My previous team was split between Mountain View and New York. We'd travel back and forth. Don't get me wrong: I love the Bay Area. The weather for one thing is simply heaven.
We'd often get into debates about this. My argument is that it is cheaper to live in New York than the Bay Area. The main reason for this is that almost anywhere you live in the Bay Area you will have a car. Between car payment, insurance, gas and maintenance you will more than make up for any difference in rent.
Your only real option to living without a car is to live in SF. That means an hour commute minimum each way every day (on the bus). Sometimes it can double with traffic on the 101. You have to catch them when they're running (4-6 times in the morning and evening?). Or if you don't have a bus option it's Caltrain + bus. Caltrain runs every hour during the day (slightly more often in peak hours).
Even if your bus has wifi and you can allegedly do work I'd rather not waste 2-3 hours of my life on it each day.
Compare this to New York. Areas around the office (Chelsea, Meatpacking, West/Greenwich Village, Union Square) are expensive but I still have a second story (true) one bedroom walkup 7 minutes walk from work for $2000/month.
A friend lives in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Door to door will typically take him ~35 minutes. His one bedroom is $1000/month. How far afield are you going to have to go in SV to find a one bedroom for that price (or, worse, that price including the car cost, even adjusting for spending $100/month on a monthly metro card).
And I'd much rather rely on the Subway (or the commuter trains for that matter) than anything in Norcal (although I found the combination of BART + buses fine in SF even though I knew many people who complained about them). It's like $2.25 to go anywhere in the city and it runs 24x7.
Rent in Manhattan is certainly expensive but you don't need to live in Manhattan. You can choose to (as I have) but you don't need to. You can get a pretty nice apartment in Forest Hills and have a relatively easy run in on the E train if you wish. Williamsburg is full of hipsters but is convenient (except when the L train stops running, which seems to happen all too often).
So rent aside, everything else is the same cost of cheaper. Food especially is cheaper. A Thai restaurant around the corner has $2-6 appetizer and <$10 entrees. A Malaysian place I like in Chinatown has ~$7 entrees. Why anyone cooks in this city is beyond me.
On the way to work there are 3-4 laundromats. The one I go to is open from 7am-11pm 7 days a week and as long as I get them my clothes before about 1-2pm will have them back the same day, washed, dried, folded and sealed for <$1/lb.
If you have a family you can stay in the city (expensive) or move to the commuter belt (as most people do). Long Island, upstate NY or NJ (or further afield at places like CT, PA) have good affordable options. If you're married and have kids you'll probably only need 1 car rather than 2 (since the trains will cover you during the week to go to work).
New York really is great. Although if I weren't working for Google I'm not sure who I'd want to work for. Foursquare? Maybe but you're essentially banking on them getting bought out (admittedly, this seems fairly likely). Tumblr? Maybe. Amazon? I think they're out of the city somewhere. Palantir? Maybe. SV certainly has got way more choice.
I live in Manhattan (formerly in the Village and now in TriBeCa) and I think you are exaggerating/cherry picking the lack of costs in NYC. Sure, you can find a few $2,000 1BRs here and there in Manhattan, but they are rare, tiny, and not all that nice. The average 1BR in the neighborhoods surrounding your office is more than 3k. New construction is more than $4k. In the nice areas of Brooklyn you are paying almost as much as in Manhattan.
Since I am moving out of the city (and the country) at the end of this month, I have no qualms sharing a little secret for anyone looking for a place in Manhattan...
There's an area of about 6 city blocks bordered by Columbia University on the south, 125th St. on the north, Broadway to the east, and Grant's Tomb on the west...and rent is ridiculously cheap! 2BR for $2700 or less (we're paying much less) are not unusual. The 125th St. 1 train stop is right there. I can be in Union Sq. in about 20 min during rush hour, and I can walk to Columbia and most of the UWS. On top of that, if you head to 125th St. and walk toward the water, you've got Dinosaur BBQ and a giant Fairway right there. If you're the biking type, you can go from there straight down the West-side Greenway. Add to all this the fact that Columbia is building their new campus just across 125th St., and you have a little slice of heaven.
Now, most people look at a map and immediately say, "But you're in Harlem!" Well, technically Harlem starts just north of my bedroom window, but yeah...so what? New York is a bit of a peculiar place. I used to live further north in Harlem, and there were literally patches of no more than 4 blocks square where life was perfect, and I never felt I was in any danger. Go another 2 blocks north, though, and you started to feel like you had to watch your back.
If you are going to move to New York, your best bet is to talk to someone who knows New York (hint: if they've lived in New York for less than 5 years, they probably don't know New York).
> If you are going to move to New York, your best bet is to talk to someone who knows New York
So talk to me. I grew up and live here. And your best bet is actually NJ. Hoboken or Jersey City. They're on the PATH. Your commute to Manhattan will be 15 minutes and a ticket costs $2. Less if you buy in bulk or get a pass.
Also, you pay less in taxes (income and sales tax) since you're in NJ.
> Also, you pay less in taxes (income and sales tax) since you're in NJ.
If you live in NJ but work in NY don't you pay NY taxes? And even if you want to get around that somehow, won't any normal employer payroll withhold for NY before you even see it?
This actually bit someone I know in the ass this year, somehow. His employer was withholding federal and state, but not city taxes. (I have no idea how this didn't happen to him last year, but he was shocked that suddenly he owed quite a bit.)
Yes, this area is called "Manhattan Valley". I lived there for two years while studying CS at Columbia and loved it. We had 5 guys in a 4-bedroom (actually 3BR with a walk-through room with an office that we used as a small bedroom) apartment at 108th St and Broadway. $3k/mo in rent. The location was amazing: 10 minute walk to Columbia, 3 minutes to the 1 train stop at 110th St, 2 minutes to Thai Market (my favorite Thai place in Manhattan).
Actually, Manhattan Valley is just to the south of Columbia. The area to the north where we are is called Manhattanville (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanville), though most won't know that name.
Another tip for prospective New Yorkers: find out where filming permits are being issued. Film crews will stay away from the overly expensive (stuck-up-ish, NIMBY-ish) neighborhoods, but they also won't go anywhere overly risky. As a nice added bonus, typically the area will be picturesque (though not always).
For example: "Person of Interest" was filming in front of our building on Monday, episodes of "Blue Bloods" and "Gossip Girl" have filmed within a couple blocks, and the outdoor scenes at the end of Lady Gaga's video for "Marry the Night" were shot right by the Fairway 3 blocks away.
Anywhere that's a discrete suburb (preferably cut off from where decent people live by a bridge or railway crossing) takes a long time to go from "slum" to "trendy" in the eyes of most people, despite it actually being a nice place to live. But everyone who is in on the secret gets outrageously cheap rent, a great place to buy, and funny looks from co-workers.
One of the one bedroom units here in Stuyvesant Town is listed as $2820 (http://www.stuytown.com/view-availability.aspx). And if you've been to Stuyvesant Town you know the units are HUGE. And most people convert one bedroom to a two bedroom, two to a three, etc.
Stuyvesant Town may be the biggest real-estate default in American history but it is really really nice. We have our own reading rooms, movie shows, ice-skating in winter, gym, 24-hours security with video, etc. It's just worth checking out the website http://www.stuytown.com/.
Disclaimer: I live here with roommates but have no other affiliation with Stuyvesant Town.
Another Stuy Town dweller here. It's also a pretty good options for those of us with families. We have a nice park with play area outside our door. It's fairly quiet. And don't forget free heat, water, and electricity!
Isn't that Morningside Heights? The southern boundary depends on who you talk to... can go down to 110th or so. I grew up on 119th and Riverside. LOVE that area, even thirty-odd years ago. Harlem doesn't start until 125th on the west side.
Anyway, the west side of Harlem, the other side of Morningside Park, has gentrified significantly in the last 20 years and is also by all accounts a pretty nice place to live nowadays.
Washington Heights is also "up-and-coming", up north of there.
You mean trendy rather than nice. There are plenty of nice areas of Brooklyn, and Queens for that matter, that are affordable, safe and have multiple transportation options to midtown and downtown.
Places like: Prospect Heights (A,C,2,3), Long Island City (7,N,R,Q,E,M,F), Lefferts Garden (Q,B,2,5), Astoria (N,Q), and Woodside/Jackson Heights (7,M,R & LIRR).
You may not be able to find a place to buy $6 PBRs or $5 coffees right around the corner, but I consider that a plus.
You say it's cheaper, then use the example of a $2000 apartment which is an insane amount to pay for housing. Then you (correctly) note that the cheap places are actually really far (and annoying) commutes. BART stations are much cleaner than NYC subway stations, I find the trips much more pleasant.
Your startup could also be in SF (not MV) saving you the commute, have you thought about that?
Eating fast food <$7 will quickly make you feel pretty unhealthy in NY. All that greasy pizza and chinese food. You're also not conveniently not including tax (which is high in NY) and tip. Real sustainable eating will cost double that in NY.
Good, healthy, cheap food in SF is pretty common, it's the lifestyle there.
> Door to door will typically take him ~35 minutes.
Bull. Maybe if he jumps out of his building, sprints to the stop, and the subway car just happens to be waiting for him the moment you get there. The fact is that if you work late into the night, the cars come less frequently, especially to/from places outside of Manhattan. You have to factor in average wait time (since NY Subways still don't track subway cars like any other good transit system). My closest subway stops would also be closed for days or weeks at a time randomly for upkeep. Don't forget that, during rush hour, you stand in a sardine can with a hundred other people.
Also, NY culture is a consumption culture. Even if you can possibly scrape by with less, you're in a culture that actively goes out and pays huge amounts for drinks at bars, measures class by where you live and places you shop, and you'll invariable end up paying some or a lot of money for cabs because of closed subway routes or maybe you just get sick of the dirty, cold subway.
I've done startups in both areas for years. I notice that people in New York justify the low quality of life by claiming the best possible aspect of something is the norm. It's not the norm. 35 minute commutes from Brooklyn, $2-$6 appetizers (who measures food costs in terms of appetizers??). $1000/mo one-bedrooms and 7-minute commutes have 0 correlation in NY.
Let's say you lived in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn and rented a 1600 a month 1BR apartment of decent size (entirely realistic). You have a Trader Joes that's a 10 minute walk. You have a Michelin star restaurant that's a 10 minute walk. I could go on and on, but basically, you have dozens and dozens of nice, reasonably priced bars, coffee shops, butcher shops, produce stores, movie theaters (well those aren't so reasonably priced) and restaurants that are a 10 minute walk. And you have a 35 minute commute to midtown... 20 minutes to SOHO. That's not bad at all.
However if you measure quality of life by the cleanliness of the subway or having to wait 15 minutes because you just missed the last F train or it annoys you that a lot of people commute during rush hour, then yeah, NYC probably isn't for you.
Your knock on consumption culture is overstated. I guess if you want to get a meal or have a drink in the same places that finance and law douches do, you are going to run into that, but that's your fault for not taking a look around and realizing there is so much more to be had in this city.
SF is definitely cheaper but not that much cheaper. I have friends who share a 2 bedroom for $2400 not far from Golden Gate Park in a shitty apartment. I can find any number of shitty apartments for $2400 in the city if I want.
Another point: you earn higher salaries in New York than less urban areas (this is true of SF too). If I earned even $30,000 less and lived in the Midwest, financially speaking I'd be worse off. It may even be $20,000.
> Eating fast food <$7
Who said anything about fast food?
> Bull...
During the day, that's the time. Out of hours trains are less frequent but isn't that kinda the point: they're still running. Caltrain stops at about 11. Not sure when the muni-buses and BART stop.
> Also, NY culture is a consumption culture.
Nonsense. Or, rather, only if you want it to be. If you want to keep up with the investment banker set, then that's your choice. If you want to go to expensive bars and drop $100-200 on drinks, that's your choice. You're able to do that in any number of major urban centers.
I don't feel the need to go down Fifth Avenue and do my shopping at Prada or Bergdorf Goodman (Gap/Old Navy/Urban Outfitters are just fine with me). If you do, that's your choice.
A friend of mine once took us to a noodle bar off Union Square. The music and noise was so loud you could barely hear yourself think. Me and a friend said "screw this" and went somewhere else. Later he was like "you have to put up with waiting and noise". No, you don't. If you want to hang out at the hipster joints, then sure. But again, that's a choice.
I find this with New York (and London) in particular: you either decide to like it or you don't. If you've decided not to like it, you'll notice certain streets smell like urine, the garbage smells, homeless people on the subway, homeless people defecating in trash cans or urinating in phone boots, the lack of space and so on. But that really is just a state of mind.
I know people who are addicted to their large houses, having a back yard, their cars, etc and look past their long commutes, the costs of car ownership and so on. That too is a choice.
Your post comes across as very bitter. You've decided to not like New York. You probably have your reasons. Fair enough. That's your choice. But in no way are you presenting anything remotely objective about New York.
When I lived in the city (1.5 yrs ago, I've since moved to NJ with my SO), my rent was $1000 (1 room in 2 bedroom, split with my brother), and my commute was a (mean, over a few days of sampling) 12-minutes, door to door. It's actually all pretty reasonable. The space is small, but the only thing you're really missing is a big room for a TV, which you don't need in this town.
Edit: Also, it should be noted that the dating scene in NYC is ridiculously nice for single men with good jobs.
BART stations are much cleaner than NYC subway stations, I find the trips much more pleasant.
Apples to oranges. BART is commuter rail, not transit. Compare BART to Metro North, New Jersey Transit, and the LIRR. NYCT's equivalent is Muni. (My experience is that Muni is pretty clean. But it's often faster to walk than to take Muni.)
Maybe if he jumps out of his building, sprints to the stop, and the subway car just happens to be waiting for him the moment you get there.
Trains on the same tracks run every 2:30 during rush hour. (If you are at a local/express station, then you get a train every minute.)
You have to factor in average wait time (since NY Subways still don't track subway cars like any other good transit system).
All the IRT lines do, as do the B-division lines that have been converted to communication-based train control. Admittedly, you have to be at the station to see the next-train times, which is annoying. But the trains actually do run close to their schedule. (Lately, I've been going home on the train that claims to be at 14th St. at 1:39AM. I've never waited more than four minutes past this time.)
Some of the B-division stations give you an idea of when the next train will come: announcements like "An uptown express train is now at W 4th St."
Even if you can possibly scrape by with less, you're in a culture that actively goes out and pays huge amounts for drinks at bars, measures class by where you live and places you shop
All people are judging you because of the possessions you choose to display. True in New York, true in San Francisco. The only way to overcome it is to not care. If you work for Goldman Sachs then there is probably some culture of pretending to be wealthy. At Google NYC, not so much.
and you'll invariable end up paying some or a lot of money for cabs because of closed subway routes or maybe you just get sick of the dirty, cold subway.
The subway seems about as clean as any other subway in the US. A $2.50 subway ticket buys a lot less cleaning than a $15 commuter rail ticket. Live in the suburbs if everything has to have the appearance of cleanliness. (Manhattan is a lot dirtier than Chicago, though. It's because there's no space for alleys to hide the garbage in.)
Disclaimer: I live in SF, not NYC, but I disagree with your post.
> "$2000 apartment which is an insane amount to pay for housing."
SF is at the same level now. A solid 1BR in the city proper (as opposed to say, out in Outer Richmond) will easily hit $2000. And beyond. New construction (SOMA) would be closer to $3-4K. This is in the same range as what both dev_jim and cletus claim.
> "BART stations are much cleaner than NYC subway stations, I find the trips much more pleasant."
Being someone who commutes on BART daily, no, they're really not. MTA stations are older and slightly more run-down looking, but cleanliness-wise, they're about the same. The interesting thing is that MTA subway trains are considerably cleaner than any BART train.
Hell, if we're going to talk about general city cleanliness - just about any sidewalk in Manhattan is much, much cleaner than any sidewalk in SF. I don't know about you, but I've never had to dodge human excrement in NYC, whereas it seems to be a semi-frequent occurrence here in the City.
> "Eating fast food <$7 will quickly make you feel pretty unhealthy in NY. All that greasy pizza and chinese food."
As opposed to greasy Chinese food in the Sunset? Burritos in the Mission? The food scene between the two cities are not too different - both NYC and SF have a lot of cheap, good-for-you food if you know where to find it. Both cities also have a whole lot of greasy stuff-that-will-kill-you food that's just as easily accessible. If you think eating cheaply in NYC necessitates pizza and Chinese takeout, you're sorely mistaken, just as you would be mistaken if you thinking burritos are a necessary food in SF.
> "The fact is that if you work late into the night, the cars come less frequently"
This is true in SF also. Live in Oakland and work in the city? Welp, you're fucked, frequently. BART also shuts down at midnight, which puts you in a SOL position a lot more often than it would be in NYC. I've talked to numerous cabbies/Uber drivers who laugh at the idea of doing an East Bay run on a busy night. You can't even find a cab to drive you across the bridge at exorbitant rates! :P
> "Don't forget that, during rush hour, you stand in a sardine can with a hundred other people."
Hop on a BART car at rush hour. Or worse, hop on a MUNI train at rush hour in one of the downtown stations - I've been on a NY subway car during rush, it's actually marginally emptier than, say, the N-Judah at rush.
> "$1000/mo one-bedrooms"
Have you looked at SF housing prices lately? You can't even find a studio in the Tenderloin for $1K.
I've lived in SF and Tokyo and spent time in NYC. @potatolicious is spot on with this post. NYC streets and subway cars are, generally, cleaner than the equivalent in SF. Crime's lower (per capita, not totals) in NYC than SF too. You also don't witness as much derelicts and gang bangers on an evening stroll down a NYC street as you do in SF.
@cletus was right about the job scene though. Most tech companies HQ are in SF and there's a wealth of jobs. NYC's tech scene is still up and coming. As we've seen with Austin , Seattle, and NC/Research Triangle, "up and coming" can last for a long, long time.
Sorry, but I think you're out of touch with Americans. Most of us want great transit. It's difficult to do in a country as large as the USA. It's a problem of scale, something difficult to appreciate for people living in smaller countries.
We'd often get into debates about this. My argument is that it is cheaper to live in New York than the Bay Area. The main reason for this is that almost anywhere you live in the Bay Area you will have a car. Between car payment, insurance, gas and maintenance you will more than make up for any difference in rent.
Your only real option to living without a car is to live in SF. That means an hour commute minimum each way every day (on the bus). Sometimes it can double with traffic on the 101. You have to catch them when they're running (4-6 times in the morning and evening?). Or if you don't have a bus option it's Caltrain + bus. Caltrain runs every hour during the day (slightly more often in peak hours).
Even if your bus has wifi and you can allegedly do work I'd rather not waste 2-3 hours of my life on it each day.
Compare this to New York. Areas around the office (Chelsea, Meatpacking, West/Greenwich Village, Union Square) are expensive but I still have a second story (true) one bedroom walkup 7 minutes walk from work for $2000/month.
A friend lives in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Door to door will typically take him ~35 minutes. His one bedroom is $1000/month. How far afield are you going to have to go in SV to find a one bedroom for that price (or, worse, that price including the car cost, even adjusting for spending $100/month on a monthly metro card).
And I'd much rather rely on the Subway (or the commuter trains for that matter) than anything in Norcal (although I found the combination of BART + buses fine in SF even though I knew many people who complained about them). It's like $2.25 to go anywhere in the city and it runs 24x7.
Rent in Manhattan is certainly expensive but you don't need to live in Manhattan. You can choose to (as I have) but you don't need to. You can get a pretty nice apartment in Forest Hills and have a relatively easy run in on the E train if you wish. Williamsburg is full of hipsters but is convenient (except when the L train stops running, which seems to happen all too often).
So rent aside, everything else is the same cost of cheaper. Food especially is cheaper. A Thai restaurant around the corner has $2-6 appetizer and <$10 entrees. A Malaysian place I like in Chinatown has ~$7 entrees. Why anyone cooks in this city is beyond me.
On the way to work there are 3-4 laundromats. The one I go to is open from 7am-11pm 7 days a week and as long as I get them my clothes before about 1-2pm will have them back the same day, washed, dried, folded and sealed for <$1/lb.
If you have a family you can stay in the city (expensive) or move to the commuter belt (as most people do). Long Island, upstate NY or NJ (or further afield at places like CT, PA) have good affordable options. If you're married and have kids you'll probably only need 1 car rather than 2 (since the trains will cover you during the week to go to work).
New York really is great. Although if I weren't working for Google I'm not sure who I'd want to work for. Foursquare? Maybe but you're essentially banking on them getting bought out (admittedly, this seems fairly likely). Tumblr? Maybe. Amazon? I think they're out of the city somewhere. Palantir? Maybe. SV certainly has got way more choice.