. Never lived in Ann Arbor or Detroit, just visited/had friends and family who lived there. My impression of Ann Arbor is that it's a college town where the population is relatively insulated from the surrounding community, unlike Boston where the colleges are heavily connected to local industry and so on. Everyone I've known from Detroit is an activist of some kind, so I probably have a biased sample set. But based on that I'd say "no", whereas I would definitely lump Cambridge in with Boston or Berkeley/Oakland in with SF.

Ithaca is a special place, I agree.

I agree re: community