I'm writing from San Jose right now. I a few minutes away from downtown on my electric bike. It's a city like many others. I've lived in Orlando, San Diego, Seattle, Norfolk, Providence.
I'm guessing you worked long hours in an office park and shuttled between a generic apartment and your generic office park. That's dystopian, I agree, but it's not enough experience of a city to judge it and you could have that experience in many other cities.
I'm not really defending San Jose, I'm just saying it's no worse than most other cities. It lacks a waterfront. Cities with water fronts usually seem better.
Most of San Jose is just tract homes, office parks, strip malls, and parking lots.
The worst part of San Jose is that there's absolutely zero culture here. Like none. Anything interesting in the Bay Area, it's in SF.
Edit: I'm basing my opinion on a lot of time spent wandering around by car to have a look around North America. Over 100,000 miles. Some cities that have a good rep actually suck in my opinion, like Austin TX. Actually the most interesting city in N. America appeared to be Vancouver Canada, but I'm not a citizen so I couldn't live there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow_(automobile_exhibitio...
I’m not sure how that makes you feel better spending all that money to live in a place that makes Cleveland look downright exciting in comparison. At least SF and Oakland have some more excitement to go with the unbelievable cost of living and quality of life issues.
As a Bay native, a younger version of me would've produced the mirror image to that rant along the lines of: "why are New Yorkers so angry and aggressive about everything? are they just miserable because they're all packed like sardines into that shabby concrete prison? why can't they just be chill like Californians?"
No accounting for taste!
Rude, brash, and raw. Problems are solved with heated verbal sparring — then you both get it out of your system and move on with life.
Everywhere else feels like I’m walking on eggshells or having to really restrain myself to get along.
Most New Yorkers aren’t cynical. Most Bay Area folks aren’t toxically positive. But it’s silly to imagine that the urban infrastructure doesn’t influence peoples’ psyches - they totally do!
I hate it though
People there act like or want to be categorized in the same tier as NY, London, Hong Kong and has nothing to cater to them except the people that want to check out to anytown USA with a high achieving leaning, but it doesnt have the self awareness to realize that
American postwar suburbia has a well-oiled machine for metabolizing growth, but it has to be fed with virgin land. The Bay Area long ago ran out. The growth kept on going, so it manifests in house prices and dysfunction instead.
However, in the interest of shaking everyone off my trail, I will mention that there’s many affordable, walkable towns and cities outside Philly and Chicago that were built up 100 years along the commuter railroads. In the absence of zoning-related tyranny, transit oriented development happens naturally. Look for towns and cities that were built before 1945, before we paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Won't find anywhere livable west of Chicago until you reach Tokyo...
Absolutely not true - and shame on you if you've never explored the older neighborhoods downtown.
However I definitely agree that overall it's a huge did of a city for its size (and most especially for the housing costs). And that you're saying applies to at least 90 percent of it by surface area. "Not a real place" absolutely nails it.
Won't find anywhere livable west of Chicago until you reach Tokyo...
Not true at all. Sounds like you've almost never been out there, except for a random business trip or two. The west coast isn't my ideal either, but it has plenty of perfectly livable places (if you can only somehow afford to settle down there).
That’s all^ for if you don’t have a car. Yea with a car you can access all the suburban stuff of which there is a lot (eg. shopping and restaurants at Westfield, The Pruneyard, eg. amazing hiking at New Almaden, Saratoga Quarry Park, eg. the vast amenities of nearby small cities). I recommend a car, it gives you access to more stuff, but is definitely not necessary, and even if you have one you don’t need to drive for everyday needs.
My one complaint about San Jose is not enough of a base of everyday cultural events, specifically live music and stand up comedy. The only small music venue I am familiar with that has regular bands is Mama Kin’s. There is no good regular stand up comedy to my knowledge. I guess SF and Oakland suck that energy out of SJ, but that’s a real deficiency.
I live in a town of 80,000 now, that feels more urban than San Jose. It's crazy. San Jose is not a real place. It's a million people all dispersed in a couple hundred square miles, seemingly at random, all in their little boxes on the side of a highway. No landmarks, no tall buildings, no walkable areas. It's not the middle of nowhere, it is nowhere. I'd say you could not design a "city" more poorly if you tried, but the rest of Silicon Valley sure proves me wrong there! Mountain View is even worse somehow!
I'd say that they'd have better luck selling New Yorkers on their dystopian suburban hellscape if they weren't so obnoxiously positive about having paved paradise and put up a parking lot, but toxic positivity is kinda California's whole thing. They're not capable of putting themselves into our cynical headspace. You have to buy into all that woo-woo crap to survive out there. We're fundamentally incompatible with it. Won't find anywhere livable west of Chicago until you reach Tokyo...