Quote:
Originally Posted by Ant131531
I always wanted to ask you, but why don't you like San Francisco? It's a pretty diverse international city with a lot of culture and Asian success and influence which is something you seem to like judging by your past posts. I already know why you don't care for Chicago and L.A., I can see why someone wouldn't like it, but your mild dislike for SF has surprised me.
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I view San Francisco and its surrounding San Francisco Bay Area as the second best city and metropolitan area in the United States today after New York and Greater New York. Just my opinion though, others may see things differently and that's fine (for them).
You are right though, I definitely don't like it enough to ever consider living there. There are three to five aspects about cities and their metropolitan areas that I just cannot tolerate, in this exact same order;
1. Dirtiness (willing to forgive this if the city is super huge)*
2. Traffic (willing to forgive this if the city is super huge)*
3. Congestion (willing to forgive this if the city is super huge)*
4. A "big city" that feels small and limited in size, scale, and scope
5. Social and political factors
* I'm willing to forgive really huge sized cities for those issues because it is understandable why they have issues like traffic, congestion, and may have general dirtiness. By super huge, my understanding of that is a place with something like 12-25 million people in the metropolis.
Contrary to what is said on this forum, I don't have any issues with the cleanliness or dirtiness level of the city of San Francisco at all. I've been to more than enough areas both in the city and its surrounding metropolitan areas to know it has plenty of clean areas, as well as plenty of filthy areas. To me, its "dirtiness" doesn't bother me the way the dirtiness of a particular Northeast city does (that will go unnamed). Every neighborhood or area of San Francisco that I personally like to spend time in are generally well taken care of. So I haven't ever had any issues with San Francisco with regard to its cleanliness level.
I cannot stand the traffic, I have never lived in the San Francisco Bay Area but have family there and have visited it often. The traffic drives me nuts, just want to pull every hair on my head off because it is frustrating. To me, while places like Los Angeles, Washington, New York, Houston, or even Atlanta get all the attention for their traffic, I have never felt anywhere more frustrating and hopeless as the San Francisco Bay Area (at least in America), especially San Francisco proper. I have spent 2.5 hours in my car in the city of San Francisco and in that time I drove a maximum of maybe half-a-mile at best. In the suburbs, it feels like the roads and infrastructure are either inadequate or too small to handle the current population that resides there now, especially the area between San Francisco and San Jose going from South Bay to the Peninsula; it feels like everyone is forced to drive 5-10 miles below the speed limit primarily due to the traffic congestion. On top of that, add in how unremarkably hostile the city of San Francisco is for car owners; you can scantly ever find parking and when you do, you'll likely get jipped on the expenses and the city isn't flat, so you always have to pay close attention to how you park, how you drive up inclines, and the general maintenance level of the car. It would be great if the city had rail access all over to incentivize people to never own a car but there are vast swaths of the city that have no rail access by either MUNI or BART, so you either walk, take the bus (which are at the mercy of traffic and congestion on the streets - varying by time of day), or take a cab.
The outer fringes of the San Francisco Bay Area are notoriously and deceptively bad for traffic to. We drove both in and out of the San Francisco Bay Area and have done so plenty of times, every time, whether we are inbound from Sacramento, or from the Monterey Bay Area, or from the Central Valley (Modesto, Stockton, Tracy, and the like) there is bumper to bumper logjams on the road leading into the San Francisco Bay Area. The only time we haven't experienced that is at night, really late at night when few others are driving on the road.
I've felt that as a visitor to the area several times; I don't want to envision what it is like to live in that 365 days a year. It would absolutely drive me insane.
The congestion is also problematic too. It feels like every store, every restaurant, every bar, every institution worth going to is just pre-jammed packed with people. It sucks when all you want to do is get a table, get a seat, get in and buy what you want and get out as soon as you can. I mean, it is like this in absolutely monstrous sized Asian megacities, including one that I spent a few years of my childhood in, but those cities have like 15-25 million people. We can see and understand why they are like that, I don't understand how San Francisco became so pressed with congestion with 840,000 people and a metropolis around it with 8.8 million people, the decentralized model should have alleviated a lot of the congestion but it hasn't. Its congestion feels rougher than either New York or Los Angeles. I have never had any issues getting anything or going somewhere in New York, despite being as populated and dense as it is, it seems things flow much smoother and infinitely faster in New York than San Francisco. Even in Manhattan, when I get something from a store or go to a restaurant, the wait time isn't anything out of the ordinary compared to anywhere else. In San Francisco, doing the same things feels like it takes much longer to do.
I'm also not that big into cities that skew strongly in one direction politically, not by voting trends but by the policies implemented. To be straightforward, I identify as a Centrist, taking in values from both ends of the spectrum (lean liberal on some social aspects (not all, just some), lean conservative in some fiscal aspects (not all, just some)) and my party affiliation is Independent. To me, the city of San Francisco skews far too left to make any comprehensive sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I like several of the programs and initiatives the city has implemented, just last week I gave the city credit for adopting the first of its kind mandatory child college savings accounts, which is a great thing. That being said, a lot of the regulations and prohibitions and general planning that come from the administrative heads of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and other councilmembers make little sense to me. There are a lot of regulatory limitations in San Francisco that just feel so unnecessary to me. Even other "very liberal cities" like Seattle seem more organized and manageable with regard to their regulatory practice and policies, which is why I don't have an issue with Seattle politically.
Finally, I don't have any complaints about the housing costs for the San Francisco Bay Area. As I've learned with living in London and paying more in rent than I'd have liked, that you have to pay up to live in a quality environment. My issue with the costs and expenses of the San Francisco Bay Area is stemmed from its size (or lack thereof). If I wanted to buy an average house in the Bay Area, it would cost me north of $1 million, I can live with the price if I felt that the city of my choice was gargantuan sized (i.e. Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, Istanbul, so on) but not for a place with a middling size. As in too big to have a laid back, free flowing, uncongested, little traffic, and generally clean and tidy environment and too small to have that hectic megacity pace, density, structural verticality, and general vibe. It is that "middle layer" of city sizes (5-10 million) that I least like, especially with the way the American ones are built, which typically means getting around in them is a pain. Me personally, I'd just rather go small (San Diego, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, Honolulu) or huge (London, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, Paris).
That being said, while I don't have any interest in living there, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I view the place as the second best city and metropolis in America (referring to the San Francisco Bay Area). I do understand the appeal of the place for other people and for those that live there, I wish them the best in life. If you live in the United States and are adamant on living in a major metropolis (lets say 5 million people or more) then the San Francisco Bay Area offers a little bit of something for everyone, even with some issues. For example, you have access to Wine Country in Napa, Sonoma, Marin. You have access to palisades along the coast in Santa Cruz and on south to Big Sur. You have beaches, rivers, bays, oceans, mountains, forests (the Redwoods are the largest trees in America), and the like. You live in a decentralized metropolitan area with three core cities (San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland) that are completely different from one another, meaning if you don't like one for whatever reason, chances are that you will find one of the other two to you liking (especially because all three cities are such polar opposite different from one another). If for some reason you don't like any of the three, then the bit cities that serve as satellite cities, suburbs, exurbs, or minor cities in the Bay Area are still there for people to take a look into. The region has some of the best suburbs in America. Hard to argue otherwise with suburbs like Sausalito, Carmel, Petaluma, Palo Alto and the like. Not only do they have fantastic and moderate weather to enjoy being out most of the year but their geographical features make property investment worthwhile because you literally get a great view and quality environment. So I can understand why people love the place and I definitely think its a top two place in all of America (along with New York) but its not for me.
To be fair, if I had to rank it with Chicago and Los Angeles, I would definitely take San Francisco over the other two. So there's that at least. At the end of the day though, for me, a place like Seattle is a better fit. It is greener, less congested, has much less traffic, nightlife seems more enjoyable (to me personally), it's much cleaner, and it is generally half the cost of the San Francisco Bay Area. That is not to take anything away from the San Francisco Bay Area, on every objective front it is superior to Greater Seattle, but for me and solely me, I like Seattle more and view it as a better fit overall.
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