
San Francisco - bencevans
http://antirez.com/news/59
======
ryanSrich
Eh. They can keep it.

• Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1]

• Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2]

After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent

You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in
food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous
expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me
it would never work having 2k per month in student loans.

Also compare that to a place like D.C.

• Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3]

• Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4]

After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent

That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is
significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and
you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech
environment none the less.

1.) [http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-
Franc...](http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-
Francisco,-CA.html)

2.)[http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_...](http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_fra.php)

3.)
[http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washing...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washington+DC)

4.)
[http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa...](http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa=8872)

~~~
lobotryas
You are forgetting the weather.

DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from
ice if you don't have indoor parking.

SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains.
That's it.

This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent
and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges
to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to
east coast weather ever again.

~~~
jusben1369
SF people have to stop quoting the weather. The summer's are miserable with
fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.

~~~
rdouble
It's never very foggy east of Fillmore street, even in the summer. YMMV but SF
weather is only miserable to people from LA.

~~~
jusben1369
SMH. You know you're drinking the Kool Aid when you try and go neighborhood by
neighborhood. SF is terrible, Oakland/Berkeley better but not much (Berkeley
gets nailed by the finger coming straight in from the GG Bridge) If you grew
up somewhere else where summer meant putting your coat away for 3 months then
"Two blocks over here the wind is still biting but the sun is out" isn't much
of a consolation. Now, if you hate heat, as some do, then it's wonderful. I
just think SF has a fantastic climate April/May and Sept/Nov. Folks need to
realize though that there are big trade offs living there. No beach and always
needing to have warm clothes if you leave your house for more than a few hours
in case the fog comes in.

~~~
rdouble
I don't know what you mean. The microclimates there are just a fact of life.
The sunset is going to be cooler and foggier than the Mission simply because
of the topography. Berkeley and Oakland are actually 10 degrees warmer with
only occasional fog all year round. The whole area gets like 300 days of sun
per year. I just wonder where people are from when they say that the bay areas
weather is "terrible." It seems highly relative. For reference, I've lived in
Minneapolis, Tokyo, Tucson, Atlanta, Boston and NYC and thought SF's weather
was better than all of those places. They all had at least one season where it
was miserable to be outside.

~~~
jusben1369
Given we're talking about the weather some of this is in jest. And you've
somewhat turned this around as "what do you mean the weather is terrible". I
was objecting to the "the weather in SF is fantastic!" crowd who blow by Mark
Twain's keen observation. Places I have lived for more than a year include the
Bay Area, Boston, Melbourne Australia, Istanbul, Chapel Hill, London. I found
the fog to be very annoying as I had to manage to the weather constantly
there.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Mark Twain's keen observation

If you're talking about "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San
Francisco.", Twain never actually said it:
[http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp](http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp)

------
ladon86
What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a
positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's
probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.

------
bifrost
> The coffee is very different than the Italian one

I've heard this many times :)

His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces
people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is
bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days
SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the
peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.

~~~
spikels
Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional
government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I
have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years.

The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many
girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of
population) are just missing:

    
    
       Persons under 18 (2010 Census)
       US 23.7% [2]
       SF 13.5% [3]
    

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck)
[NSFW: male nudity & mild violence]

[2]
[http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html)

[3]
[http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html)

~~~
kryten
Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children...

Expensive: check. Bad schools: check. Disfunctional government: check. Drugs
on streets: check. Lots of crazies: check.

The thing I hate is that people wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Going to move out to the countryside I think...

As for the nutter on BART, I got urinated on whilst on the tube in London ....
twice. And no I was not on fire :)

~~~
adw
SF is way worse (I used to live in Finsbury Park, now live in the Mission).

~~~
kryten
Seriously? I lived in a crap hotel in Finsbury Park for a few weeks and it was
a dive.

~~~
adw
I was down nearer the Highbury end of things, but in terms of
drugs/violence/random menacing on the streets SF is way sketchier.

------
pfarrell
I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF
work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is
not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints).
I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for
Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!

All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took
some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or
contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything
in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness,
brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it,
but it's a balancing act.

~~~
Throwadev
Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in
Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.

~~~
pfarrell
Oakland has about 600 police officers for a population which requires around
1,100. There have been five robberies on my street in upper rockridge, where
we rent. It's an incredibly beautiful neighborhood and we pay a pretty high
rent to live there. In 2010, the police announced that for a long list of
crimes (including burgularies) they will not come out. We have caught people
casing our neighborhood, strangers sitting in cars for hours, "solicitors"
checking for who is home, etc. One woman was abducted from her home, but
managed to flee before being permanently maimed (I don't know which year this
was, but it was mentioned at a neighborhood watch meeting. Combine a typical
neighborhood of strangers with desperate criminal elements, as well as an
understaffed police and you can have a bad situation. Hoping the governor will
help out (it's his hometown) because Oakland could be an incredible town.

~~~
dontAgree
Oh typical petty crime. BRING ON THE POLICE! "Oakland could be an incredible
town". It already is. If you don't appreciate it, then go elsewhere? Berkeley
may be more of your taste (lots of granola for ya).

~~~
hack_edu
Rockridge is far, far more crunchy than any part of Berkeley these days...

------
jechen
On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling,
ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you
have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and
manage to live in SF for $20k a year
([http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-
san-...](http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-
francisco-on)). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly
resourceful.

In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some
persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one
and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of
last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on
which to jumpstart life here.)

~~~
lnanek2
Haha, yeah, I stayed at the StartupHouse a bit too. It was great being right
in the middle of the city and being able to walk a block for groceries or tech
meetups. Got a lot of coding done too! Too bad someone filed a complaint and
got it shut down.

I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private
room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in
the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was
still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month,
but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying
in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month,
so could get way cheaper buying longer too.

~~~
baddox
> I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private
> room in a shared dwelling.

That's fair enough, and describes me when I moved to SF straight out of
college. It's probably also fine (even necessary) if you're a student or
bootstrapping your own startup. But I've only been here two years, and it
didn't take long for me to get sick of having a home situation that's in many
ways worse than when I lived in my college's dormitory and significantly worse
than my last two years of college living in a one bedroom apartment. With no
lack of great and lucrative career opportunities in the area, I wish I didn't
have to either live like a starving college kid in a house packed full of
starving college kids or spend 20 hours a week searching for an affordable
studio apartment in a tolerable location. Although I've actually been hearing
good things about Oakland...

~~~
tommaxwell
Like the commenter above, I stayed at StartupHouse for awhile, actually until
they got shut down. It was pretty awesome to have my own bed, good WiFi, and
be in the middle of SOMA for ~$1,000/month. I also interned at a startup in SF
and lived pretty happily during that time. I was being paid $40k/year, but it
was a 6-month internship so really only $20K. But I lived pretty well. I had a
bed to sleep on in the city, I went out with friends on the weekends, and had
a great time. I guess it all depends on your priorities and the standard of
living you're looking for.

------
physcab
San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently
traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another
portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF.
It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt
Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for
skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth,
just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete
with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough
singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun
festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and
unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are
incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but
because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different
cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths
to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive.
It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in
person) who seriously dislike where they live.

~~~
agilebyte
When talking about singles you mean men right?

~~~
colmvp
Yeah seriously. The number of single women I meet in SF is for whatever reason
vastly disproportionate to living in other cities in the United States, like
New York or Los Angeles.

------
charliepark
Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and
end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or
critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.

~~~
jamesaguilar
You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take
home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should
not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment,
and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your
priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Is your estimate of 65 including state (10%) and city (1.5%) taxes?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Yes. It might actually be a bit conservative, since the overall burden for a
single person making $100k with 10% state taxes is around 20% for federal
taxes. And the CA overall burden is going to be more like 8.9% (marginal is
9.3% below $1M).

So, let's do the numbers to be sure.

    
    
          100 000
        -   7 009  (2013 CA on 100 000 -- not sure if std deduction should be factored in)
        -  17 820  (2012 Federal on 87 000 -- GI - state - std deduction)
        -   7 650  (Soc sec + Medicare)
          =======
           67 521

------
bretpiatt
Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting
perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally
connected.

He met up with a good crowd one night: [http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-
Redis-Meetup/events/1231...](http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-
Meetup/events/123141892/)

------
bherms
Very happy he enjoyed the city! Next time he's in town, I'll be sure I'm
following his twitter to remain informed. I'd love to buy him a drink.

While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot
(not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.

~~~
michael_miller
What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent
a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my
experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar
backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry).

I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's
definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel
in the atmosphere.

~~~
bherms
_but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very
similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford /MIT/CMU in the tech
industry)_

That's why I said "not so much as 10-20 years ago". It seems like our
community is actually destroying what made SF so special in years past. That
being said, while a majority of people coming in are fairly well-off
20-something tech industry kids, the fact that SF prides itself as being an
"anything goes, something for everyone" kind of city helps to bring out the
quirkiness and eccentricities of people who otherwise would've never found
that side of themselves. In addition, if you look in the right places, you
will find a ton of the goofy oddballs that made SF such a special place.

------
danmaz74
"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite
is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either
impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more."

One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to
watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK
pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only
true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).

~~~
keiferski
My guess is that foreigners are used to hearing American English from TV shows
and movies, and thus find it easier to understand.

~~~
cmccabe
The UK was where English first evolved, and it seems like there is a lot more
diversity in how it is spoken there. Fragments of older dialects that didn't
win out still linger.

The US was settled relatively quickly and there wasn't that much time for
regional accents to evolve. There are a few recognizable ones, like the
Southern US accent, but it's not as dramatic as something like a Cockney or a
Scottish accent in the UK.

~~~
keiferski
Mmm, can't agree with you there. There are significant, noticeable differences
between American accents. Boston, NYC, Western PA, the South, Texas, Midwest,
and California all have very obvious differences, on par with the difference
between Cockney and other UK dialects.

------
austinz
I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a
beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of
tech companies.

~~~
david927
The nearby town of Taormina is _awesome_.

~~~
weston
I can confirm both: Taormina and Catania are gorgeous, amazing cities. The
whole island of Sicily is also a wonderful place to visit.... I highly
recommend it!

------
lelandbatey
I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time
to write this all down!

Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less
_plain-text_ way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution:
[http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68](http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68)

It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.

------
wallio
It is very hard to not love this guy.

------
Yhippa
This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky
enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the
entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One
of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you
should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the
story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there).

What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for
web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?

------
swang
First I am glad this is not another post about how many homeless people he saw
and how he cannot believe it and how people in SF should fix these problems.

Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is
probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more
strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac
Heights.

------
corford
Just out of curiosity... I assume the waiters, waitresses, receptionists, taxi
drivers etc. of San Francisco are not all on $70K+ salaries? And if the answer
to that is yes, how do they manage to make it work? Either there's a lot of
#firstworlproblem esque moaning going on in this thread or taxi drivers in
SanFran are the best paid cabbies in the world.

------
jamesjguthrie
I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife
and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If
he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck,
there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really _that_ high, it
probably won't be a good idea.

~~~
michael_miller
The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent
reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone
in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but
the quality of teaching is great.

The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo
Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will
require some sacrifices.

~~~
ryandrake
Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable
for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your
mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your
gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really
don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income:

$5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary

I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at
one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the
'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer.

Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting
around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16
years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!

~~~
stephencanon
After including annual bonuses, ~214k is perfectly reasonable (on the low side
if anything) for a good engineer with 5-10 years experience at
google/facebook/apple/etc. Add in a second income and its easily feasible
without bonuses. Million-dollar starter homes are obscene, but people actually
do buy them.

------
VeejayRampay
British people are really hard to understand. The way they make whole
syllables disappear is nothing short of black magic.

~~~
threedaymonk
American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can"
and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory
(cot/caught and Mary/merry/marry) is most perplexing.

(Which is another way of saying: that to which one is unaccustomed is
difficult. British people understand each other perfectly well, and some of us
even find American English a bit difficult to understand out of familiar
contexts.)

------
ef4
Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free
weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or
insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.

~~~
wpietri
Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free
weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability
concerns.

I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights.
Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to
novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.

------
meerita
I want a SF job but work remotely from Barcelona. I'm willing to travel 1 a
month :). I know the pains of work and live there, it looks amazing but all my
friends told me the same: it feels artificial.

I like Europe, with their pro/cons.

------
codex_irl
I love the bay area, nothing else to say.

------
corresation
Enjoyable read, however the notes about the hotel gym were a bit strange to
me. I may have a insufficient sample set, however I've never seen free weights
in a hotel gym, beyond a couple of low weight dumbbells. Certainly no one
doing _deadlifts_ , and I can't imagine a hotel dealing with that.

------
stefantalpalaru
Sounds like a guided tour with no real exploration of the city.

~~~
antirez
Well it is, in the sense that, no exploration is really possible in three days
full of meetings, but something can be captured walking on the street, talking
with many people, most also not native of SF exchanging stories. I just tried
to turn my feelings into a blog post without any special goal.

------
spitx
kryten:

 _Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children..._

Does your experience of life in London in recent years (since around late
nineties) reflect that of this writer? I think this is one of the few writers
(on the topic) I've found balanced and non-alarmist. That's the reason I've
used her piece to moot a point that has been posited by many others in a more
judgmental and accusative tone. So I ask, is this what London increasingly
feels like for secular, middle-income families and individuals?

    
    
      "Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim,
      with the majority of them young families. That is
      not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims
      increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, 
      it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours 
      flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t
      see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling
      deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about
      regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they
      never look me in the face.
    
      I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked
      if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of 
      elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind 
      of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments.
      I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered
      as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had 
      been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a 
      place where I am a stranger.
    
      I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although
      I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept
      the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite
      it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays,
      though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by 
      young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are
      serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely 
      meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, 
      the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what 
      was on TV last night."
    
      "In the Nineties, when I arrived, this part of Acton was a
      traditional working-class area. Now there is no trace of 
      any kind of community – that word so cherished by the Left.
      Instead it has been transformed into a giant transit camp 
      and is home to no one. The scale of immigration over recent
      years has created communities throughout London that never 
      need to – or want to – interact with outsiders.
    
      It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of 
      Jewish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, 
      among others, have arrived in the capital, often displacing
      the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful overt 
      racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, 
      over time, I believe we settled down into a happy mix of
      incorporation and shared aspiration, with disparate 
      peoples walking the same pavements but returning to 
      very different homes – something the Americans call
      “sundown segregation”.
    
      But now, despite the wishful thinking of multiculturalists,
      wilful segregation by immigrants is increasingly echoed by
      the white population – the rate of white flight from our 
      cities is soaring. According to the Office for National 
      Statistics, 600,000 white Britons have left London in the
      past 10 years. The latest census data shows the breakdown
      in telling detail: some London boroughs have lost a quarter
      of their population of white, British people. The number in
      Redbridge, north London, for example, has fallen by 40,844
      (to 96,253) in this period, while the total population has
      risen by more than 40,335 to 278,970. It isn’t only London
      boroughs. The market town of Wokingham in Berkshire has 
      lost nearly 5 per cent of its white British population.
      I suspect that many white people in London and the Home 
      Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity, 
      especially if they have children. Estate agents don’t 
      advertise this self-segregation, of course. Instead there
      are polite codes for that kind of thing, such as the mention
      of “a good school”, which I believe is code for “mainly 
      white English”. Not surprising when you learn that nearly
      one million pupils do not have English as a first language. 
    
      I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the
      footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want 
      to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a 
      good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m
      a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with 
      safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond 
      my reach. I see London turning into a place almost 
      exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich.
      It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to
      escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if 
      I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local 
      schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a 
      conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer 
      need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant 
      racists of us all."
    

Source:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I-feel-
like-a-stranger-where-I-live.html)

Edit: Cleanup

~~~
DanBC
That's just typical Telegraph[1] hateful anti-immigration stuff. perhaps
somewhere buried in there are a few grains of truthy material; did multi-
culturalism cause ghettos? etc.

> Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young
> Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving.

How does the author know they are muslim?

> I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and
> the very rich.

I know many white British non-rich people living in London, but the author is
right that London is very expensive. There is a problem with London being the
place where everything happens. Some organisations are doing stuff to prevent
this (government departments going to the regions; companies moving to much
cheaper towns with decent[1] transport; BBC moving to the North; etc.) Perhaps
the Telegraph could move their offices to Manchester?

A recent comment I made had the throwaway line about the UK being a lousy
place to live. So normally I agree when people say the UK, especially London,
sucks.

> It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of Jewish, Irish, Afro-
> Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, among others, have arrived in the
> capital, often displacing the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful
> overt racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, over time, I
> believe we settled down into a happy mix of incorporation and shared
> aspiration, with disparate peoples walking the same pavements but returning
> to very different homes – something the Americans call “sundown
> segregation”.

Blacks first arrived in England with the Romans. But, if we restrict ourselves
to the bigger immigrations of the _Windrush_ era (1950s) - we still had both
hateful racist violence and institutional racism over 40 years later (See
Stephen Lawrence murder, 1993).

If I could be arsed I'd trawl through the Telegraph archives to find the
hateful screeds they've printed in the past. Faced with that level of hate
it's not surprising that people prefer to avoid Telegraph writers.

~~~
objclxt
Yeah, I'd agree with you that The Telegraph isn't the most balanced of sources
when it comes to immigration. It's an overtly right-wing paper.

~~~
spitx
Why is the slant of the source relevant?

This is the opinion of one person.

I tabled it to invite dissenting voices to offer sensible and rational
critiques of the premise not petty and bitter ideologues who want to silence
all dissonant viewpoints even when they may have more than a shred of truth
value.

There are plenty of such people on sites like Gawker.

I thought this place was a platform for sensible and intellectually upright
discussion.

~~~
DanBC
Well, that one person is a polite racist and is using tactics from concern
trolling to push their racist agenda; that person isn't wanting to engage in
an intellectually rigorous discussion.

We ignore the trolls here.[1]

[1] I WISH. HN is vulnerable to trolling and there are many threads to prove
this. :-(

