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Not to mention the epidemic we're having (nyc) with bedbugs as you all may have heard. Oh and the cockroaches we just deal with. They do seem to get bigger and healthier!
Well I grew up in Wellington FL and I live in the Bay Area now. I think I explained why I don't want to live in FL earlier in this topic. I just wouldn't want to live there even if I could get a decent job, and I don't think I could get a decent job in PBC even when the economy is good. I don't like the endless suburban sprawl and constant heat. Sure there are good jobs in PBC if you do something specific like being an accountant or a doctor, there are lots of professional jobs like that because of all the retirees, but there isn't the variety of work you can get in the urban parts of California. And it seems like rent in South Florida is almost as bad as the Bay Area now. A 1 bedroom in a nice part of the East Bay (over the bridge from San Francisco) can go for $1100, and when I was in South Florida recently and looking at rentals I saw plenty of places that were around that price or higher. Also I'll take 70 degree days in July in Oakland over miserable 92 degree days in Florida. I don't even need to own an air conditioner.
Im glad you like the Bay area. Thankfully the East Bay doesn't have the cold damp foggy feel that across the bay has. I just hope your well aware of and prepared for an earthquake. I personally would take a hurricane over a major earthquake anyday. At least there is time to prepare for the hurricane.
Otherwise it can be alot of fun living in the Bay area if one can afford it.
Im glad you like the Bay area. Thankfully the East Bay doesn't have the cold damp foggy feel that across the bay has. I just hope your well aware of and prepared for an earthquake. I personally would take a hurricane over a major earthquake anyday. At least there is time to prepare for the hurricane.
Otherwise it can be alot of fun living in the Bay area if one can afford it.
Yeah, quakes are scary but fortunately really rare and they do what they can to reinforce structures. I would definitely take a hurricane over an earthquake, at least you know they are coming. When you first move here you go to bed every night thinking about earthquakes, but after a while I stopped thinking about it which seems to work. I try to keep extra water and a flashlight and some dry goods around but I moved recently and need to resupply my stores...
As for bugs, you can have a company come spray for stuff and put out ant poison (which is way better than when I was a kid) but especially if you open doors and windows in the cooler months you will get some pests. South Florida is practically a jungle. As for the Northeast, you get pests in summer but they all die in winter except for stuff like roaches. I lived in Chicago and never really saw any pests. California seems to hardly have any pests at all, I think I've seen a roach like twice and that was out on the street, and there's no mosquitos at all. You get fruit flies in the summer if you don't have screened windows though. I don't know if it's the weather or the fact that the Bay Area is so urban, but there's just not that many pests here unless you live in a real dump in SF that has rats and mice.
Yeah, quakes are scary but fortunately really rare and they do what they can to reinforce structures. I would definitely take a hurricane over an earthquake, at least you know they are coming. When you first move here you go to bed every night thinking about earthquakes, but after a while I stopped thinking about it which seems to work. I try to keep extra water and a flashlight and some dry goods around but I moved recently and need to resupply my stores...
As for bugs, you can have a company come spray for stuff and put out ant poison (which is way better than when I was a kid) but especially if you open doors and windows in the cooler months you will get some pests. South Florida is practically a jungle. As for the Northeast, you get pests in summer but they all die in winter except for stuff like roaches. I lived in Chicago and never really saw any pests. California seems to hardly have any pests at all, I think I've seen a roach like twice and that was out on the street, and there's no mosquitos at all. You get fruit flies in the summer if you don't have screened windows though. I don't know if it's the weather or the fact that the Bay Area is so urban, but there's just not that many pests here unless you live in a real dump in SF that has rats and mice.
Ok I hate to tell you but NY has roaches all year round.they dont have a preference for Seasons..Have you lived in NYC? or grew up there? or any of the Boro's in NY? how about NJ? Some of the most expensive cleanest homes had roaches and all different kinds of bugs...and we wont get started on the Rats and the Mice...as far as florida and bugs its because of the weather all year round..and lets face it its like the Tropics...My husband commuted to manhattan every day for 15 yrs and on the tracks u see the Rats running so im sorry but you really dont have a clue...
Yeah, quakes are scary but fortunately really rare and they do what they can to reinforce structures. I would definitely take a hurricane over an earthquake, at least you know they are coming. When you first move here you go to bed every night thinking about earthquakes, but after a while I stopped thinking about it which seems to work. I try to keep extra water and a flashlight and some dry goods around but I moved recently and need to resupply my stores...
As for bugs, you can have a company come spray for stuff and put out ant poison (which is way better than when I was a kid) but especially if you open doors and windows in the cooler months you will get some pests. South Florida is practically a jungle. As for the Northeast, you get pests in summer but they all die in winter except for stuff like roaches. I lived in Chicago and never really saw any pests. California seems to hardly have any pests at all, I think I've seen a roach like twice and that was out on the street, and there's no mosquitos at all. You get fruit flies in the summer if you don't have screened windows though. I don't know if it's the weather or the fact that the Bay Area is so urban, but there's just not that many pests here unless you live in a real dump in SF that has rats and mice.
As for bugs we don't seem to have as much of a problem on the West Coast that much of the country does. We do seem to have rat problems though. I think I would prefer the bugs over the rats.
Ok I hate to tell you but NY has roaches all year round.they dont have a preference for Seasons..Have you lived in NYC? or grew up there? or any of the Boro's in NY? how about NJ? Some of the most expensive cleanest homes had roaches and all different kinds of bugs...and we wont get started on the Rats and the Mice...as far as florida and bugs its because of the weather all year round..and lets face it its like the Tropics...My husband commuted to manhattan every day for 15 yrs and on the tracks u see the Rats running so im sorry but you really dont have a clue...
No I've never lived in NYC which everyone tells me is a dump in terms of living conditions, but I lived in Chicago and have spent a lot of time in New England because my mom's from there and neither place has the level of bug infestation FL has.
Ok so then pls dont lump the "Northeast" together because in fact those statements are not true...Everyone including myself knew florida was known for its bugs..but you know what? Nothing one can do about it other than learn to deal with it or move on...
I'm a native of the Northeast and the bugs are very bad during the summer months, black flies, mosquitoes, moths, wasps (most notably yellow jackets), bees, spiders, centipedes (that you will even see in winter in the house). They can get big too, I saw one at least 6 inches long one time in a basement of a house I was living in. They love basements and damp locations. They can also sting, the thing is they are actually beneficial bugs since they eat roaches and etc, so it's a trade off bug.
Also there are Hellgrammite's, harmless but free some people out they get big as well.
Florida is more buggy inland, but it comes with the territory and honestly, they along with Gators are the least of your worries here.
Wow we actually agree on something very well put!! and let me add that to make general statements comparing so many places isn't very fair either...because it really does depend on what u do..and people wouldnt still be moving here if they werent working..In this economy too alot of people are now self employed, or work from home etc...I can tell you one of my Oldest friends works for walmart and is a manager of the store and well they make in the MID to upper 100's plus bonus's so Im just Sayin...and that is across the board no matter where he works and with a transfer to florida he will make the same as he would anywhere else....
We looked in AZ back in 94 when we lived in Colorado and well I don't like bugs and things that jump and crawl..Florida has been tough for me with the bugs but I still love it here...DH and I weren't impressed with AZ we looked in Scottsdale and the surrounding area of Pheonix it was way too dry, way to hot in the summer and just wasn't what we were looking for...Back then there were alot of NY people dont kid yourself there are plenty of them in AZ too...
Everyplace has it's positives and negatives, and yes it's true that what works for one person someplace will not work for the next person and so on. Not everyone likes certain areas and it's not good to generalize a place because everyone has different desires and tastes. I'm amazed when I hear people say they don't like the beach and the ocean especially when they are Florida natives and still live here, but on a whole statistically speaking, the beach and the proverbial Corona Beer commercial speaks in volumes on the allure...you won't get that in Arizona...sure Arizona has some natural beauty don't get me wrong.
Because the difference for a lot of people just out of college, including myself, would be working at Wal-Mart in South Florida making $6 an hour or whatever versus getting a decent office job in a place like San Francisco or Chicago or whatever. Plus when you're 25 or whatever, PBC is pretty boring. Unemployment sucks now in CA which negates the value of having a large economy, but when times are good here it's very easy to find work, unfortunately those are the times that housing is more expensive.
Problem is it seems like a lot of jobs in FL still pay really low compared with how much rent has risen in the last 10 years, it's like they're still paying 1999 salaries or something. Salaries in the Bay Area went up a lot during the tech bubble in the late 90's and early 00's, and they keep rising though not as fast as rent goes up, but generally you'll be comfortable here if you're not making minimum wage (which is like $10 an hour in SF).
Craigslist is really the main place to find rentals in the Bay Area.
I'm not too familiar with Mountain View prices but it is in the heart of Silicon Valley and is where Google is headquartered. 1 bedrooms in San Francisco are around $1400 and higher. You can get a 2 bedroom in Rockridge for around $1200, and 1 bedrooms for $1000 it's that much cheaper. Housing isn't going to be as nice as in South Florida because it's older and it's a very urban area where smaller apartments are the norm. If you want an entire house you can move further out into the suburbs for newer and bigger places.
A lot of Oakland, especially Rockridge, where I live, is really nice and much quieter and cleaner than most of San Francisco, plus it's quite a bit cheaper to live in Oakland. Most outsiders think Oakland is one big ghetto, I sort of had that attitude when I lived in SF until I spent more time in Oakland.
92 is like as hot as Florida ever got when I was growing up because the humidity would keep it from going higher (though it would feel a lot hotter). I don't know if you're having hotter summers now. 92 in Florida is just brutal to me, I've been in 100+ weather in Chicago and the Bay Area and it was bad too but it would go away after a couple days, but in Florida it lasts from around what, March to November?
SF and a few coastal areas are really the only cloudy and foggy areas in summer. In SF it is really windy all the time in summer because it's sort of thrust out into the Pacific, and it's not uncommon to have long stretches of 60 degree days. Usually the sun comes out but the coastal parts of SF like the Sunset District can be really foggy all day long. This summer was one of the coldest on record, it was 60-65 every damn day which just gets old after a while, but usually it gets to be more like 70 which I think is the perfect temperature. This is the first summer I've spent in Oakland and it would always be like 70-75 and sunny all day, and not windy like SF is. Also on the plus side it never rains in summer in the Bay Area. Winter kind of sucks though, it's cold and it rains a lot--it's been raining all day here. Overall I don't really mind the weather here, the winter is a LOT better than places like Chicago and NYC, and the summers are better than in Florida. I'd take Florida winters over Bay Area winters though.
In a nutshell though the Bay Area is expensive, I could easily make a killing salary there compared to here but the cost of living and the 10%+ deducted by Sacramento out of my paycheck and the insane Sales Tax rates >9.5% in most of the Bay Area
Means that a dollar there would not go too far after deductions, rentals seem very hard to find and often in some parts, open to the highest bidder. Owning a house there is less of a possibility than here currently, but I agree the salaries in Florida need to improve for a lot of people.
The weather there will be quite crappy the rest of the week and this weekend, but I'm not doubting it's nice during certain parts of the year.
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very well put!! and let me add that to make general statements comparing so many places isn't very fair either...because it really does depend on what u do..and people wouldnt still be moving here if they werent working..In this economy too alot of people are now self employed, or work from home etc...I can tell you one of my Oldest friends works for walmart and is a manager of the store and well they make in the MID to upper 100's plus bonus's so Im just Sayin...and that is across the board no matter where he works and with a transfer to florida he will make the same as he would anywhere else....
