Reality check: Is San Francisco a friendly place? (Berkeley, Bloomington: neighborhoods, shop)

[tstieber]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

Agree with every word

I would not totally agree with this, only because that would make San Diego the least friendly place on the West Coast except Seattle, and I think OC and LA are much less friendly than SD, even though they are farther north. Are people in Oregon friendlier than in California? I've been once but noticed no real difference.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Never mind that haggar (Mayor of what, his own mind?) is impugning vast swatches of the country he's likely woefully ignorant of.

http://www.reece-eu.net/gallery/var/albums/funny/Pot%20Kettle%20Black.jpg?m=1272636617 (broken link)

You don't know anything about me, and if you did you'd know that I grew up in the South and lived in the Midwest before moving to the Bay Area. I'm sorry, but people in the Bay Area are just a lot less nosy and judgmental than people in the South or Midwest. I know you want to believe that everyone in the South is god's gentle children or whatever, but they're largely uneducated, uninformed, obese and fanatically religious, and the further you get from big cities like Atlanta, the more racism you see. The Midwest isn't much better, a bit less religious but it has a lot of massive swathes of rural areas where anyone with an Illinois license plate is treated with disdain and where people very rarely encounter non-whites. Say what you will about Bay Area-ites but at least they're fairly educated and even if they are religious they don't force it on other people.

[BVitamin]

Originally Posted by 415_s2k

I agree with you, but just out of curiosity... why do you think Seattle sucks?

The architecture of the city is bland (aside from that art-deco archway), it's pretty much slabs of cement, except for a few things. The art atmosphere is uninteresting, not much of anything (that goes for that huge library of theirs too; you would think they would have a large collection of just about anything. Sadly, space fills up most of the building and .... yes, tourists taking pictures and posing). The people I ran into, well I pretty much was dealing with zombies. The food, although fresh, when made is not that great. I suppose in essence, my experience was very grey, much like the weather up there which I don't mind at all. Portland's weather is pretty much the same but I love Portland so much more, I may even like Portland more than S.F. -- Portland is the fun younger brother to Seattle, I think.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by tstieber

I would not totally agree with this, only because that would make San Diego the least friendly place on the West Coast except Seattle, and I think OC and LA are much less friendly than SD, even though they are farther north. Are people in Oregon friendlier than in California? I've been once but noticed no real difference.

Perhaps I was being more crude when I said that. Here's my personal experience, of course everyone else's will vary:

LA and OC=least friendly
San Diego=Friendlier
Bay Area (east bay really for me)=friendlier still especially when it comes to common courtesy.
Washington State= sickeningly friendly.
Seattle= somewhat less so than the east bay but I find it more so than San Diego.

Overall, I find the east bay to be the most courteous.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

Overall, I find the east bay to be the most courteous.

Although I've found evidence of the opposite when taking a wrong turn and getting lost east of the Coliseum (kind of like doing the same near At&T, ending up in Hunter's Point). Otherwise, sure.

[BayDude]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

Perhaps I was being more crude when I said that. Here's my personal experience, of course everyone else's will vary:

LA and OC=least friendly
San Diego=Friendlier
Bay Area (east bay really for me)=friendlier still especially when it comes to common courtesy.
Washington State= sickeningly friendly.
Seattle= somewhat less so than the east bay but I find it more so than San Diego.

Overall, I find the east bay to be the most courteous.

I don't know about anyone else, but I value honesty and straightforwardness and common sense over friendliness (for its own sake). I don't believe in being friendly to absolutely anyone. People and situations must be judged carefully as not everyone has "friendly" motives.

That said, I wouldn't want to live in a society of uptight people, but we must be careful who we are friendly to. Not everyone is honest, well meaning etc.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by BayDude

I don't know about anyone else, but I value honesty and straightforwardness and common sense over friendliness (for its own sake). I don't believe in being friendly to absolutely anyone. People and situations must be judged carefully as not everyone has "friendly" motives.

That said, I wouldn't want to live in a society of uptight people, but we must be careful who we are friendly to. Not everyone is honest, well meaning etc.

I understand that and agree with you there. It's never good to be around people who are too nice to the point where they are insincere. I don't find most of the west coast like that but I have been to those places at times.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

You don't know anything about me, and if you did you'd know that I grew up in the South and lived in the Midwest before moving to the Bay Area. I'm sorry, but people in the Bay Area are just a lot less nosy and judgmental than people in the South or Midwest. I know you want to believe that everyone in the South is god's gentle children or whatever, but they're largely uneducated, uninformed, obese and fanatically religious, and the further you get from big cities like Atlanta, the more racism you see. The Midwest isn't much better, a bit less religious but it has a lot of massive swathes of rural areas where anyone with an Illinois license plate is treated with disdain and where people very rarely encounter non-whites. Say what you will about Bay Area-ites but at least they're fairly educated and even if they are religious they don't force it on other people.

I, too, spent most of my formative years as well as many of my adult years in both the deep South and the Midwest. What you describe certainly hasn't been my experience, ever.

Perhaps yours say more about you than may meet the eye, especially yours.

By the way, no argument about the educational level in the Bay Area. Impressive. But a great deal of education coupled with only a smidgen of common sense isn't all that much.

[NorCal Dude]

I can agree with what hag is saying to an extent. People are more nosy and judgmental in the midwest. Nosy can be annoying, but at the same time, there is a greater sense of community. California because it is a highly diverse and mobile locale, is the type of place where you could live somewhere for 10 maybe even 20 years and not so much as know your 5 closest neighbors names.

People are more judgmental, but at the same time a lot of judgment comes after analysis, where as alot of people in CA are hyper-obsessed with the superficial.

As far as the south. I used to view it (the bay)as the reciprocal of the bible belt, but now I feel it is more of the anti thesis. And as different as anti thesis's can be to one another, they can be similar. Stalin and communist Russia was the anti thesis to Hitler and national socialism, yet in many ways they were the same. The same goes for the bible belt and the bay.

Just as there is a level of group-think, intolerance of different opinion, racism, suspicion/resentment of outsiders in the south, there is in the bay. It is just a different paradigm. A big truck, big lots, big bubba-bushie in the south, really isn't all that different from a Prius driving, whole-foods, Obama zombie in marin.

[EclecticEars]

Originally Posted by NorCal Dude

Just as there is a level of group-think, intolerance of different opinion, racism, suspicion/resentment of outsiders in the south, there is in the bay. It is just a different paradigm. A big truck, big lots, big bubba-bushie in the south, really isn't all that different from a Prius driving, whole-foods, Obama zombie in marin.

Not just Marin, but Seattle, West L.A., Berkeley, or some hipster enclave in NYC.

Hell, it can even be Austin, Raleigh or Louisville where both big truck, big lots and big bubba live in the same city (but don't really coexist) with the Prius driving, Whole Foods, Obama zombie types.