I lived in LA for 5 years, and in SF proper for 3. I live in the midwest now and I prefer it, not because of the weather, but for the cost.
And therein lies the rub. We had the big house (that we had to clean more often and pay more to heat, cool, and maintain), the huge yard with lots of space (that we had to spend hours every weekend dealing with, along with the cost), the two cars (with their own costs and hassles), and so on.
What we didn't have was the respect of our community, or at least the recognition that families like ours should be full members of society. It's fucking awful to hear your governor on TV crowing about how immigrants are "ruining the state," or that the latest environmental-disaster of a highway project is "true freedom."
No amount of money can ever make up for that. Where we live now, we still get to save, we still are able to travel (well, pandemic notwithstanding), and we need not drive everywhere to do it and we feel accepted--or at least somewhere between begrudgingly tolerated and utterly adored--by the government of our state.
I used to optimize for cost; no longer.
I love Savannah and Augusta. Those cities are a lot of fun. I spent time living in both in my early 20s. The segregation both is and isn't there. It's very strange. I think that the feeling you're describing is due to the ghost of slavery. It was always very hard for me to separate the history of the antebellum south from those two cities specifically.
To be fair, though, the most segregated place I've ever lived was easily East Los Angeles. It doesn't have that same feeling that you describe, of course, which makes it ... different but in a slightly better way.
(I should also note that the idea they wanted familiarity is just one part of why specific minorities live together. Another is because of the effects of racism actively rejecting any attempt to integrate.)
I love these areas and the cultures I dont have to travel afar to get a taste of.
I just found it odd as being in Rosemead the other day and then seeing that, probably just a crossed wire, my apologies.
There are plenty of people in a self righteous bubble who think they are enlightened and those in the red states are mouth breathers who spend their day looking to hate people.
Meanwhile you see people in the Bay Area with BLM signs in their yard yet no actual black lives live in their neighborhood.
That said, I did know several Indians (n=4, subcontinent, not Sioux, all Hindu, not Muslim) who seemed to enjoy Texas more than the gringos. They were all highly educated like the aforementioned cohort but also really into pickup trucks. We lost touch over the years and I’m curious to see how they viewed the cultural shifts under the outgoing administration.
San Francisco is 6.1% Black
Would maybe slow the roll on who is more diverse.
SF is more diverse (even just racially; ethnicity and national origin just makes that even more clear.) There's more to the world that White and Black.
(Also, in the Bay Area, Oakland is 22.7% Black and about the population of Tulsa, so if you are looking for concentrated Blackness, the Bay Area has Tulsa beat on that as well as diversity.)
As for Oakland the black pop is steadily declining, and might even be sub 20% when 2020 Census #s are released, in a decade might be mid teens.
No, in the context of the posts upthread of it, while it referenced an anti-black mass slaughter as an indicator of unwelcoming aspects of local culture, it did not imply that it was just talking about blacks.
Having your family members feel dehumanized in every interaction in their daily routines is not worth any amount of money if you care at all about your family when you can instead love somewhere where basic respect is the born.
While I understand what you’re going for here, this feels a bit eugenics-ish to me. They are as much a human being as you are and people are capable of change. Odds are they didn’t choose to live there.
If you can’t admit that you, with your own mind and morals, would act the same way in the same circumstances, that doesn’t seem any different than the bigotry you accuse ‘them’ of.
Totally agree. But these attitudes towards fellow people tend to pair with unproductive behaviours.
Now, there are plenty of exceptions. Highly productive people with abhorrent views. But on average, acidic views tend to go with lower incomes at a population level. (I make no assertion on which way causation flows. And within a city, the relationship breaks down.)
This is classism and itself is abhorrent. As someone who lives in NYC, living in NYC and discussing abhorrent views in red states as correlated to income sounds utterly ridiculous on its face when we have our own corrupt NYPD (Stop and frisk, the kettling and brutality on peaceful protestors), ineffective mayor, and increased gentrification leading to homelessness.
I'm absolutely baffled by "I treat living in NYC as a way to get away from lower income people and their abhorrent views" when NYC has lower income people that are actively being disenfranchised and the wealthy simply look the other way (which arguably is abhorrent!).
In private they hate the 'poors, blacks, queers', et al.
Boggled my mind reading gp's comment, as in my experience it's been the reverse- I had to distance myself from the wealthy part of my own family because 'the poors' have always been better people in general: more forgiving, understanding, compassionate.
That does not mean, within the city, the wealthy are more tolerant than the poor. It’s a system effect. When tolerant people densify, they become more productive. This might be because they can exist more compactly. Or it might be something about how interactions in a tolerant society work.
The country club analogy was solely an equivalence of cost. If I were in Tulsa, I imagine I would have to pay that much to get access to the restaurants, theatre, arts and clubs that I take for granted in New York.
But delusions can be purchased.
"The program, started by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is paying people $10,000 to move to Tulsa, Okla"
The great thing about religion is that it attracts fanatics who are willing to do this work. I wish there was a movement to make the world a better place with missionaries going abroad and to remote places to make people more open minded and less individualistic.
Yes, bigotry is a nasty stain. Otherwise this thought sounds so tone deaf.
The common perception outside California is that Californians royally fucked it up and are flooding out like water from a ruptured damn, except they are bringing their political baggage with them to damage their new home just like the thing they can’t escape from fast enough.
People try and recreate Silicon Valley while arguing non competes must be enforced. As if the ideas must inherently be unrelated.
it's only odd if you think economic productivity is the sole determination of what makes a desirable place to live. regarding SF in particular, it's phenomenal what has been accomplished there, don't get me wrong. but this has to be weighed against the fact that a "starter home" costs $1mm, the rate of petty crime rivals that of the most dangerous cities in america, etc. it's not cognitive dissonance to acknowledge that, while great things have been accomplished, a lot of stupid mistakes have also been made.
and by the way, I don't think the ban on non-competes is usually what people are thinking of when they describe california as a mess.
Antibusiness/antiemployer government intervention is the most commonly explicitly-cited thing, and pretty much every State law, rule, and regulation that favors employees or restricts employers is included in that basket.
Correction: SF has nation-leading levels of property crime, a leaderboard dominated by west coast cities. The US cities with highest violent crime rates have comparably low property crime. Which makes sense: Property crime is riskier in those places.
The average house in Riverdale Chicago is worth less than the average car in Silicon Vally. People there make less money from armed robbery than someone can shoplift from a Silicon Valley Apple store. So shockingly with different risk/reward payoffs you get more property crime instead of armed robbery.
SF property crime: 57.01/1000
SF median home: $1,195,367
SF per-capita income: $64k
NYC property crime: 18.64/1000
NYC median home: $1,126,049
NYC per-capita income: $73k
Palo Alto property crime: 22.88/1000
Palo Alto median home: $2,363,833
Palo Alto per-capita income: $89k
Chicago property crime: 32.48/1000
Chicago median home: $272,043
Chicago per-capita income: $34k
So SF has worse property crime even though it is on-par or poorer than NYC and Palo Alto.
But, if you’re confusing the point, clearly median income isn’t the only factor. Palo Alto is 2,712.65/sq mi where San Francisco is 18,790.74/sq mi. It’s over the hump where you don’t get poor people begging etc. Similarly, manhattan effectively segregates the rich an poor in a way that San Francisco doesn’t, but wealth very much is a factor when comparing San Francisco to similar areas.
The only question people are left asking is if a CA transplant believes their different way of doing things is so much better then why did they leave and why don’t they go back.
I have a relative with an advanced degree in a state without labor laws who has to work 12 and 13 hour shifts with zero breaks standing up.
I am from near Tulsa and there's absolutely no way in hell you'll ever catch my family moving back to there. It's hot, humid, comes with tornadoes, you have to drive everywhere (and everywhere is set up on the assumption you will drive). Plus, I will never forget the clerk at the licensing office who, after the rules changed to require "proof of legal status" to renew a driving license, gave my wife shit for having "married up to America" when she presented her green card as proof of status. (Never mind that my wife had been a permanent resident for years prior to us meeting.)
Everywhere has its upsides and its flaws, but at least where I live now has the benefit of the vast majority of people and culture here doesn't want to throw my loved ones out on their ear. Perhaps some of the new arrivals moving there will change that culture. I hope so.