Regional-Class Distance Runners Looking For a Home (San Diego, San Francisco: middle-class, for rent)

[RunAllDay]

Hello, city-data forum-

We apologize in advance for the very long post- thanks ahead of time for anyone who provides us with good information. We posted this in the OC and San Diego sections- but we don't mean to spam the boards, we're just casting a wide net.

Our situation:

We are undergrads going to school in the Northeast (we'd prefer not to give out too many personal details). We are track and cross country athletes for our schools (none of us attend the same school). Recently, we were discussing the fact that while we were reasonably successful runners, we weren't the guys getting offered contracts to run professionally after college by any means. There are hundreds of athletes in our position- not yet ready to give up serious competition and willing to make some sacrifices to achieve our potential, but not fast enough to pay our expenses purely through racing.

Our idea? Well, 5 of us have committed to getting the heck out of the Northeast and spent a couple years pinching pennies. As a group, we decided that, being as we were all born and raised in the New York/New England, it would be nice to do something entirely different- hence our post here.

As the thread title asks, is San Francisco the right place for 5 recent college grads with dreams of running fast?

Here are the requirements any place would need to meet for us:

1) Rent: We would be 5 recent college graduates, one of us would be certified to teach. If we each take home 1500 a month, that would allow us to pay about 700/month each for rent. We don't mind bunking up, but we would obviously prefer a duplex or something where we could rent both sides and hopefully give everyone a room.

2) Employment: Cost of living is obviously quite high in California, as it is in Boston. In Boston, this cost of living is reflected in the fact that even a crappy job like telemarketing offers salaries of about $10/hr + commission on sales. Even typically low-paying jobs offer $10-15/hr here. Tax isn't particularly low in Massachusetts or New York either. Yet, we've managed to survive thus far in the Northeast (which, again, apparently has a higher cost of living than OC) off about 15,000 a year after taxes. What kind of tax would we be looking at in Orange County? We'd imagine we'd have to be in a pretty low tax bracket.

3) Standard of living- quite low from the perspective of a middle-class family, we'd imagine. We're college kids. We don't mind living in somewhat sketchy areas- One of us lives in a neighborhood with 2x the national average for violent crime and with a little common sense, we've never had a problem. We're all very tolerant people- hearing people speak Spanish in public doesn't offend our tender sensibilities and while our backgrounds are all lower-class white guys, we grew up in pretty diverse areas and have no trouble getting along in multicultural areas. At the same time, we've got no issues with suburbia- whether the area is a planned city with beige houses or a rundown area that WASPs fear to tread, if it meets our other qualifications, we're good.

4) Running specific stuff: In order to be our runners' paradise, it needs 1) to have excellent weather, which we'll specifically define as less than 10 days a year where the high temperature is less than 40 degrees or more than 90 degrees. Fog doesn't matter but we'd prefer an area with low-humidity. Our "perfect temperature range" is about 55-75 degrees. We also need access to soft-surfaces to run on (dirt trails, grass parks, friendly golf courses, similar offerings) and access to a high-quality outdoor track for training.

5) Area: we'd like to be close to the coast, because we noticed the temperature in the summer seems to rise precipitously even 15 miles inland. We need to be reasonably close to an airport in order to travel to different races. A vibrant local road-racing scene would be really great. We don't know much about the Bay Area running scene. We'd also be more than ok with living in a so-called "student-ghetto," that is, the cheap(er) housing often found near large universities. We'd also be of similar age to the students there, and noise/undergraduate shenanigans don't bother us in the least. Essentially, we're putting our "real lives" on hold for 2-3 years to find out if we've got the right stuff for running. If not, hey, we got to experience a different area of the country, hopefully meet some new people, have some adventures, and retire from serious, competitive training knowing, hey, at least we tried. We've got no plans to do this thing long term, unless by some miracle Nike or whatever shoe company comes a-knockin'.


Sorry this is so long. Here's the best summary we can do:

1) 500-700 dollars in rent, lower-class areas fine by us
2) good soft-surface running options
3) part-time employment in $12-18/hr range
4) normal weather is dry, 55-75 degrees
5) college town/city is preferable


Housing seems cheap in Oakland, but even out here we've heard of Oakland's reputation. Is West Oakland or even more north, like towards Berkeley reasonably safe? It's not like we need it to be safe enough for our toddlers to roam about unsupervised (since none of us have children. . . nor would we let them roam about unsupervised regardless) just safe enough for 5 young white men to avoid trouble so long as they exercise common sense. Craigslist seems to have about zero affordable housing anywhere between South San Fran and Campbell. We thought perhaps that given Stanford's high cost of tuition, we could find ourselves a nice little off-campus student ghetto to settle in, but no luck thus far. Any leads?

Sorry for the novel!

-We Like to RunAllDay

[Ultrarunner]

There are lots of running clubs in the East Bay and mile after mile of trails just in the East Bay Regional Park District Parks.

Oakland does have mild weather as determined by the low number of heat and/or cooling days...