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there are TOO MANY PEOPLE in the bay area. not as stuck up as NEW YORK though. Way too many liberals, thats not the problem though. Too many far left, flag burning, Castro loving communists.It only gets worse witha trip up the 101 to the Mendocino Coast, namely the Town of Mendocino. Other parts of the north bay aren't so bad though.
I LOVE SF and miss it immensely. Sorry you have such terrible things to say. If it wasn't for a job transfer I would go back to SF in a heart beat. I love the city. There are so many wonderful restaurants, so many little nitches that are fitting for almost any different person.
The fog is cozy, the scenery is unbelievable. The liberal, the conservative, the crazy, the middle of the road all seem to blend so well in this melting pot.
I miss SF & sorry to hear someone had such a negative thing to say about the best city in the USA.
PS with regards to the crime...I find SF VERY VERY SAFE!!!
I have lived all over & with my job I am very familiar with crime rates. I felt that the homicide rate is actually quite good for it's size. Obviously it is no Mendicino..but even there you have Chandra Levy & Lacey Peterson...so this cute small town even has homicides.
To get the ideal life of SF back...you need to be back in the 70's which will never happen. "It is what it is"
I couldn't agree more with the earlier statements about the Orlando FL area. I grew up in central FL before Disney World came and have many fond memories: growing up in a small town, the smell of orange blossoms, riding my bike to school, etc. So many people have flocked to the state to retire that it's ruined the area. Citrus groves bulldozed to make room for retirement communities. Ugly WalMarts and strip malls cropped up. It's plain scary driving in areas where elderly are driving these huge RVs with car in tow. I would never move back there.
I moved to NJ because of my job but was recently laid off so I'm looking to leave this state. I live in the northwestern part in the mountains where it's rural and very beautiful. New York City is only a 1.5 hr train ride away. Unfortunately, there is so much corruption in this state that has led to the highest property taxes in the USA. Plus, I'm tired of shoveling snow in the winter. That's why I'm looking at potential jobs in CA (SF or San Diego area).
This forum has definitely been an eye opening experience. I guess every place has it's pros and cons. I just wonder are there any places out there where the quality of life has stayed the same or gotten better?
I lived in San Francisco from 1987 through January of 1998. I grew up in the area and I remember as a kid walking with my parents or grandmother through the Haight Ashbury and the Wharf area, etc. I remember the Summer of Love and the hippies and incense, flowers on chains, open pot-smoking. The 1970's were an ugly period in San Francisco in my opinion. The city was dirty, many parts were derelict and rundown, crime seemed pretty pervasive, and litter was blowing down the streets. If you were in SF in 1975 or so, and remember walking on the Wharf, you also remember all the trash in the streets. In the 80's the city began to clean up. I lived first in the Western Addition which was still considered a rough neighborhood then (1987/88). I then moved to the outer Richmond and eventually after the 89 quake which damaged the building I lived in, to the Outer Sunset where I remained until 98 and took the N-Judah to the Embarcadero and walked to my job down at Spear and Mission downtown. I thought the city looked much better by the 90's and I enjoyed living there. I'm pretty conservative politically and I never felt uncomfortable sharing my views there. The company I worked for did however move out of the City because of payroll taxes, city taxes, and the cost of doing business in San Francisco. So I ended up being transfered to a new site in the East Bay which might have been a commuting problem, but I decided this was a chance to leave the apartment life and buy a house, so I did in the East Bay and worked in Oakland on 12th Street right across from City Hall. Oakland scared me. San Francisco never scared me. I think part of the problem in San Francisco is the way the city government is set up and the power the Supervisors wield. Laws driving jobs and businesses out of SF are for example:
-All businesses with 10 or less employees must be given 40 hours of paid sick time a year, to use any way they see fit. Businesses over 10 employees must grant up to 72 hours a year. Small businesses can't afford this and must either bite the bullet or close. This affects even people who hire babysitters, gardeners, etc. They have to track hours worked now and provide that benefit according to this new law which becomes effective in 2007.
-Domestic partnership benefits. Regardless of how they do business elsewhere, if a company with employees in San Francisco offers married couples benefits, it must also extend those to domestic partnership couples.
-Payroll taxes are calculated as 1.5% of the total payroll expenses and applicable to any employer doing business in San Francisco.
-Supervisor Tom Ammiano proposed legislation that would force every company not currently offering medical coverage plans with more than 20 employees within San Francisco to pay $345 each a month for mandatory health care plans for those employees. Businesses on the financial margin are expected to close or move out of SF.
-"Best Places" ranked San Francisco 358th out of 393 for job creation.
-Between 2000 and 2004 San Francisco lost 32,000 residents, or 4.2% of its population.
It's a beautiful city no doubt, and I have fond memories of my years there, but I'd never want to put myself through the financial nightmare and red tape of ever trying to own rental property there and the restrictions that the City places on landlords to manage their own properties. I also would not want to be a business owner in San Francisco whose profitability and success lay in the unpredictable hands of supervisors with no business skills or training. San Francisco is slowly committing financial suicide and turning into a museum relic where people go to it to enjoy the charm and touristy things, but serious business is leaving and operating elsewhere taking with it high paying jobs. You can't afford an apartment in San Francisco as a waiter on Pier 39 or Hotel Lobby clerk.
I agree with the poster who said many currently nice parts of San Francisco were run down in the seventies. After WWII, middle class people moved out of cities to raise families in the suburbs, and cities all over the country suffered from neglect. In the eighties, a lot of the people who had grown up in the suburbs wanted to spend a few years living in the city. Many of these people were young professionals (yuppies) and, one after another, previously decrepit neighborhoods became gentrified and expensive.
The thing that distinguishes San Francisco and Northern California from other parts of the country is the importance people place on controlling growth, preserving the environment and open space, and preserving quality of life. And, yes, San Francisco is liberal to the point of being ridiculous and driving businesses out of the city. But that's another story.
San Francisco hasn't grown at all in the last 35 years. The population has stayed at 750,000. When I left Marin in 1971 to go to college, the population of the county was 198,000. Now, 35 years later, it is only about 260,000. People in Marin were so determined to prevent sprawl development that the Marin Municipal Water District refused to issue building permits.
If you drive down Highway 280 on the San Francisco Peninsula, you'll notice very little development west of the highway. There is a huge amount of open space extending 10-20 miles out to the ocean. East of Berkeley and Oakland, there is a huge regional park system. And, of course, the bay itself separates out the different cities and communities of the Bay Area.
Keeping your city and region beautiful and uncrowded, of course, makes it all the more desirable as other cities and regions are overrun with development and all the problems that come with growth. So the Bay Area has become extremely expensive; there is more demand for housing than there is supply. And if you look at the demographics of, say, Marin County over time, you will see that the average age of people living there has gone up enormously -- from about 30 to about 52 over the past 35 years. Not many young families can afford Marin. I gather the same is true to a lesser degree for the entire Bay Area.
I moved to San Diego because it was less expensive and I could afford to buy a much nicer house in a much nicer neighborhood than I would have found in the Bay Area for the same money. I also moved here because I could find parking and have a garage fairly easily (unlike San Francisco -- one wonders what the point of being near Yosemite, Big Sur, Marin, Napa/Sonoma, Lake Tahoe and Santa Cruz is if you don't even own a car with which to visit those areas?)
But San Diego is also a desirable and relatively unpopulated area (compared to nearby LA), so housing here is more and more expensive relative to incomes. The middle class is being priced out, leaving the rich and the poor.
The sad thing about San Diego is that people here are much less interested in stopping sprawl development (or the equally bad "smart growth" -- "mixed use development" -- "infill development" that is increasing the density of population in the city without any corresponding increase in infrastructure to support that density.)
People here commonly say that growth is inevitable, when in fact I know that it isn't, having lived in Marin and San Francisco. If the Marin Municipal Water District could find a "water shortage" in order to stop new construction, surely the Southern California water agencies could use the same excuse. We have very little local water in this desert-by-the-ocean.
There is no question that the developers run things in San Diego, and -- in contrast to the Bay Area which has some enclaves of unique architecture and historic homes -- almost all development in San Diego since the fifties has been in the cookie cutter mode.
Meaning big houses on tiny lots with no private outdoor living area -- ironic in what is the best climate for outdoor activity in the U.S. if not the world.
My main worry about California (and the U.S.) has to do with immigration, both legal and illegal. You can't plan when you don't know who's here and who's coming here (illegal immigrants.) And how do we know that all these immigrants (1 million legal immigrants a year, plus all the illegals) will assimilate, work hard, get their kids to work hard, and not depend on the government to take care of them?
The U.S. would not be growing in population at all were it not for immigration. We'd have slightly-below-replacement population growth. This would cause a labor shortage and we'd see prices go up. But, given that most problems we are having now are growth related, it's long past time we controlled our borders and limited legal immigration, including the places where new immigrants can live (Southern California is maxed out on population, and the rest of California isn't far behind.)
I would have to say that perhaps, just perhaps, I was a bit overzealous in my terminology.
A bit overzealous, indeed, but so fun to read!
I lived in Sonoma County for 12 years before moving to Austin, and I loved the liberalism at first when it was less oppressive. What I mean is that it used to be liberal in the true sense of the word --- freedom to be who you want, lots of unique lifestyles and everyone accepting each other, lots of open discussion of issues, and it was OK to disagree with someone. Sure, we were all mostly leftist in our politics but we weren't a$$hole$ about it.
What I've seen happen in the region over the past 20 years is that it has become politically oppressive. Some of my old friends have joined in this attitude, showing absolute disgust for anyone who would ever consider voting for a Republican, or who questions the sanctity of abortion rights. It's to the point of hysteria, the left wing equivalent of a city full of people who all think like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter. There is a phenomenal amount of hate speech directed towards those who disagree with ANY of the pet issues of the Politically Correct Police. It's a sad degeneration from what was once a shining beacon of progressive light on the west coast.
And perhaps I, too, have just been a bit overzealous. Truth is I love the Bay Area and might move back to western Sonoma County someday. Once a hippie, always a hippie.
As many of you know violent crime in up this year substantially in SF, and the number of arrests is thousands down.
Gary Delagnes president of SFPD Officer's Association says that liberalism is the main cause. "It's a city that get's caught up in it's own liberalism. And they don't know how to deal with beggars and homeless people."
Police officer's are undersuch a pressure to protect people's rights. Most officers are afraid to enforce minor crimes because they'll just get a OCC complaint for unfair treatment. Victims are getting more rights than officers!
A new study this year shows 40% in SF do not "feel" safe. Mainly because simple "quality of life" crimes are not being enforced.
The problem is NOT the only 250 officer shortfall(it's been short for five years)-the problem is continually increasive and sickening liberalism in the bay area. Some one needs to take the bay area closer to the center.
About the "politically correct" police; do I ever hear that. I used to be a Republican myself (not for the moment, the party left people like me behind; but that's another story) and the bulls___ I wound up taking from people in that supposed Mecca of tolerance was beyond belief. I used to deliver for Project Open Hand, and let me tell you; who do you think I saw down there with me? Vans from CHURCHES. I'd try to tell this to some of those so-called "liberals" out there and got belittled. Not that they felt it necessary to account for this inconsistency in their world view. That's the herd mentality for you.
Irony of ironies - now, here I am back in New York. And, whenever I hear a bunch of trash talk about "******s", etc., I feel I must speak up. How could I look some of my oldest and dearest friends in the eye if I remained silent? And, almost invariably, I hear back - haw, haw, well you must be one too.
Not that it bothers me. I simply say, "Very well, go ahead and think that. That's a good thing for someone of your intelligence level to believe."
N.B. The asterisks sub in for a nasty word that nasty people call gays. I had not realized it was considered unmentionable.
Last edited by Dedalus; 12-05-2006 at 05:15 PM..
Reason: Clarification.
About the "politically correct" police; do I ever hear that.
I probably vote the opposite of how you vote, but I'm in 100% agreement with you about the issues you mentioned in your post. If I ever act like a PC A-hole, then I hope someone will shove a crowbar in my eye if that's what it takes to wake me out of my stupidity. I can't stand the duplicity of people who claim that they "celebrate diversity" and then in the next breath they're spewing hate towards people whose views are diverse.
Humans.... can't live with 'em.... can't live without being one.....
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