
San Jose is hell on earth - henning
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/cesspool.html
======
SwellJoe
When I came out for StartupSchool three years back, I went back to Austin with
the impression that the bay area was perhaps the most awful thing I had ever
seen--strip malls, Starbucks, and on the "good" streets there would be a
Restoration Hardware. Everywhere I looked, my first thought was "Do not want!"
I would never live in a place like that.

Then we got into YC, and I had another look around, and it turns out there are
little pockets of nice living on the peninsula. The downtown Mountain View
area is great, as long as piece and quiet are positive attributes for you. It
lacks the suburban sprawl and mini-malls of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara (the
Rengstorff/Showers area excepted), and actually has a very walkable central
core. And, I guess in 12 years a lot of good restaurants can happen, as there
are at least a dozen good places on Castro and a few good ones sprinkled about
in the rest of town (Amber India, for example). The library is awe-inspiring,
the parks are numerous and just crowded enough to be interesting, and there
are two little Asian markets within walking distance. I always see dozens of
people walking when I'm out. There is a patch of soulless hell at the distant
end of Castro, where the Starbucks and other polished up corporate turds
reside, but one can avoid it easily (just stop and turn around at City Hall).

~~~
jsjenkins168
After living in the SV area for a while, how would you now compare it to
Austin? I'm considering the exact move soon myself. I love Austin, but dont
think the atmosphere is as conducive for young hackers trying to start a
business. Its a bit hard to stay motivated when people around you dont take
what you are doing very seriously.

~~~
SwellJoe
The downtown Mountain View area feels like a much smaller, much less cool,
version of the downtown Austin area...The houses were built around the same
time as those found just past the river on South Congress, I think (though
there are some Hyde Park/Travis Heights era houses around as well, the 50's
and 60's is when Mountain View boomed and most houses in the downtown area
were built). The restaurants and shops on Castro street are, as on Congress
and 4th-6th streets in Austin, independently owned and of uniformly high
quality. Not as quirky or as diverse, but perfectly acceptable, unless you
want a decent dive bar or rock and roll club (of which Austin is the capital
of the world), as neither is well-represented in Mountain View.

There is nothing like the river and Lake Travis, and the parks that surround
it, in Mountain View proper...but one is compensated by being less than two
hours from some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Big Sur is an easy
weekend road trip away.

There is no music scene, of course, though San Francisco has a pretty good one
and it's only 45 minutes away by car or train.

Mountain View is not nearly as dog-friendly as Austin, though I've been told
it is more dog-friendly than most places in the region, and folks are shocked
when I seem put out by the unfriendliness of the city to my dog. Finding a
place to live if you have a dog (I mean a proper dog...one that gets into the
jeep or the boat under its own power rather than being lifted or by riding
around in a handbag) can be a challenge. Even if an apartment allows dogs,
there's usually a 25-35 pound limit.

I was also disappointed to find that dogs are banned from downtown during any
of the many street festivals. Not only does this make the festival less
enjoyable (dogs are funny and a great ice breaker), it also means I can't have
a proper walk with my dog on the weekends when they have the festivals. Folks
don't often understand the meaning of "dog-friendly" until they've spent some
time in Austin.

It's more expensive to live here--housing in modest areas is about 50% more
expensive than the best areas of Austin. And there is no HEB or Central
Market. Whole Foods has made it out, though, and there is an amazingly great
little produce and cheese market called the Milk Pail.

Overall, I enjoy living here. I miss some things about Austin, and will
probably retire there. But, living in the valley has been good for our
business in dramatic ways.

~~~
mattmaroon
You really can't find a music scene like Austin's. They're perpetually in the
top 3 by most people's standards.

I found SFs to be kinda lame, but then I'm not that into electronica. Guess it
depends on your tastes.

What breed of dog?

~~~
SwellJoe
Agreed. But touring bands do make it to SF at almost the same clip as they
made it to Austin...the local scene is significantly less interesting,
however, as far as I can tell. But I might be missing something because I,
also, mostly lack the electronica appreciation gene. I give SF the benefit of
the doubt on the music issue since many people do seem to feel it has a good
music scene. I will merely accept that it's not "my" music scene, and remain
pining for Emo's.

And my dog is a rescue mutt of dubious heritage...probably quite a bit of
English Pointer descent in her genes, though. Not huge, but too big to be
acceptable to most apartment complexes in the entire bay area--but we found a
nice little house near downtown, so it worked out well.

~~~
mattmaroon
SF has a fantastic comedy scene at least.

------
iamtooch
Places that grow really fast are going to have trouble building a gracious old
downtown with lots of character. I moved here from New York State 25 years
ago, having grown up and gone to school in little towns and small cities with
tons of character and no jobs. When I got here, it was obvious that outside of
SF and legacy downtowns, most of the rest of the peninsula and south bay had
been built in a continuous pour from about 1950 to today.

Relax. LA looks like that. Phoenix looks like that in spades. Suburban Seattle
looks like that. Kansas City. Atlanta. Urban Texas. It's what places look like
when people are moving there as fast as they can to get jobs and raise
families (and spend money and pay taxes, I might add). It's an uptown problem.
As the south bay ages, and infill and redesign happen here and there, the area
will develop [more] character and idiosyncracies. But for now it's pretty
sweet living in one of the most dynamic places in human history.

By the way, there are very nearby places where you can live in the country or
in the city, and still commute fairly easily to your job, but I'm not going to
spoil them. Look around.

~~~
Prrometheus
Atlanta has some very nice places. Little Five Points, Virginia Highlands, and
West End all have lots of character. I had a friend who was a trapeze hobbyist
stay at a cheap and huge repurposed warehouse (I wouldn't quite say
"refurbished") on the west side. She had her trapeze rope strung up in a
cavernous main room with brick walls decorated with her friends' art. She had
bitchin' parties at which she would get a little drunk and perform (not the
smartest idea, but entertaining).

Sure, you have to drive places in Atlanta. We just had more people crash at
our place after going out, or we would crash at theirs. The music scene is
healthy, if you care about that sort of thing. People are friendly. And I paid
$340/month in rent in 2005 (that is not a typo).

The food is great. I have yet to experience anything quite like it outside of
New York, and NY can't match the prices. The Vortex serves the best burgers
this side of the grave, and Highland Bakery has a shrimp and grits with a
spicy cheddar sauce that cannot be described in any earthly tongue.

Add in a very international flavor, 2 of the 10 gayest counties in America
(Sorry to stereotype, but any city without a gay population probably sucks.
They sense backwards boring closed-minded people and stay away.), and you have
one cool city.

I can't speak for Atlanta's start-up scene, but gawd, what a city. I hear
Austin is better, but Atlanta is like a mini-Austin from what I can tell.

------
p_alexander
San Jose, like any major US city, has its awesome points and its disgusting
monstrosities (Santana Row, I'm talking to you). And come on, San Francisco
has its share of fake and cliche (North Beach? Haight? The area around PacBell
Park?).

Since the link focused on the negatives, I'll throw some positives out there
(coming from a San Jose native who has lived in SF, LA, Chicago, and now
Morgan Hill - mushroom capital of the world).

1\. There are some cool little neighborhoods in the San Jose metropolitan
area: Willow Glen, Rose Garden/Burbank, Campbell, Saratoga, Almaden Valley.

2\. Good ethnic food, especially from Latin America, Vietnam, India, and
China. Even some good fine dining opportunities (La Foret in New Almaden comes
to mind).

3\. A great Latino/Chicano cultural scene.

4\. Decent transit that's been getting better (much, much better than LA,
lagging a little behind SF and WAY behind Chicago/New York).

5\. Retail tech stores all over (even SF lacks this).- Central Computer, any
number of Fry's.

6\. A developing downtown. If you'd been here ten years ago, this place was
dead. If you'd been here 20 years ago...well, you wouldn't have been downtown.
The fact that you can go there at night at all now is AMAZING considering what
this place was like when I was a kid. It's fairly jumping now, with a decent
selection of restaurants and good parking.

7\. Cheaper than SF by a bunch.

San Jose is great, especially if you aren't into the trendy hipster scene and
don't mind heading into "scary" (aka non-Anglo) parts of town like East San
Jose, Little Saigon, etc.

~~~
mattmaroon
Lot of Santana Row hating here. I liked the place. Some people just like nice
things and convenience, and Santana Row has plenty of both. It doesn't
necessarily make you "fake" or materialistic.

I personally enjoyed having a Brooks Brothers, a Diesel, a Cole Haan, and a
Tommy Bahama store all next to each other. Mix in some decent (though
overpriced) restaurants, and it's altogether a nice place. I did have to be
sure to route my wife around the Donald J. Pliner shop though.

I guess maybe it's just due to the inordinate amount of time I spent in Las
Vegas, but I find it fairly easy to coexist peacefully with the materialist
mindset, and simply take advantage of the perks while opting out of the
pseudo-religion. You can like nice stuff without that defining you.

~~~
ardit33
Santana row is a cheap immitation of a city street. The immitation of italian
architecture is really gawdy and cheesy and very aethestic displeasing. The
people that go there are also have a certain attitude, that is far from simple
and humble, but more of a show off type.

Santana row is a clear manifestation on what's wrong with modern american
architecture.

Please travel to other countries, to see real town centers with real people
(that are not trying to show off).

~~~
paul
Santana Row is bad relative to a real city, but it's great compared to a
regular shopping mall (and compared to most of what surrounds it).

For example, the linked article,
[http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96sep/kunstler/kunstler.ht...](http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96sep/kunstler/kunstler.htm)
(which is a good read, btw), says: "In many localities apartments over stores
were also forbidden under the zoning laws. Few modern shopping centers are
more than one story in height, and I know of no suburban malls that
incorporate housing."

Santana Row, however, does have housing above the stores.

~~~
mattmaroon
Right. Comparing a shopping mall to a city is almost as bad as Gladwell
comparing a Trailblazer to a Boxster.

~~~
ardit33
Santana row is a cheap immitation of a city street. It is made in a way to
make people feel like they are in a urban enviroment, mainly b/c there are no
true urban enviroments in SJ.

Yes it is a mall, but it takes this form mainly b/c SJ lacks proper city
streets, with thriving retail, where you can actually enjoy walking, meeting
people, dining, working, and shopping.

You don't have to go out of the country to see where proper urban areas mixed
with retail can be great enviroment. Go to Boston's Fenaul Hall, or Harvard
sq. where there is a very healthy mix of PUBLIC space, retail and shopping,
some offices, and condos or houses.

If people did city planing in a good way, these garish malls would be
superflous.

~~~
paul
Faneuil Hall felt just as fake to me, kind of like Fisherman's Wharf. The rest
of Boston is nice though.

~~~
brlewis
It only takes a few steps to be out of Faneuil Hall and into the rest of
Boston. If you haven't seen the greenway since the big dig finished, that's
one more nice place to walk directly out of Faneuil Hall into:

<http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2008-05-14>

------
neilk
San Jose does indeed look like the most godforsaken sprawl. This town is more
populous than San Francisco and yet people still refer to SF as "the city".

However, if you live here, you'll find that it's not quite that simple. There
are creative and life-affirming things here, but the only architecture that's
available is the strip-mall, so that's what people use. For my money, the best
coffeehouse in the entire area (including places like Ritual in San Francisco)
is located in an unassuming strip mall in Santa Clara, next to a big-box TV
retailer. (<http://barefootcoffeeroasters.com/>).

And there are vibrant immigrant populations here, particularly Vietnamese, and
they bring their cuisine with them. San Francisco itself is so expensive that
it's getting older, richer, and more ethnically homogenous all the time.
Pretty soon it's going to be just twentysomething white trustafarians and
fortysomething white management consultants.

But that just barely modifies jwz's critique. For now, if you want to feel
like your soul is enriched just by walking down the street, you have to live
in SF. If you want a place to put your bed and TV, live in San Jose.

~~~
mattmaroon
I mostly feel my soul endangered, rather than enriched, when I walk down the
street there. Someone assaulted my wife the first time we visited (long before
I joined YC). I wasn't around, but thankfully a passerby helped out.

That's undoubtedly atypical though. I think it's relatively safe for a city
its size.

------
rantfoil
Wow, I don't know what it was like when jwz wrote this (12 years ago?) but
these days Palo Alto is the epicenter of mediocre expensive food. Mountain
View, however, has some really great ethnic food for cheap, especially on
Castro Street.

The other thing that people don't really know until they've lived here is that
you typically don't have to live in suburban hell so long as you know where
the "main drags" are. The peninsula / south bay used to be all orchards with
"main streets". Today there's a "main street" in nearly every city that is
worth living near -- walking distance, and only a slight premium (University
Ave excluded, thanks to Facebook). Santa Cruz Ave in Menlo Park, Castro St in
Mountain View, 4th St in San Mateo, and California St in Palo Alto come to
mind.

~~~
axod
Palo Alto has taxis, cpk, cheesecake factory, that wraps place. All nice
enough. Not to mention the creamery. Also it has a borders and Apple store.

Out of all the towns in the area I'd choose Palo Alto every time.

~~~
mlinsey
Agreed in spirit though I disagree completely with your actual list. What's
with all the mediocre mega-chains? How about Paxti's, gyros gyros, Homma's
Brown Rice Sushi, the Counter, Vino Locale? A bit of a walk north will take
you to Cafe Borrone and Jan's Deli, the latter of which happens to have one of
the greatest turkey sandwiches ever. If you have a car and you venture away
from trendy downtown PA you can find some pretty good authentic taquerias as
well as any variety of Asian you would want....

...Damn, I need to move back to the Bay Area.

------
soundsop
I moved from Toronto to South Bay for work a couple of years ago. I couldn't
face the commute from San Francisco to San Jose, so I decided to live close to
work in San Jose. I almost cried when I first visited San Jose's "downtown".

The descriptions of the link are pretty much bang on, although I don't find
the smog in San Jose so bad. And San Jose does have one attribute that's
better than San Francisco: the weather. It's sunny and warm in San Jose with
cool nights. Whenever I go to San Francisco, it is cold, windy and foggy. The
San Francisco Zoo is situated close to the ocean in a part of the city that is
seemingly permanently overcast and cold. I feel sorry for the animals.

Other than the weather, the best thing that can be said about San Jose is that
it is close to a lot of interesting events and places that are not in San
Jose.

~~~
idea
> I feel sorry for the animals.

I have that with any zoo. They may be treated well, but wild animals shouldn't
be locked up for entertainment and profit.

~~~
modoc
What if they're locked up for a safe breeding of more of a threatened or
endangered species, or for the purpose of education and awareness of the
threats facing wildlife around the world?

I've been to some zoos that just make you want to cry, and I've been to other
ones where the animals seems happy, well taken-care-of, and had enough
activities/entertainment to keep them from getting bored, and where there was
a huge amount of focus on education around what species are threatened, why,
and what you can do about it. How to co-exist with wild animals locally, and
how to support efforts around the world.

It's a lot easier to feel sympathy/empathy and DO something when you see a
real live cute endangered animal, than if you read a paragraph in your paper.

It's definitely a mixed bag, but overall, I'm pro good-zoos.

~~~
signa11
would you take your dog to visit a penitentiary ?

------
mjterave
What's with all the hate for the South Bay?

Seriously, I see posts like this from people in San Francisco all the time. I
understand that they like where they live, but why the seething hatred for San
Jose? Nobody's making them go there. :)

Does this sort of whining happen in other metro areas too?

~~~
mhartl
Indeed. The phrase "hater in the house!" kept running through my head. If you
live in a place you hate, shut up and move. If you don't, just shut up.

~~~
sah
If everyone shuts up, how are people supposed to figure out where to move to?
I hate the idea that no one should ever be critical of anything.

~~~
mhartl
I'm not saying everyone should shut up, just the haters. They're so loud and
shrill that they drown everyone else out. There are lots of people who like
suburbia (and dislike cities). They're just not smug and self-righteous about
it, and they don't shout it from the rooftops while looking down on everyone
else.

------
sealedidentity
San Jose is heaven compared to anywhere in NJ. That place reeks, ancient
infrastructure, tolls everywhere, dirt everywhere and not to mention awful
weather for the better part of the year. I'd rather live in the Bay Area with
more expenses on the same pay than anywhere else in the east coast. Although,
I concur Austin, Vegas and Phoenix are fantastic places to live.

~~~
natrius
Tolls are a bad thing? God forbid people pay for the roads they drive on. Free
highways are a huge cause of the Bay Area's sprawl.

~~~
natrius
Hm... I thought we only downmodded comments that didn't add to the discussion
here, but it looks like people just disagree with me. Care to explain why
instead of just downmodding?

------
mynameishere
<http://www.morganquitno.com/cit07pop.htm#25>

Safest city >500,000 population.

~~~
run4yourlives
Safest City in US < Most violent anywhere else.

Point being it's all relative, hence next to meaningless. :-)

~~~
hugh
_Safest City in US < Most violent anywhere else._

Johannesburg? Rio? Manila? Bogota? London? Honiara?

~~~
run4yourlives
You missed my point.

It's all relative.

~~~
hugh
What is relative to what, precisely?

~~~
run4yourlives
How "safe" a city is to whatever you're comparing it to.

You can make pretty much anywhere look safe just as easy as you can make
anywhere look unsafe. Studies like this are virtually meaningless.

I'm surprised I've being downmodded so much, I figured the crowd at hacker
news would be a little less reactionary than that.

~~~
hugh
You're being downmodded for making assertions which are either false or
meaningless. I can't quite figure out which just yet.

In case you're still under the impression that the US is a particularly high-
crime country, check out <http://rechten.uvt.nl/icvs/images/graph05.jpg>. The
grey bars show that the US is safer than an awful lot of other developed
countries including the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland (!),
Switzerland (!), Belgium and Australia. And that's not even counting
undeveloped countries, which tend to have much higher crime than developed
ones.

~~~
run4yourlives
It doesn't say which crimes.

Many places outside of the US have a high degree of property crimes compared
to violent crimes. I wouldn't consider property crimes like vandalism to
reflect a degree of safety though. I could use murder rates alone and show
opposite results.

That's my point though. "Safety" is unmeasurable, really, because it is a
perspective.

------
mattmaroon
Wow is he wrong about Sushi. It's quite easy to screw it up, and I have a few
friends with hospital trips to prove it.

------
ericb
Hold up. Living in Boston, I can say that winter is just not that fun. I can't
say, go for an enjoyable jog, for at least 4.5 months of the year. I basically
hibernate for 5 months of the year. This is true for large swaths of the
northern US. Is it really so bad in CA, or is the grass always greener?

~~~
menloparkbum
I've lived in Boston (Allston and Cambridge). Weather in San Jose trumps
Boston winters for sure. However, Boston proper in the summer is better than
San Jose in the summer. If you grew up elsewhere, one thing you may miss is
hot, steamy summers. The weather in the Bay area is almost always a little bit
chilly. In San Francisco, the weather in the summer is actually colder than it
is during the rest of the year.

~~~
breck
You can't beat summers in Boston. But ericb is right, winter's in Boston are
terrible. Not going outside for more than an hour for 5 months is no fun.

------
motoko
"New" Mountain View on Castro Street is OK. It's not SF, but there are now
decent restaurants, two bookstores (the used bookstore is fantastic), and
acceptable (not good) independent cafes. It's also near the train station.

------
kirubakaran
I'm glad to know I am not the only one who felt this way. I felt like I was in
one huge shopping mall. Malls give me head aches.

Human brain has an upper limit on the fakeness it can take before it makes you
throw up, I think. (I seldom complain and I don't drink 'orange mocha
frappuccino')

[edit] deleted --> "SJC is the most depressing airport I've been to."

~~~
tptacek
SJC is a much better airport than SFO, but OAK is the one the cheap flights go
to, and is inexpensive to get to SF from.

~~~
bmj
Having never been to SFO or OAK, I find this shocking, since SJC seems kinda
slummy, especially when flying via NWA.

~~~
tptacek
I guess it all depends on what you're looking for in an airport, but if your
metric is "time taken to get from the expressway exit to wheels-up in your
plane", I'd rank the Bay Area OAK, SJC, then SFO.

I'm not really looking for amenities; if I needed them, I'd probably just pay
for the Amex Platinum and get into the airline lounges.

------
berecruited
Very funny read - mostly because of the hyperbole and awesome formatting
(including dead links). That said, I don't exactly agree with any of it!

~~~
pl0nk
You are surprised that a webpage from 1996 has dead links? I am more surprised
that _any_ of the off-site ones work.

------
dgentry
If thats what he thought in 1996, I wonder what the 2008 version would say?

------
rtf
Last Sunday I walked through San Jose, about five or six miles.

I got sunburned.

------
tokipin
i love san jose, and the whole bay area. i feel so deprived not being in cali
right now. i would state reasons but i don't really know them. my best guess
is the mesh of civilization and nature. the hills are so beautiful, the trees
are lush, starbucks is on every corner yay!

------
steveplace
Heh. You haven't seen pre-fab until you've been to Orlando.

------
mkull
Hows San Diego?

~~~
henning
It has a similar sprawling ticky-tack faux automobile-metropolis feel, and the
food except in places like downtown generally sucks.

~~~
sabat
On the other hand, San Diego's weather is probably the best in the whole US,
the people (except maybe for the far-righters and far-lefters) are pretty
cool, there's nice history, beach access, culture ... sigh. Wish I was there.

~~~
henning
If you're close to the beach, where property and rent is ridiculously
expensive, yes, the weather is pretty nice.

East County, though (El Cajon, Santee, etc.) lack nearly everything that is
good about San Diego. No biotech startups, no weather, no college kids, no
nothing.

------
sabat
I used to think that. I think it less now. SJ definitely does not have the
taste and cosmopolitan charm of SF, but as places to live go, it's really
pretty good. Access to the ocean and amazing open spaces, etc.

