- I enjoy not needing a car. Many neighborhoods are walkable.
- I appreciate the mild weather. E.g. I lived in NYC, and though I did not need a car, humid summers and snowy winters made it less pleasant to be outside.
- It's dense but not _too_ dense. NYC felt legitimately claustrophobic sometimes.
- It's still an LGBT mecca. Prior to the pandemic, I could be in queer spaces on a daily basis.
I don't know that I'll be in SF forever. But when I think of moving, I wonder where I would go, and what my life would look like when I get there. I grew up in suburbs and still associate those neighborhoods with isolation. Among US cities, it's hard to meet all of these.
2) SF & Valley: Diversity. Bay Area cities top the list of largest number of foreign born residents, with only LA and NYC being competitive.
3) SF & Valley: Weather. LA beats us here, but SF trounces NYC, Boston, DC, and Seattle.
4) Just SF: Walkability and street life. SF is more walkable than most cities (the weather helps with that), and although it has shitty public transit options, it's only shitty in comparison to places with actual good public transit, which more or less don't exist in the US.
5) Just SF: Weirdness. Okay, SF has driven out most of the interesting weirdo and artistic crowds and replaced them with CrossFitting Burners. But there are still remnants of that culture, more so than most places except perhaps NYC.
6) SF & Valley: Food. It's mediocre in comparison to the scenes in LA and NYC. But it's still worlds better than the rest of the country.
7) SF: Arts. Similar to food, it's mediocre compared to LA and NYC. But it's still worlds better than the rest of the country.
8) SF & Valley: Nature. West Coast cities are all competitive here, as is Denver/Boulder (though even they lack the beaches), but this is another place where East Coast cities fall short.
In the end, the only plausibly competitive cities on this scoring matrix are LA and NYC. LA sacrifices a lot of the walkability and weirdness of SF. NYC sacrifices the weather, and moving to NYC from SF isn't going to get you of any the much vaunted coupon-cutting decrease in cost of living that everyone in these comments is so pumped about.
Just to be fair, I'll also list disadvantages of SF:
1) Cost of living. "No one is willing to pay that much to live in SF, it's too expensive."
2) Dating scene for men.
3) Travel. Subjective, but East Coast cities are better situated for international travel than the West Coast.
4) Cleanliness. Yep, SF is an unhygienic shithole in many places.
5) Monoculture. Too many tech folks here, not enough diversity in industry.
On the nature front, there are really a lot of great public lands on the east coast. They are a bit less iconic than what you can find on the west coast, but you can still hike, camp, climb, ski and beach to your heart's content.
I think comparing SF to DC and Boston makes the most sense just due to similar size. LA and NYC are in a class of their own.
Walkability: for pros, DC is flatter and cleaner. The Metro is cleaner and more reliable than Muni. For cons, the city itself is a bit more spread out, and its hinterlands (e.g. Tysons or Silver Spring), although accessible via public transit, are much less walkable than San Francisco's hinterlands (e.g. Berkeley or Palo Alto). But the biggest issue is that D.C. is just not really walkable in either the depths of winter or the heights of summer (although evenings can be pretty pleasant, and you can actually enjoy an evening out on a patio). Maybe I'm a wimp with low tolerances, but that's six months of the year gone right there.
Diversity: SF is around 1/3 foreign born, while DC is like 1/6 or 1/8. Almost half of SF speaks a language other than English at home, while DC is more like a quarter. DC is diverse, just not as diverse as SF.
I agree with the rest of what you said.
Metro absolutely does not serve many areas. It's a far cry from NYC or European cities, but was totally workable as long as you stuck to the city and certain suburbs.
As somebody who has lived on three continents in major metro area's as well as countryside IMO SFBA has the best dating scene.
I am married now, so I have been out of the single pool for a couple years...but before that I will say that SFBA had the most attractive pool of available woman in the world, if intelligence, creativity, independence, being self starters and physical attractiveness is what you value.
I sure found the love of my life here.
I have one friend who lived at a base in Antarctica for awhile, and he favorably compared the dating scene there to what's in SF.
But personally I had no game with woman in NYC or LA....in part because what each party wanted from a partner was incompatible.
Where did you end up moving that you found a better fit for yourself?
The only two things you miss in VA on your list is "grittiness" which is a negative for me, and walkability, which you could get if you go closer to DC.
That said -- and I hear pushback on this from other threads -- my job opportunities here for any senior level roles are next to nil. This could be because I do not have a security clearance (a local favorite), or it could be because the job pyramid here in DC/NoVa really is differently shaped than SF/SV, or it could be that i'm an outsider w/o a deep social network, or perhaps I'm not looking at the area correctly.
As an anecdote, I get tons of Linked In messages for opportunities in California. CTO positions, VP positions at venture backed growth startups, all across the board. I get almost no in-bounds from companies in DC except for consulting firms (been there, done that when i was 20-25, not sure if that is a good fit at my current stage in life.)
I'm sure part of it is my profile. I have lots of real-time systems, model, quant, Computer Vision, and tech leadership background. I'm just not sure how much of a market there is for that -- though I'm positive having a security clearance would change things dramatically.
This presents a serious concern for me, and a balancing act for continued happiness in DC/VA.
The more I think about it, the more I realize the choice of where you live is barely rational, if at all. Sure we come up with reason about why we are where we are post hoc, but are those the real reasons?
I can almost guarantee I will never move to DC or Virginia. Not because it isn't an amazing place with everything you can want, but because it's just not me for some reason that's hard to articulate. I would guess you would almost guarantee you'd never move to CA, too.
SF/Bay Area is "Good enough" for your needs and VA is "Good enough" for mine and it's not some optimized process, moreso an artifact of our relative histories.
Not sure SF's climate can be considered universally better. I think I would get sick of it never actually getting warm.
To be perfectly honest, the only thing missing is our friends and family in Canada. It wasn't so bad when we could visit 2-3 times a year, but the pandemic has put a stop to that.
My wife works in Biotech and the only other alternative for us would be the Boston area. But, after running some numbers pro/cons, the Bay Area wins.
So we are stuck here ... for now.
My two favorite cities in the US are San Francisco and Philadelphia. Many people hate those places with a passion. To each their own!
* Food - an incredible an ever-changing restaurant scene, from cheesesteaks to 10-course tasting menus. And all much more affordable than fine dining in most US cities, plus free BYOB is extremely common. * Music / Sports - incredible music scene with major and minor venues of all kinds, and a professional sports team in all 4 major leagues with a passionate fanbase. * Size - neither a very large city (NYC) nor a very small city (Boston). Easy to get around, narrow streets make it very walkable. * Attitude - Philly people are just different. I'd describe it as a "warm hostility" :) but you'll find Philadelphians are very welcoming while also being brutally honest. * Diversity - there is no racial majority in Philly. It's about 40% white, 40% black, and 20% other. * Price - Philly is cheap!
I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere.
I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture that many people love. However the basic infrastructure and problems with SF are well known and have been documented.
I can't see at this point how the former plusses of SF outweigh the latter negatives and frankly I see no inherent plusses to the Valley.
It seems that people (technologists mostly) literally only value the valley because of technology companies and even more pointedly - because that's where the big VC money lives.