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Another Aussie here planning to grace the shores of the USA..
So I am moving the family (Wife, 2 little girls 4 years and 1 year) and myself to San Francisco. I have visited a few times for work and really liked Burlingame. Apparently the school in that suburb is good as well?
Well Visa's are just getting finalised and so I thought I would seek advice and tips in realtion to moving to San Francisco.
We will probably move the furniture but will have a month accomodation covered while we find a 3 Bdrm house. I guess we will need to buy / lease a car.
Not that much else I have really considered hence the reason for this thread.
Another Aussie here planning to grace the shores of the USA..
So I am moving the family (Wife, 2 little girls 4 years and 1 year) and myself to San Francisco. I have visited a few times for work and really liked Burlingame. Apparently the school in that suburb is good as well?
Well Visa's are just getting finalised and so I thought I would seek advice and tips in realtion to moving to San Francisco.
We will probably move the furniture but will have a month accomodation covered while we find a 3 Bdrm house. I guess we will need to buy / lease a car.
Not that much else I have really considered hence the reason for this thread.
I welcome your advice
Cheers landog
I'd definitely recommend having a car once you move here. If you didn't have kids and you lived near either California Drive or El Camino you could get by without one, but life will be much easier with one. Hopefully you get used to driving on our side of the road though!
Do you have any idea what side of Burlingame you're checking into? West of El Camino gets more expensive, especially the closer to Hillsborough you get up in the hills. The schools are very good. There aren't really any bad areas that you'd need to avoid in Burlingame, but there tends to be car break-ins along and near Rollins Road more so than anywhere else. The whole town is very nice overall, but I find the areas closest to Burlingame Ave to be a bit more desirable. You'd be more centralized between downtown Burlingame, Broadway and San Mateo, and you'd have good freeway access. Washington Park is also a great park to be near for your kids, as well as several other smaller parks in the area.
Hope this helps a little. If you've got any other specific questions, shoot em out and I'll see if I can answer them!
All of the schools in the Burlingame School District are excellent (elementaries and middle school). The home district high school, Burlingame High, is also an excellent school. Check out the Recreation & Parks Department. They have a lot of age appropriate programs that your children can participate in.
Hi There, I've lived with my wife in Burlingame for the past 10 yrs - before that was Sunnyvale, before that San Francisco, and before that grew up down the way in Santa Cruz. I'm a Bay Area native and we have a 2 yr old and a baby due in January.
Burlingame is a nice little town in the middle of the SF peninsula, with lots of charm - but it comes with a pretty high price tag - its great to be close to SF, but any further north than Bgame and you'll run into some pretty foggy weather, pretty often. When you get into Millbrae, and Daly City, So. San Francisco etc. its much more dreary and the homes are mostly 1960's tract homes (not much charm or character - tho of course there are exceptions)
The best parts of Bgame from my perspective (in no particular order) are:
Downtown: big enough and small enough, great place for a coffee and a stroll, farmer's market on sundays, decent mix of local and chain businesses, and lots of great restaurants. Also a side note - there are kind of 2 Bgame 'downtowns' but the better of the two is definitely Burlingame Ave. Broadway is 'ok' but doesn't have the upscale, local, quaint feeling that The Ave. does.
Weather: As mentioned - any more north and u can be in pea soup fog all too often for my tastes. Bgame gets a little bit windy at times up on the hill (the 280 side of Bgame) but other than that its great weather. The
Schools: I'm biased since my wife is a teacher but this area has a reputation for being some of the best (public and private) in the Bay. Note other than one particularly good public school in San Mateo - I dont have any real experience - since my daughter is only 2 - but we do know a lot of teachers, and they are are wonderful and dedicated people. The
Location: So the bay area is broken into some distinct areas - San Francisco (the actual city), The peninsula (everything south of SF down to about Palo Alto - some might include Mountain View), the South Bay (San Jose and surrounding areas like sunnyvale, santa clara, cupertino, saratoga), then theres the East Bay (oakland, berkelye, fremont, richmond, etc.) and finally the north bay (tiburon, sausalito, etc.) Nobody who can live on the Peninsula, SF or the nicer parts of the north bay would ever live in the east or south bay if they could help it (ok - of course there are exceptions, I'm just a peninsula snob) but Bgame is ideal in many ways. Its 20 mins to the city, 20 mins to the beach, and close enough to everything you need (like the big box stores) but far enough away to feel 'local' - depending on your work - if you're in tech for example - Bgame is right smack in the middle of the major hubs (most start ups are started in the City (sf), San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, etc. Its also convenient to be on the 280 side if you're driving up and down a lot (less traffic on 280 than 101). The train also stops here - so its really quick to get to the city or to San Jose (or in between) on public transport.
Technology: this is true for anywhere in the peninsula - but if you are in the tech field - the whole peninsula is chalk full of all the players that are defining the way we interact with the world thru technology - Companies like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Adobe, and countless flash-in-the-pan start ups are born right here (not in Bgame so much, but stone's throw in any direction)
Character : the neighborhoods in Bgame from my experience are pretty family friendly, and mostly have a lot of character - not tract homes where everything looks identical. People take care of their yards (or pay others too) and there are a lot of older 1950's homes that have charm which have been updated. its pretty 'cute' i guess is the way to describe it - tree lined streets, green lawns, etc.
Family: great resources for family stuff - parks, events, parent groups and organizations, youth sports, rec areas, swimming, etc - as well as a close-by Coyote Point (little science museum with some small animals - fun for the kids) - Its a very safe town too.
Now for some of the not-so-great things:
Cost of Living - Holy cow... seriously. The while peninsula is nuts in this regard but Bgame is on the upper end of even that. its a desirable area with not much land left to build on - thus its extremely expensive. In Bgame - we're renting a 2bedroom/1 bath 1000 sq ft home (with a nice yard) in a very nice neighborhood up on the hill for $2375/mo - that a mortgage on a mansion in most parts of the country. To buy here you're looking at $1 million for anything 'nice' - condos are a little cheaper - but there aren't that many condos in Bgame. Renting apartments are pretty expensive too - so I hope you're packing a very large income if you're moving here with kids.
Rich White People - Don't get me wrong - I'm a white person who makes a good amount of money (and probably would be rich anywhere but here) but these are the richest and the whitest people. The economic diversity in this town is next to nil (not to mention the cultural diversity) Its something i value and as my kids get older - i'd much rather have them experience some shades of green (not everyone in the real world is rich) - but that said - Bgame wouldn't be nearly as nice without all of em... theres also a lot of older retired people here - which isn't bad - but makes it a little sleepier. Also - coming from a laid back hippy town like santa cruz - I find the general public just a little bit aloof and shallow - you see a lot of cliques and some are kinda douchy - but theres a lot of great people here too.
Airplanes - You get used to em - but the airport is close - and in some weather conditions they fly pretty near Bgame - noise gets a little annoying but pretty minor really... just trying to think of other bad things.
General Info that might be helpful:
The peninsula has a lot of nice towns - all expensive but theres a few that are extremely expensive (Bgame, hillsborough, menlo park, atherton, palo alto). In general - if you stay west of hiway 101 you've got pretty nice hoods - east of 101 is almost definitely lower income, shadier areas - all up and down the peninsula - with some exceptions like foster city (which in my opinion 'ain't great' but it's not shady - just bland. So if those towns are a little out of budget - check out Belmont, San Carlos (hills), San Mateo (hills), or parts of Redwood City.
Politically - the Bay is full of lefties (which I am as well) - Bgame tho is more conservative than most of the bay area - if you're a flaming lefty who wants a more artistic, yet still hi-income community - Tiburon & Sausalito over the golden gate bridge are really nice too (if you got the coin and
dont have to drive the bridge every day!) Hope this helps someone, just my perspective so feel free to disagree.
We are moving to SF from Sydney (yes another one!) in early Feb. I am an academic/artist and my SO is involved in a start up in Silicon Valley. We have 2 kids aged 10 and 12. We are definitely left leaning. The schools look great and the commute would be easy for him, and easy for me to get into SF.
Will I fit in there? I don't do 'soccer mom' ...
How bad are the planes? (ie can you still talk when they fly overhead or is it more minor nuisance?).
The other areas we are considering are Orinda and Berkeley (soccer moms, commute and the Fault are concerns).
The other areas we are considering are Orinda and Berkeley (soccer moms, commute and the Fault are concerns).
If you mean the seismic faults, you will have to go very far from the Bay Area to not be affected by a big earthquake here. The Loma Prieta 1989 earthquake was centered in the hills outside of San Jose but destroyed a lot of stuff up in San Francisco and further north, for example, so any quake on the San Andreas fault (which runs through the Peninsula and out to sea around Pacifica, yikes!) would no doubt cause damage to the towns in the East Bay like Orinda and so on. Also there are several fault lines in the East Bay, the main one being the Hayward Fault which is overdue for a quake.
Not trying to be alarmist, major quakes are rare, but unfortunately any quake in the Bay Area will be felt over a very large area. However, houses built on landfill at the edges of the bay are much more susceptible to quake damage than houses built on solid ground. You saw a lot of major damage in the Marina District in San Francisco in the 1989 quake because of this. So in that respect it would be better to live inland than on landfill on the bay.
How bad are the planes? (ie can you still talk when they fly overhead or is it more minor nuisance?).
The other areas we are considering are Orinda and Berkeley (soccer moms, commute and the Fault are concerns).
Thanks for your help!
The planes in Burlingame (and Millbrae) aren't a problem. During certain weather patterns, they will fly over Burlingame/Millbrae, coming down towards SFO from the Burlingmae Hills and Millbrae hills. They fly real low . This happens about 4 times a year and for a very short period of time. Also, when it rains heavily, the planes can take off from SFO going east and make a southerly turn at about the city line of Millbrae/Burlingame (making the southerly turn at about where Mills High School is and crossing over into Burlingame. I'm not sure of it's path from that point on). But, yes, you can talk while the planes are going over, and the planes aren't a bother.
The San Andreas Fault is just up the hill from Burlingame (on the other side of 280).
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. This happens about 4 times a year and for a very short period of time. Also, when it rains heavily, the planes can take off from SFO going east and make a southerly turn at about the city line of Millbrae/Burlingame (making the southerly turn at about where Mills High School is and crossing over into Burlingame. I'm not sure of it's path from that point on). But, yes, you can talk while the planes are going over, and the planes aren't a bother. 
