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I mention the aloofness and lack of basic politeness displayed by a disproportionate number of SF denizens, which several others also have mentioned, and now I want to live in a "commune" but am thwarted because I think "everyone" here is "horrible"? What an odd response (which in its snottiness, simply tends to affirm my point of view).
Well no..Mayorhaggar lives in Oakland. So what YOU perceived as snottiness (I actually found it funny) isn't unique to SF and can be found anywhere..which is the point that many of us were trying to make.
Why is it so hard for some people on this board to grasped that just because THEY perceive a situation a certain way, not everyone does. It does not make anyone's right or wrong opinion...just DIFFERENT. Do you have issues with diversity of opinions and beliefs?
I mention the aloofness and lack of basic politeness displayed by a disproportionate number of SF denizens, which several others also have mentioned, and now I want to live in a "commune" but am thwarted because I think "everyone" here is "horrible"? What an odd response (which in its snottiness, simply tends to affirm my point of view).
You just don't get urban life. You say that SF is horrible because everyone is horrible and only cares about "personal fulfilment" so they don't interact on a community level or whatever. People don't say hi to strangers on the street because it's a big city and there's a lot of crazy people who look normal and junkies wandering around, not because everyone is a jackass. You say you've lived in SF for like 20 years but you clearly still haven't adjusted to city life. Try another city, nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to live here (same for any of the other people on this forum fussing about SF), but in any other dense big city you'll find pretty much the same attitude, and you'll often find people that are a lot ruder and impolite compared with Friscans.
So I've just been sitting back for a while and taking in all the opinions...I didn't want to continually be bumping my own thread, which I'm sure gets annoying.
Lots of great, well thought out, responses. Thanks to all who have contributed to my humble little thread.
But at this, point, just a few observations / conclusions on the topic...without taking up all the space to respond to individual posters:
* It's accurate to say that as one gets older in life, it is without a doubt more diffcult to make new friends and lasting connections, as everyone in late 20's and beyond begins to grow increasingly more time-pressed and insular / wrapped up in their own priorities of family, career circles, established social circles, etc. This fact is independent of geography.
* It really goes without saying (or not, based on this thread ) that easily the biggest deteminant of if, how many, and the quality of friends and connections in a new area will be the personality, attitude and proactiveness (new word?) of the transplant. This is also independent of the new city one has transplanted to.
* Folks in fast-paced cities, especially those where COL is high and thus one's time is more "valuable", will surely come across as less "friendly" than in smaller towns where time moves more slowly. The Bay Area in general, and especially the City, clearly fits the former category.
* I will disagree though with a few posters on here who contend that the premise of the thread (that a newcomer's experience could differ somewhat from place to place) is flawed. Would you disagree that a transplant to, say, Minot, ND could expect to have roughly the same experience as a Manhattan newcomer? Of course not. So these being 2 obvious extremes, I think the rest is shades of gray. The point of the thread was to zero in on what shade of gray most accurately describes the SF / East Bay new transplant experience, in terms of (non work-related) social connections.
To those who say something like "you'll just have to get it out here and see for yourself"...well, sure, but the big value of C-D forums is to collect some good info ahead of time BEFORE you make the big, life-changing decision. This is expecially true for someone like myself who is older than average, and might not have more than one more major move left in me. I'm no longer an early 20-something with wanderlust and no other committments, but this time trying to decide once and for all where to put down roots. It's kind of a big deal. As I've stated, I have a pretty decent circle of friends and family back here...BUT if I have to suffer through another (4 month) summer of oppressive heat and humidity, another (3 month) winter of ice, snow, sub-freezing temps and dreariness (and, BTW, rain in most of the other "nice" 5 months), ultra-conservative, small-minded, parochial attidues, AND a local economy that has almost NOTHING to offer me...I think I'm gonna beat my head through these Midwestern walls. Which would suck, because they're usually brick.
@greenmountainex-pat - as I've said, I do appreciate your honest opinions, and I agree with you that one is only served by accurate, unvarnished information before making major life-changing decisions. I was just trying to point out the irony in that, for someone who is complaining about how RUDE San Franciscans can be, you were extremely rude and abrasive in your own posts. I'm not talking about the content of your posts (which was your honest opinion), but the manner in which they were delivered. It's almost like you were trying to somehow "get back at" the locals on here on a quasi-anonymous interent forum to make up for your experiences on the streets of the City. I think there's a fine line on internet forums like these between brutal honest responses and trolling, and IMO you were at least approaching Trollville. If your everyday manners on SF streets are anything like what you were displaying on here, it's no wonder you are having the experiences in the Bay Area that you are. Just my 2 cents...from one "call it like I see it" person to another. I was a bit surprised that you weren't called out more by some of the locals on here...but that, too, is telling. It tells me that Bay Area folks are somewhat less confrontational than East Coasters, especially NYers. Doesn't make either style better or worse, just different.
Lastly, I've concluded that with people's subjective experiences all over the map (literally)...in a metro of 7mm people...at the end of the day, a newcomer's experiences of a new place really is what they choose to make of it. To one degree or another...as you sow, so you shall reap. There are some great perspectives in this thread, and some good ideas on ways to shortcut the friends-making process for Bay Area newbies. I think finding groups of people (through Meetup or otherwise) who are already doing the things you're interested in or passionate about is one of the best ways to connect in a new place for transplants of any age.
I hope future BA transplants will find the thread useful. I know I have. Thanks again to all contributors!
/novel
Last edited by OakAve2OakLand; 07-14-2011 at 05:23 PM..
In any case OakAve2Oakland when/if you ever move to Oakland send me a PM if you want to meet up for a coffee or a beer and I can maybe show you around Oakland a bit. And yeah I think this thread's generally run it's course.
In any case OakAve2Oakland when/if you ever move to Oakland send me a PM if you want to meet up for a coffee or a beer and I can maybe show you around Oakland a bit. And yeah I think this thread's generally run it's course.
Thank you, mayorhaggar, for the generous offer...I may just take you up on that.
Maybe Oak2Oak's arrival in your fair city could even be a good enough excuse for a C-D forum happy hour? First couple rounds are on me!
See, I'm being proactive already...lol.
And yes, I do think the thread has officially run out of steam. I guess my last post was about giving it a proper eulogy.
To a couple of the posters who are most adamantly arguing against the Bay Area being friendly - based solely on your contributions to this thread, you sound extremely angry and a bit unpleasant. That may have more to do with your inability to fit in socially than anything specific to the locals here.
To a couple of the posters who are most adamantly arguing against the Bay Area being friendly - based solely on your contributions to this thread, you sound extremely angry and a bit unpleasant. That may have more to do with your inability to fit in socially than anything specific to the locals here.
But that sort of comment nullifies the very purpose of a thread asking about how easy it is to make friends in a certain place. If it all comes down to "what you make of it," then any place is as good as the next ... Des Moines, San Francisco, Lagos, who cares, right?
By my way of thinking, which is backed up by the persistence of threads asking about friendliness of particular areas, what you can "make of it" is going to depend in the first instance on what "it" is.
So your comment is really more heat than light ... it doesn't illuminate any new aspect of this discussion, but just tries to squelch those who disagree with you by way of personal attacks. Superficial, high-handed comments like yours, as I noted above, really illustrate quite well the aloofness and aggressive smugness that I, among many others, have noted to be a distinguishing characteristic of San Franciscans.
Funny, I thought I was being pretty clear that I thought the entire premise behind this thread was flawed.
It's about a useful a question as the recurring "where can I go to meets guys/girls?" threads.
Funny, I thought I was being pretty clear that I thought the entire premise behind this thread was flawed.
I guess we'll agree to disagree on this. I offer detail on why in my post above (#73).
It would be off base to deny that different cities have different demographics and different socio-cultural tendancies. For instance, a city like Denver has, on a % of total population basis, more transplants between the ages of 20-45 than older, more established cities like, say, Cincinnati. This is not an opinion, it is a verifiable fact. Hence, the social scene in terms of how it "feels" and is experienced by newcomers / transplants from other cities will necessarily be different between such cities. The central question of the thread was where SF / East Bay specifically fits into this spectrum, and to inquire about the actual experiences of newbies (locals opnions welcome, too) in this area.
The thread did morph a little bit from the experiences of new arrivals to the friendliness of the area in general...which wasn't exactly the original question, but clearly related to it, and still useful info.
There are many facts and statistics that one can research about an area, but subjects such as those in this thread, which are very subjective and experiential, are valuable threads IMO. They offer 1st-hand reports, with all their nuances and subtleties, and the kind of info you won't get from a map, almanac, or city guide. The fact that these types of threads surface often is further evidence that this is one of the major issues on people's mind when they consider moving to a new city, as they try to figure out if they will "fit in" there. The fact that the #1 determinant of an individual's success in making new friends / connections, regardless of area, will be that individual's attitude, openness, ability to intitate social interactions etc. doesn't change the fact that the general social climate (especially for newcomers) does vary somewhat from place to place.
My best guess as to the cause of this is that there are a lot of people who come to SF just for the experience of living here without intending to actually form lasting connections, which means there are a lot of players and others who mainly want to use other people until it's time to leave. And the folks who stay are often self-congratulatory and see themselves as better than most of the U.S. population. (South Park nails this aspect of SF very accurately in its "Smug Alert" episode.) SF is also a haven for people who are marginalized by society as a whole and run-of-the-mill druggies, which means that you have a higher-than-average quota of psychologically fractured people who are basically unable to connect with other people other than superficially.
I had a lot booze-induced fun when I came here for law school, and I also felt like there was a community when I was married with kid. Now ... not so much.
So, in conclusion, if you want to come here to have some booze-induced fun (I saw a pretty young thing puking into the gutter on a recent week-night evening while I waited for my bus in the financial district to take me home) or you are satisfied with being "friends" with people on Facebook or throughout the duration of a Meetup group (until it dies when the novelty wears off), live in SF. Otherwise I would not move to SF (or Marin, where i have also lived).
(About 10 years ago I was chatting with a female lawyer I worked with who came from Appleton, WI. Somehow the subject of Bay Area people came up and she, without prompting, mentioned how difficult it was to meet people here (and she is an attractive and sharp lady). She said that people here don't know how to have conversations, like in Wisconsin. Her theory was that people there had to be stuck indoors together for many months and had to learn to get along. The opposite trend seems to prevail here.)
Interesting points there. Your post got me curious about the "Smug Alert" South Park episode, so I sat down and watched it. It totally reminded me of an experience I had during one of my visits to SF. I was at a restaurant, and there was a nearby table where two people had just one discussion throughout their lunch: how does San Francisco compare to other cities? They went one by one starting with New York and LA....
I thought it was kind of funny. It was one of the first cultural characteristic traits that stood out to me in San Francisco. I wasn't offended, or taken back, but I definitely noticed it.
Besides going to school in Massachusetts, I have lived in two major U.S cities; New York, and Los Angeles. I grew up in NYC, and I lived in LA from 2005 to 2010. Each city definitely has it's own character. Los Angeles people don't really brag about LA much, but they love talk about the weather! That's like all they talk about. If you tell them you're from New York, then forget it, you'll be talking about the weather for the next 20 minutes. For them it always comes down to that when comparing the two, forget every other amazing thing NY has to offer. On the other hand, they love talking about NYC whenever possible.
I found these comparisons funny because people in New York people are not sitting around talking about LA, or SF. New Yorkers are usually too busy doing things, and don't have time to talk about anywhere else. The only time they sit down to talk about another place, besides discussing current events, is when they are looking to travel there, and that's usually a warm tropical place, not another metropolis. You would think that NY, with all it's publicity, and it's history, that it's people would be smug about their city... but it's the complete opposite!
Anyhow, we're here to discuss San Francisco... I'll be moving there later this month. I'm excited about my move, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the city has to offer. I've visited 4 times in 4 years. Each time I loved it more and more.
I actually found that people were very friendly. There were quite a few moments when complete strangers spoke to me like I had known them for years! I would witness several random acts of kindness per day.
I guess that everyone has a different experience. I have two friends that lived there briefly about two decades ago, and they told me that it was hard to make friends there. Reading the posts here I gather that it hasn't changed much. Part of me finds it hard to believe after having such a nice experience there myself. I just turned 30, and I'll be going to school there. (I decided to make a career change two years ago when the recession hit). That should probably make it easy for me to make new friends, specially since most people at that school are in the tech industry.
Who knows, maybe I'll become smug myself.
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) that easily the biggest deteminant of if, how many, and the quality of friends and connections in a new area will be the personality, attitude and proactiveness (new word?) of the transplant. This is also independent of the new city one has transplanted to.
Smug Free
