NYC MANHATTAN to SAN JOSE (are we nutz?) (San Francisco, Santa Clara: equity, transplants)

[cdrobert]

hey just doing my part to stop the over population hehehe im just teasing, im a transplant myself. Anyways basically if you take what I said and Gizmo said you can put it together. Everything in San Mateo is either yuppie(Slapped up condo's), upper middle class (prefab/stucco tract homes), wealthy(homes in the hills), or barrio(mexican).

[gizmo980]

Originally Posted by NY2Cali

Gizmo- THANKS for the zip codes - great info!!! Any other areas in San Mateo county that you'd reccommend... I like the fact of having good access to all the bridges and roads there! As for the Stage deli... Skip it and hit up Katz deli on Houston street (another NYC institution and my fav.) on the Lower East side next time.... the Pastrami piled high on rye will literally will melt in your mouth!

No problemo. And thanks for the tips on delis - sounds yummy!!

As for San Mateo County, there are lots of good options, depending on exactly how much you can/want to spend. If convenience is important to you, San Mateo (the city) is probably the most centrally located... others in what we call "Mid-Peninsula" would be Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City, Foster City, Burlingame, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto. The latter three are overpriced suburbias, but great places to live if you can deal with that. Belmont and San Carlos are nice mid-range towns, with fairly low crime, good shopping, and some reasonable housing... I lived in Belmont Hills recently, and paid $1050 for a small 1-bedroom w/ a yard. Redwood City is nice if you stay west of El Camino - East side is literally the "barrio" - and there are lots of rentals around Farm Hill Blvd. & Woodside Rd.

Foster City is a very nice waterfront town with TONS of condo/apartment complexes, and some cute shopping areas & recreation. It's extremely convenient to 101 & 92/San Mateo Bridge, but fairly expensive and yuppy-ish. It also has a very large Asian community, and is quite safe (crime index usually under 100) and family-friendly. Oh, and my father helped in developing their new Jewish Community Center, which serves the whole Peninsula & is absolutely beautiful... of course people of all beliefs are welcome to enjoy the facilities! Finally, my favorite town on the north Peninsula is Pacifica, where I lived in 2002. It's a gorgeous place, but very foggy and inconvenient to highway 101 (right off 280 though). Also a bit pricey, but not bad considering you can hear the ocean from your living room.

Now I'm starting to sound like the Department of Tourism, but hopefully it's helped! I am a reference librarian, so this kind of "work" is actually fun for me - LOL.

[EZrhythm]

Throwing in a bit here; I've been here for decades and don't recommend San Jose or Santa Clara County at all. The West part of Redwood City as mentioned could be nice.
With your NYC traffic example, you definitely won't have it that bad unless there is a major accident. You'll be traveling much farther than .7 in an hour.
Travel time from San Jose to San Francisco (50 miles) is under an hour, with heavy traffic you could probably add 1/2 hour .
From Redwood City I'll bet it's a 20 minute drive or catch a train.

[romeoDNB]

I'm gonna take a stab and defend my hometown of San Jose. First of all, I'll admit San Jose doesn't have the sights and sounds of SF. It seems to me you guys want a change of scenery. San Jose can be a great place.

San Jose is the biggest city in the Bay Area, we're the 10th largest city in the U.S. San Jose has more money than SF, we have more growth potential (just ask the SF 49ers and Oakland A's, both who have proposed to move much closer to San Jose within the next 4 years). Our downtown area is nothing compared to SF, but I can tell you that construction has been bussling. New condos, lofts and apartments have been built and are currently being built.

I know that $750,000 can buy you some crappy homes, but I did some recent condo searching and you can find brand new condo/lofts for about $450,000. They are pretty nice too.

We have some **** good restaurants as well. There is plenty of shopping for your tastes including the Santana Row area and the Valley Fair Mall across the street from that.

The traffic in San Jose is probably the most bearable in the Bay Area. Not saying that there isn't any traffic, but it's steady and you can usually get from place to place within good time. One suggestion thought is that I wouldnt' want to live anywhere in East San Jose. This is where I find most of the heavy traffic resides due to the slightly lower cost of living in the area. Highways construction is active on some highways to include expansion of lanes (which is a very good thing for highway 87, which connects you from South San Jose to downtown).

I hope this helps!

[Downing Varick]

i just moved to san jose from downtown manhattan last august. and i am losing my frickin' mind! the problem is: san jose is not an urban setting that offers the city experience. i can't even get a decent haircut. who really cares if sj is the 10th largest city in the u.s.? it's kind of like saying that one is the tenth tallest person in the country.
say goodbye to the avante garde, culture, decent pizza, bagels, deli's, architecture, city planning, public transportation as a primary mode of transit.

on the upside:
-delicious mexican food..and it's cheap. unlike anything you'll find on the east coast.
-the weather.
-people are unbelievably mellow (if you're into that).
-you can buy alcohol at the supermarket, and it's so much cheaper than nyc liquor stores.
-way more apartment space for the buck.

if you're serious about moving, prepare yourselves to leave the greatest city in the world for suburbia.

[metaljaybird]

Why don't you try San Diego out? It's a decent economy, still a bit of traffic, but nowhere near like gridlock of NY/Northern NJ or LA.

[romeoDNB]

I only threw in 10th Largest City for a tidbit. Obviously San Jose will never be like NYC population wise or historical wise (and I would never want it to be). I can say this though. Beware San Jose will be one of the top cities of the future. NYC has no more room to grow. It's tapped out. San Jose has tons more room to grow (not sure if that's really a good thing with traffic though). It's one of the richest cities in the USA as far as companies and median incomes. It has better all-around weather than NYC.

If you like that BIG city atmosphere you never should have moved to San Jose, move to SF or LA. I like suburbia, but I also like being close to bigger cities like SF. It's an advantage. If you like to listen to a constant humming of traffic and noise than stay in the big cities.

[oread]

I will say this as politely as possible. I am a S. F. native and older. It isn't the place I grew up in now. But no place likes newly transplanted citizens that constantly compares where they are to where they left. If it was so **** wonderful why did you leave? I suggest that you consider Seattle it is in the U. S. and close enough to Vancouver Canada that you have a kind of two city's for the price of one. Also Hong Kong and Seattle have a very tight economic tie so flights to and from Japan and other cities in the Orient could beckon you if you get bored with and creeping suburbia. Good luck, and love the one your with.

[bicoastal]

I'm with Downing Varick on this one. I've lived all over the place, in almost equal measure the East coast and the West coast. You would be insane to move here. First off, this is the most boring place I've ever lived, even more boring than Providence, Rhode Island, which was at least close to NYC. The weather is much worse here than you might imagine. For the last two years it has basically flooded all winter long. This winter, it's not flooding but it's insanely cold by Californian standards -- we're talking lows in the mid-30s. I met a girl who came from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan who said that she's never been colder than here in Silicon Valley because the buildings aren't made to withstand the type of cold we're having. I have to agree -- it's freezing here and my apartment can't handle the cold. As I type this I am rubbing my feet together to keep them warm... that never happened to me when I lived in Boston/NYC/Providence.

Also the suburbs are incredibly boring. Good luck finding a home with any character, or a neighborhood with any character, for less than $3 million. And even the $3 million houses are pretty soulless and bland compared to what is available where you are. There is no culture here. Your patience will constantly be tried by FOBby Asian soccer moms who drive their Honda Odysseys 20 mph below the speed limit, or being forced to dodge the junk falling off a Mexican landscaping truck as it does its daily rounds around your neighborhood. I found it much easier to drive around Boston than here, by an order of magnitude. Also, do you like breathing exhaust? Because apparently here it's in vogue to hand landscapers leaf blowers so that they can pollute the **** out of the air so that you can't even breathe in your own home.

There is no artistic sensibility nor any sense of aesthetics or beauty here. It is nothing but strip malls, concrete and engineers. If strip malls and engineers are your thing, then be my guest, move here. If not, stay in NYC. I would love to trade places with you if I could. I am desperate to get out of here before I lose my mind.

On the other hand, if being accosted by toothless crack addicts and escaped mental patients is your thing, you could always have a go at SF. Newsom's too busy dating 20-year-olds to do what Giuliani did for NYC. If I were you -- STAY PUT. You won't regret it.

[SarahGabrielle]

I would like to pose this question to you as a New York couple. Are you scared of earthquakes at all? My husband and I lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and got burnt out after several years so we moved to downtown Miami instead of San Fransisco because we we're to afraid of possible earthquakes. I wonder how bad they possibly are in the San Jose area?