Los Gatos or Santa Rosa Area

[gooski]

We live in Los Gatos near the Campbell/Saratoga border so it's more of a middle class area. Haven't personally seen any "attitude" from other folks who live here. I'm sure there's some but nothing to worry about.

Downtown is not crowded even during the weekends, has a nice two screen movie theatre (just saw "Up" there), Borders bookstore and lots of cafes, restaurants and little boutique shops.

If you will be working in the high tech sector in Silicon Valley, then Los Gatos provides a much nicer commute than the other cities that you listed. I work in Santa Clara and I can take surface streets or San Tomas Expressway to work (10 mile drive takes at most 30 minutes, 15 minutes during the summer).

[aleuzinger]

I've lived in the Los Gatos area (actually Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Los Altos) and currently reside in Santa Rosa. I personally prefer Santa Rosa and have gotten to the point where I'm unwilling to move back to South Bay area (although I'm considering Portland). My main gripes with living in Silicon Valley are the culture of money and tunnel-vision around technology, plus the traffic and high housing prices (which partially drives the culture of money). However, there are definitely pluses about living in the South Bay: unparalled open space park system, lots of good restaurants (especially if you like ethnic foods), educated and interesting people (not all are tech-centric and/or driven by money), diversity of ethnicity, Stanford nearby, Santa Cruz and Monterey nearby, nice surroundings if you're near the Santa Cruz moutains, and easy access to airports.
Moving to Santa Rosa I was struck by a lot of things that are different between the two areas: in Santa Rosa I became annoyed by how people would stop for pedestrians to cross the road (I've gotten used to this): life is a bit slower, lots of pick-ups and not so many BMWs, generally traffic jams only occur on 101 at commute time and are pretty minor (and they're widening the roads which honestly should eliminate the traffic jams), hard to find truly good ethnic food although there is good "California/Wine Country" cuisine, pretty heterogenous (ie white and latino) culture, there's money here but it's not the big topic of conversation, my 3000 sq ft house on 0.5 acres couldn't by a 1600 sq ft condo in Los Gatos.

Having said all this, the main drawback to living in Santa Rosa is the main reason to go to Los Gatos: jobs. The job market in Santa Rosa is very limited if you're in high tech (which I am). There's a bit of an industry for people with medical device experience (led by Medtronic, but other companies here are doing similar work). But the telecom industry in Sonoma County has been shriveling up since the dot-com bust. This isn't to say there aren't jobs in Sonoma County (I've actually got a pretty good job right now), but realize that choices are limited.

Hope this helps.

[Zaney]

I'm loving this inside perspective. Thank You So Much!

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by Zaney

I'm loving this inside perspective. Thank You So Much!

FYI, I think aleuzinger's perspective hit the bull's eye.

[mysticaltyger]

One thing that no one has mentioned (and you didn't really ask about) is the difference in weather between the 2 places. The weather in both places has a lot of similarities. Warmer and sunnier than the coast, especially on summer days. Less fog. Winter nights can be chillier than on the coast.

Santa Rosa gets significantly more rain than Los Gatos/South Bay. It probably gets 10-15 more days of rain per year than Los Gatos. And when it rains in Santa Rosa, it rains hard. Los Gatos, since it's in the hills, gets more rain than the rest of the South Bay, but still significantly less than the flatlands of Santa Rosa. On the flatlands of the South Bay, (San Jose, Campbell, etc), the rainfall is often pretty light. So winters up north are noticeably drearier/wetter than the South Bay.

The climate in Santa Rosa is also slightly more exteme. More 90 degree days and more nights that dip below freezing. In general, daytime temperatures between the South Bay & North Bay are pretty close (slightly cooler in winter, the same or a bit warmer in summer), while night time temperatures in the North Bay average around 5 degrees cooler year-round.

[ando775]

Originally Posted by skywalker400

I'm personally not a big fan of Santa Rosa versus the other towns in Sonoma County, it has more generic houses and rundown areas than places like Sebastopol, West Petaluma or Sonoma. Once you get some distance from the 101, you get pretty disconnected from the civilization too though.

This is true, but Santa Rosa is also quite a bit larger than all those towns (probably all those town combined) so your going to have a broader spectrum of status. There are plenty of very nice places in Santa Rosa that seem almost like seperate communities (Rincon Valley, Bennet Valley, the Junior College area).