
If San Francisco Is So Great, Why Is Everyone I Love Leaving? - jseliger
https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-why-is-everyone-i-love-leaving-d2b167471c35
======
101km
The first time I went to work here a few months ago I got out of the Lyft
around 9am and two meters away a homeless man was injecting something into his
veins. My office is in the Mission.

Some parts of San Francisco are very dirty and the homeless issue is not
exaggerated. Everybody knows about the Tenderloin at night.

With that being said, I drove across the US two years ago and if you keep your
eyes open you realize it is all over - Portland and Seattle are no better,
just less talked about.

My rent is $1300, I live with one roommate on Russian Hill. I'm flexible and
lucky so this is not representative. A girl I know who works at Google lives
in inner Richmond (arguably a less desirable area) by herself and pays nearly
triple for some reason.

It is hard to find a proper gym for less than a Benjamin and food is above
average for an American city but hilariously expensive. Good way to gauge is
pick some fast food chain and compare, Dennys is x2 here than the rest of the
country.

All in all this place isn't the shiny happy city you'd imagine from watching
Full House or or the counter culture epicenter of hippie times gone by. It
doesn't suck, I'd definitely visit for a week or two if you have never been,
and there's a lot of history here but in the end it is no longer a very
remarkable place to live.

~~~
rsync
"... and food is above average for an American city ..."

The food in San Francisco and Marin is the best food in the world, by a fair
margin.

In 2018, food, food venues, eating environments and _every other aspect_ of
dining, the world over, is being invented and reshaped in San Francisco.

Go anywhere else in the world, at any price point, from the first class lounge
at Hong Kong airport to the mall food court in Granada, Spain, and everyone is
inspired by, or directly copying, what is being done here.

EDIT: my parent spoke not of a particular restaurant, but the food of the
city, generally. That is what I am talking about - not who has the best BBQ
joint in your favorite BBQ genre, but which _city_ has the best food (as
opposed to "above average for an American city").

I stand by the assertion that food(ie) culture, worldwide, is being driven by
SF.

~~~
JPKab
That's a very bold statement, and frankly demonstrates the insular, self
congratulatory circle jerk of the Bay Area. Amazing food, of course, but I've
been to an open air Tejano restaurant in a garden outside of San Antonio that
beat anything in the Bay, roaming chickens and all.

The proprietors could give a shit about SF. And oh yeah, your BBQ sucks. Sure,
I can get decent brisket, but for triple the price and half the portion.

~~~
subway
Rudy's was hands down the number one thing I missed in moving from SA to SF.
Eventually I found solace at Everett and Jones in Berkeley, but even that'll
never come close to Texas BBQ.

------
manfredo
I've lives a while in Seattle (childhood to 2010) and San Francisco 4 years
ago to present. My take on it is that San Francisco isn't really significantly
better or worse than comparable dynamic cities. It's got good cultural,
social, and economic opportunities. But it's nothing super special, and it
largely doesn't justify the cost unless you're getting paid a premium to live
there (thus why it's dominated by higher paid workers mostly in tech).

I'm not so sure whether it's fair to say that this is the wealthy people
deliberately imposing exclusory policies. It's mostly long time residents that
are anti-development and favor nativist policies like rent control. Most of
the tech workers I know want the city to build more housing and remove
nativist policies. But some, like proposition 13, are enacted by the state and
our ability to remove them is very limited.

~~~
the_clarence
You’re the first person I’ve seen being against rent control. You want to rent
a place where the landlord can double the rent the following week?

~~~
manfredo
The only people who benefit from rent control are long time residents that
were fortunate enough to start ending a long time ago. Everyone else is
subsidizing those people. This is why rent control is a nativist policy. Not
to mention, rent control suppresses willingness to build more housing thus
contributing to the chronic undersupply of housing in places like San
Francisco that have extensive rent control. People would be a lot less eager
to shoot down development proposals if they felt the impact of rising rents.
But currently, only ~30-40% of the renter population is affected by rising
rents.

~~~
the_clarence
You are not answering my question. What is your proposed solution to avoid
having a landlord doubling your rent in a week?

~~~
manfredo
The solution is to build enough housing such that the market rate is
affordable. Then, landlords need to keep rents low enough to be competitive
with other apartments.

------
burfog
If a city is nice, then crowds will arrive until it is not nice. There are two
main kinds of "not nice", prices and the annoyances of your fellow human
beings.

The end result is that locations that are physically nice will be occupied by
people who have a relatively high tolerance for those two not-nice attributes
and a relatively high desire for the physical niceness.

So if you like cool weather and pretty hills and the ocean, and you don't mind
violent crime or hepatitis or $2,000,000 houses, then you'll be happy to wedge
yourself in like a chicken in a factory farm. It takes a certain type of
person to decide that this is the best choice.

~~~
osdiab
There are plenty of examples of nice places that remain nice even as people
move in. It's up to the city to be dynamic enough to adapt to a changing
environment.

In concrete terms, that means: building sufficient housing and infrastructure
to keep life affordable and smooth; designing (or shepherding emergent
patterns of) functional, livable neighborhoods; and addressing social problems
as they arise.

You might be surprised to find that you can still get a studio in Tokyo within
45 minutes of the city center for ~$400/mo (bump up to ~$600 if you want to be
15 minutes away), that it's easy and efficient to get around to nice urban and
natural amenities, and that there are endless quiet, peaceful, and utterly
charming neighborhoods, parks, and temples right next to all the hotspots.
You'll never see any feces on the street, you never see anybody shooting up
needles, and nobody will ever beg you to spare a dollar.

Part of that is cultural, but most of that is by concerted effort.

But positive outcomes like that can only happen if a city successfully adapts
to changes—which San Francisco (and virtually every American city to varying
degrees) has abysmally failed at. As another commenter pointed out up the
page, San Francisco's public policy has been very nativist, and the physical
form of the city has remained more or less unchanged for decades, which spells
disaster for one of the most coveted places to move to in the world.

------
kbos87
San Francisco has never appealed to me. When I’ve told people that in the
past, they’ve looked at me like I have two heads. For anyone who doesn’t live
or spend much time there, the romantic notion of SF is pretty great. It’s got
a lot going for it - a unique geography, it’s full of landmarks and
architecture and history - but the day to day reality of what it’s become is
just sad. It’s a pretty unliveable place unless you are a true millionaire,and
the character it once had is quickly evaporating.

------
chrisallick
haha. San Francisco is awful. That title is misleading and uninformed. Grew up
there. Got a degree in math and comp sci and returned to work. Lasted a year
before being so disgusted by the self quarantining of the rich.

It’s a tech distopia. I’m not even talking about having to step over human
feces 3 times per block. I’m talking about the utter lack of ethics and values
of the people who have descended like rabid vultures to manipulate the tech
utopian thinkers and then run with the money. The damage is done and we’re
just now starting to see the impact it’s had on the people that haven’t been
taken along for the ride to the top. That place is a lost cause.

I guess it would have been cool to be there during the Alan Kay xerox parc
days. Probably intoxicatingly inspiring environment. But now... I hope it
burns. I’ll show up to repair and rebuild.

I do enjoy the Marin headlands though. And I suppose I’ll take a Taqueria SF
burrito most days of the week. And the punk scene in Berkeley was great, and
growing up skating there was awesome, but... meh the bad outweighs the good.

~~~
walrus01
> the utter lack of ethics and values of the people who have descended like
> rabid vultures to manipulate the tech utopian thinkers

a lot of these people, having destroyed SF as a livable city, are now moving
on to Seattle. Which is rapidly also turning into a city with feces laden
sidewalks and a tech dystopia.

~~~
chrisallick
Seattle has the 1/3rd largest homeless population and the city wanted a $500
per employee tax from amazon. Amazon said they’d move their business and also
haulted construction on new building. 40k employees, that’s 20million a year.
They then lobbied and got it repealed after city lowered to $250/employee.

He than turns and donates millions/billions ONCE, but that’s specks of sand
compared to what would be generated over time yearly and consistently.

So... no faith in that city either and no faith in tech in general. Super sad.

~~~
whoisjuan
People get the Seattle tax story wrong. The money was not a problem. USD 250
is a negligible amount for an employee that earns above $100K a year.

The problem is taxing job headcounts regardless the amount. That creates a
horrible precedent for any company trying to do business in a city. It's
basically telling business owners that the jobs they are creating are not
welcomed. It's penalizing the core of what makes an economy productive.

Let's put Amazon out of the picture for a minute. Since the head tax was meant
to tax large employers, it's kind of hard to see in the micro context what
imposing a job headcount tax actually means. So for the sake of the example
let's say that the head tax applied for any business owner (not hard to
imagine since implementing it for large employers create precedence for taxing
small employers).

Let's imagine that the business that we are talking about is Mommy's Bakery.
The head tax in Seattle was the equivalent of telling mommy to pay a USD 750
ransom for her three employees or to fuck off. Mommy is already collecting and
paying taxes and fees.

She is employing people that are putting money back into the local economy,
but the city feels that the act of job creation is adding to their problems.
So they decide that they want to tax those headcounts.

This is more or less the equivalent of you helping a friend or relative with
some money and they coming back and telling you, "hey thanks for the hundred
bucks, but because I'm gonna get wasted tonight and gonna spend it all on
drinks, I'd need 6 bucks more to get back home".

Yeah sure, six bucks are not too much but just asking for them after you gave
them a USD 100, it's utterly ridiculous.

This is how the Seattle city employers felt when the head tax was proposed.
They already contribute millions of dollars to the city economy in taxes and
jobs, but the city still wanted to get more to justify their gross
incompetence when it comes to dealing with the homelessness crisis.

------
kylec
A big part of this is that San Francisco attracts people that don't actually
want to live there, they're just there for the jobs. Once they've had enough,
or find a more desirable opportunity elsewhere, they leave.

~~~
seppin
Also they only hire one type of person (engineer) which has created a
monoculture of people not predisposed to being outwardly friendly. (I know
this is a stereotype, but sometimes stereotypes are true).

~~~
adjkant
I think part of that lack of outward friendliness is both transplants
generally as well as those people that don't actually want to be there. But
yes, the monoculture is the key problem. I was considering moving to SF
because I loved the SF of 10-20 years ago (not without its problems but had so
many things still right) but all of the other cultures that made SF great have
been suffocated by the tech industry moving in. No longer a top option anymore
for that reason alone.*

* I've spent a limited amount of time in SF so grain of salt.

------
latchkey
After 20 years in the Bay Area, I left just over two years ago. I moved across
the world to Saigon, Vietnam. I had never lived outside of California before.

I did not leave because I hated SF, I left because I wanted to do something
else with my life. In a way, for the same reasons I stopped going to
Burningman after the 5th time. There is other things to do in life than just
experience one city.

One thing about the bay area is that it definitely goes through cycles. I went
through that many times. You can't take it personally that your friends want
to do something else with their life. The expectation that we stay in the bay
area until we die seems obtuse to me.

I was back recently for a work trip (consulting) and I did not miss it at all.
I realized that at the end of the day, I was doing it wrong for myself. I was
leading a consumerist lifestyle of click buying things I did not really need
on Amazon or paying $20 for lunch every day. Now that I have changed those
patterns, I am much happier and more free.

------
gnulinux
Studied in Berkeley, got bunch of 6 figure job offers in SF, instead left Bay
Area for Boston. SF is a beautiful city, but it's not worth it. It has way too
many problems. Maybe in the future I can come back, but I had to take a break.

~~~
baddox
I don’t know how recently you’ve been here, or how closely you’ve looked, but
it is very much not a beautiful city. It is literally gag-inducingly
disgusting.

~~~
nhf
I feel like this is a common sentiment: San Francisco is beautiful in the
abstract, but disgusting in detail. I feel like this is a pretty common trope
for most "grade A" cities—someone will always hate it, people who love it will
always explain it away.

\- NYC is expensive and has failing transportation, but people love the
unparalleled cultural diversity and gritty tenacity of the city

\- Paris is dirty and unfriendly, but the city's romance and character make it
a great place to live

\- London is expensive and out of touch, but its job opportunities and
multiculturalism make it a better place to live

...and so on and so forth.

Someone's always going to dislike SF for a valid reason and someone's always
going to hit you back with a valid reason why it's a good place. They're
probably both correct.

~~~
the_clarence
Having lived in London, Paris and SF I would disagree. SF is freaking
disgusting. Paris is messy and has some crazies. London is a nice city.

------
sxp62000
I feel like a lot of my friends who are about to start a family or get married
have started moving away from big cities like NYC, SF and LA. You just end up
wanting a bigger place, a quieter street, and proximity to a Trader Joe's.

------
hintymad
I'm curious on why people love to set up their companies in the city or live
in the city. I mean, there are plenty of office space in Fremont, for example,
and living in the Bay Area is much more pleasant than in the city. I was
wondering what's so enticing about city life. Bars? But bars are so noisy and
anti-social. I never get it.

~~~
osdiab
To color it in with an anecdote as a 27 year old who grew up in the suburbs
and spent the last 7-ish years of my life in city centers: my personal
preference is just that I like the presence of other people.

I don’t feel bothered by lots of people walking around the streets, hearing
their conversations, living in proximity to others; and I only feel marginally
bothered by crowds and packed trains, definitely less than I enjoy the bustle.

In fact even if I don’t talk to a single person or enter a single
establishment it just makes me feel energized to be around it. Bars are
antisocial and I don’t go often, but even when I’m just walking past one on
the way home, the atmosphere around them makes me feel happy (and you can be
social at a reasonable volume with all the smokers and loiterers outside if
that’s what you like).

There’s something deeply depressing to me about the American suburban life I
grew up in: always deserted, copy-pasted strip malls; giant, humanless roads
clogged with hurtling metal death traps; cul-de-sacs of strangers spending
large fractions of their lives solitary in cars.

(I do acknowledge it can be different to some extent—the ethnic suburbs in LA
are vibrant in pockets, for example—but even in the best cases they’re still
pretty desolate to me.)

Where I came from in the Midwest, my life involved never talking to anybody
within a 20 mile radius of my house except in business transactions, and only
rarely even seeing my neighbors. As a child I didn’t mind, but after having
lived differently there’s no way I’d choose to go back unless it’s
prohibitively expensive to choose otherwise (which is, to my knowledge, a
major driver of people moving out of cities into suburbs).

Separately, I personally dislike driving and greatly prefer public
transportation. It’s far more comfortable (not much acceleration and far more
space than a tiny car unless it’s rush hour), I don’t have to pay attention to
anything except where I’m getting off, it’s super cheap, no risk of accidents
or headaches from other drivers incompetence, I don’t have to ever find nor
pay for parking, I don’t have to worry about the safety of my personal
property, I don’t have to worry about my car breaking down out of nowhere, I
can drink and not personally endanger myself, the list or positives is
basically endless to me but I’ll stop there.

But that all said San Francisco isn’t that dense (in my opinion), has such
glaring social issues, is ludicrously expensive and doesn’t have particularly
good infrastructure/transit. Given that I can get all of those things
automatically by living in pretty much any major east Asian or European city,
that’s my preference, but the one and only thing drawing me back is the
concentration of jobs and money.

I weaned myself off San Francisco and lived in east Asia for a couple years,
but I found myself back now for a job. Hopefully not too long from now I’ll be
able to head back over, or at least work remote for a significant part of my
time.

~~~
keerthiko
This is an echo of my thoughts, as a 29yo. I grew up in a podunk Middle
Eastern "city" (it was the national capital, but...) which can be
geographically approximated by an american suburb lining a single, not-so-
important highway.

I realized I loved the city (for exactly the reasons you mentioned) only when
I spent a month in the countryside of Thailand after 2 years of SF. I then
spent a considerable time in the major East Asian metropolises, before
returning here to rejoin my cofounders. I am far happier than I would be in
any non-metropolis, but I can't stop thinking of all the ways SF is just
subpar in all the things that make a city great except for interesting
conversations with intelligent people, pro-entrepreneurial vibe (minus the
VC/fundraising noise), and technical prowess.

Being near my cofounders is invaluable and my heart may be in SF for being the
first metropolis I got a chance to get attached to, but I am eagerly looking
for a way to live 9 months of the year in a more functional metropolis like
NYC, and come here on workations while crashing with friends.

~~~
osdiab
Yep I think we see eye to eye on all of that. With a clarification that SF is
great in particular for having professional, tech- or entrepreneurial-focused
conversations, but that social scene is pretty weak otherwise. I've found
that, except with those close to me, my conversations in the Bay Area very
quickly transform into talking about what you're working on or what
credentials you have. People here generally don't seem to want to talk about
much else, whereas my experience chatting up strangers in Tokyo and Shanghai
is that people actively avoid talking about their work, and my friends in
Bangalore compare the social scene there vs SF like night and day.

And as far as I can tell a lot of my friends have the same thoughts—it's not
just Bay Area natives who can't afford the cost of living who leave the Bay
Area for greener pastures, but also tons of disillusioned techies
themselves—so the people deriding Californians in this article might
rightfully complain about that group.

Thankfully being in software provides a benefit inaccessible to most—the
flexibility to work remote. So I think that lifestyle is definitely doable,
and I intend to make it happen one way or another.

------
the_clarence
I’ve lived in Chicago, currently in SF. Both cities are filled with homeless
like I’ve never seen before. I’d say I felt less safe in Chicago, but in SF
the homeless are more trashy: poops and seringes and crazy people everywhere.
People get harassed or mugged all the time. It’s not pretty.

Now, tech-wise, SF is freaking amazing and you HAVE to go there for a few
years if you work in tech. It’s that magical. If you’re a tourist, I’d say
avoid it.

Now if you want my opinion, it’s the US that has a huge disparity problem. SF
is just the symptom of something much deeper. People are unwilling to see
what’s in front of them. When I talk to people in SF or Chicago they tell me
that their city is safe and that it has as much homeless as Paris or London.
When I hear about prop C which tries to throw more money at the problem,
people seem to be against it.

~~~
60654
Huh, I lived in both as well (in the city itself, not the burbs, in both
cases), and had a very different reaction. I haven't felt "unsafe" in either
city, but Chicago feels so much nicer and cleaner in comparison. In SF,
however, the trashiness you mention is very much right there, front and
center. And I haven't seen people be harassed in CHI like I've seen in SF -
there's no equivalent of mid-market, with its luxury condos getting built
right next to the TL.

------
duaoebg
San Francisco is awful. Recently a homeless person mindlessly threw their
bucket of shit onto the hood of my Uber. This was in SoMa so not even
Tenderloin where you might expect something like that.

~~~
the_clarence
A month ago I took the bus in emeryville, bunch of kids started slapping
passengers randomly. I thought I was going to have to fight against them. They
ended up ignoring my gf and I.

A week after I take a bus around 2pm. In the mission a guy just jumped on a
girl and pulled on her phone for like 10s until she released it. Then got out
of the bus and ran away. Frightening stuff.

That and the weird homeless jumping at you randomly in the street to give you
a scare. I don’t understand why any tourists would come here. It’s really
unsafe, especially if you have children.

PS: I also feel so bad for these homes with homeless people sleeping on their
porches... or all these shops, restaurants, bars and cafes that end up being
swarmed and surrounded by the crazies. Life suck for a lot of the people here.
I’m happy I can afford to cab everywhere and avoid the craziness most of the
time.

------
countzeroasl
Cost of Living. I was born in California. I lived there for two years again
starting in 1998. Even 20 years ago, cost of living was stupid. And that was
in rural northern California. It was worse in the city. And it hasn't gotten
any better in the last 20 years.

In fact, I've even excluded California from my last and any future job
searches because as a plastics engineering manager, a company can't pay me
enough for my family and I to live on there. It's crazy.

------
hirundo
For the rent of a small studio in SF, ten years ago I left the bay area and
got a mortgage on a modest house on a few acres in rural New Mexico. Now the
mortgage is paid and all that cash not going to a landlord or a bank makes a
big difference in my lifestyle and peace of mind.

For me living far from a city is a bonus, and without remote work I'd be hosed
here, so it's sure not for everyone. But I'm not tempted to go back.

------
karmasimida
Because it is expensive, and because I don't feel the quality of living there
justifies the expense to be paid. Bad traffic, and a city wide hygiene
problem.

My sample is limited, but not a lot people around me have good opinions about
SF. Guess it is a mutual selection as well.

------
blhack
Every time there is one of these threads about SF, the topic of human feces
seems to be a big part of it. People defecating everywhere, people throwing
feces at each other, just filth everywhere.

WHY does the city not just install portapotties all over the place?

I bet they could even plumb the portos into the actual sewer eventually, but
it seems like just installing portos and having trucks pump them a few times a
day is something that could happen _tomorrow_.

~~~
ransom1538
"WHY does the city not just install portapotties all over the place?"

I can clarify what is happening - this might help others too. There is a large
drug scene around Edddy & Turk & Market in San Francisco. Mainly crack or
heroin (currently). To earn money these addicts pan handle around market
street.

What happens is the addicted users often get belly sick (crack guys from
eating food while high and heroin guys from being 'dope sick'). They don't
have the physical capacity to move quick enough to a restroom. AND they occupy
the most heavily trafficked areas for money (powell/market).

So this is a perfect storm.

------
electricslpnsld
> But what this “native” Bay Area kid won’t do is start blaming the guy from
> North Carolina or Wisconsin or Boston—basically every other person in the
> bar—for propelling the rents into the sky and inadvertently forcing the
> “locals” to flee.

The author hasn’t been to a Berkeley (or San Francisco, or a Penninsula town)
city council meeting... there is a lot of very blatant resentment in the Bay
Area directed (mostly unfairly) at transplants.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Maybe because the author has an upcoming business trip to Austin, Denver, etc,
and doesn't want burn the bridge until after he's crossed it.

------
exabrial
I really hope the next wave of 'we should fix that'ers is a bunch of high
salary earners convincing each other to donate to good causes rather than a
bunch of disconnected high salary earners advocating for regressive high taxes
and minimum wage increases.

~~~
the_clarence
Yeah. Let’s continue to pay waiters 2$/hour and let’s reject the idea of free
health care for people who can’t afford it. Murica!

~~~
exabrial
Are you saying you know how to spend the money these people earn better than
them?

Or, to force you into a false dichotomy, are you saying that back when hotdogs
cost $0.05, increasing the minimum wage from a few pennies an hour two $2.00
an hour made all the difference in the world?

~~~
osdiab
Pretty sure people need money in order to have them decide how to spend it,
and that most people can't personally save their way into affording million-
dollar cancer treatments.

I don't particularly trust cutthroat employers, who have demonstrated their
desire to do everything they can to undercut the salaries and benefits of
their employees to expand a bottom line, to properly value and choose to
provide the necessary income to give their employees humane standards of
living.

Though I do think that a fixed minimum wage where you have to have to have
heated debates every time cost of living changes about what it should be set
to, is silly. If it's supposed to reflect the ability to achieve a minimum
standard of living, let's at least set it dynamically against the price of a
typical basket of goods; or use a different mechanism than a minimum wage
altogether to achieve that minimum standard of living.

------
rdiddly
It's great the same way the view of the bay from some of the cells on the top
floor of Alcatraz was great. Some prisoners loved having a view; others said
it was worse to be reminded of such beauty while you were in a prison cell.

------
kibalock
I made a video about San Francisco and why I left:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li6nZefWZ5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li6nZefWZ5w)

------
JohnJamesRambo
I enjoyed reading these comments.

------
0x445442
It's not just San Francisco. The whole state has been on a steady decline
since... wait for it... the state turned blue. It's very sad because the
California I grew up in was the place to be, not just in the US but in the
world.

I lived in the state from 1967 until 2006 and I can tell you 1992 was pretty
much the pivot point.

~~~
the_clarence
Wouldn’t free healthcare actually prevent most of these cases?

~~~
masonic
Health Care is mostly subsidized already: the _average_ premium cost paid on
Covered CA is less than $150/month as it is.

------
sys_64738
It’s very expensive today but in five years time when people look back they’ll
say it’s cheap. I remember looking at expensive houses in San Jose back in
2010. Now that price (750k$) isn’t available any more.

~~~
osdiab
I do wonder if there's a breaking point where people won't be willing to pay
the premium. Current rents are already severely stretching the budgets of your
average entry-level techie.

EDIT: some early evidence to that speculation:
[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/10/19/bay-area-
rents-...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/10/19/bay-area-rents-dip-
slightly-zillow/)

------
watertom
Yogi Bera said it best. "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

------
redisman
Too expensive

