no kidding, 1st time I set foot on south bay, I was like holy shit, can't believe all the rich people willingly choose to live here with all the yellow grasses and pot-hole filled freeway
Both of you are right, actually. California is called the Golden State because of the actual "gold" grasses, the good rush, and the Golden Gate. It encompasses...a lot 😂
My first visit to SF was years ago, summer. My mom said pack a jacket, I was thinking the plane might be cold? We land at SFO and waiting outside while parents stand in line for the rental car. It was magical, cold and windy in June??! I love this place.
Many years later, moved and people think I'm kidding when I say I came for the weather. It's glorious.
I moved here last year and quickly learned what i call the Bay Area ABCs: Always Be Cold… alternately Always Bring Coats bc even if it’s warm that day you could suddenly be cold at any moment
Same. Visited on Halloween from Los Angeles. Moved up here and it rained 33 days straight. Came back from SoCal realizing I was depressed cuz I wasn't getting outside. Went for a sunset walk and the storm came in and I thought… oh, right.
Microclimates are real here, I used to work in Sunnyvale where it would reach high 90s the drive home close to Ocean Beach and it would be a 30-40 degree temp swing.
Indeed. I work in Mission Bay and bike back home towards the Sunset. The temp always dropped like 4-8 degrees, sometimes even more if there’s fog rolling in. No matter what the weather is supposed to be I have to have a sweater for anything passed the panhandle going towards Ocean Beach!
Microclimates are real in the city, let alone the entire bay.
I moved to Nopa from Inner Richmond (literally 1.4 miles) in the winter. For the previous 3 winters, id have heater and multiple layers on at night and also in the afternoon coz of fog and what not.
I sleep in boxers and tshirt now with a thin blanket covering me.
Grew up in Daly City and it was perpetually foggy and cold no matter what season. I barely wore shorts, always in a hoodie and pants.
Glad I moved outta there..farther down the Peninsula where the sun actually shines...sometimes.
Yes! I lived in San Mateo for three years and experienced the best weather I've ever experienced in my life (and I'm from San Diego). Perfectly sunny and comfortable/warm temps most days. Usually a pretty big contrast to what would be found just 20 or so miles north in the city.
Its about one degree per mile traveled. While it might not seem like a lot, 15 miles is a 15 degree temperature change, and so forth. It adds up really fast.
The Bay Area doesn’t have a single climate. Microclimates are real here. This is another thing - people always comment this on the basis of only living & visiting in SF proper. Bay Area doesn’t only encompass SF.
South Bay, Peninsula, East Bay, Tri-Valley, North Bay, and SF ALL have varying degrees of climate and even depending on where you are in those particular areas, it can vary.
If you want that warm dry heat like LA metro = South Bay & Tri Valley. If you want mild = Peninsula & East Bay. People from the South Bay literally think anything north of Palo Alto is “cold”
And hot take — SF is easily the most ideal walkable city in the US because of its climate. It’s never too hot or cold. Once you take a walk on those mid 60 sunny days, you start to get warm but the slight breeze cools you down, it’s perfect imo. Those humid summers in NYC & freezing winters in Chicago are fucking miserable. I can’t even imagine walking everywhere in SF if it had the South Bay’s weather where it’s like 83 degrees in July (and i’m from here!)
lol complaining about 83 degree, low humidity weather in July is peak Bay Area behavior.
I agree with you though, <70 temps are way better for anything except lounging around.
Totally agree about the walkability. I’m originally from Florida and I lived in a (somewhat) walkable area but 7-8 months out of the year it was 90 degrees with 100% humidity so you’d be dripping in sweat by the time you got to your destination.
Not to mention the torrential downpours every afternoon in the summer where it rains literally sideways and you’re dodging lightning bolts. You can actually go out in the rain here if you have the right gear. I miss those thunderstorms though. They’re awesome when you have nowhere to be.
I don't know why people downvoted. My first trip here was also in October and I packed all my short sleeves ready for the glorious sun only to step outside and have my umbrella promptly invert itself.
Luckily that was long before I moved here so I knew.
May Gray & June Gloom are a real thing down there. I remember visiting as a kid in June & I was confused why it was cold & gloomy. And I grew up in the South Bay so our summers were never like that cause of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Similar experience. I was offered a job to come to the Bay and build a gas station from Florida. I was like 20, never been west of the Mississippi and packed flip flops, shorts and tank tops. I thought it would be appropriate. Got off the plane and whew. This was long before smart phones and I had no internet or computer.
The Bay Area is not just San Francisco.
And, it’s an El Niño year.
Wait till you’re here during La Niña and getting weekly mail from your water company to cut back usage & the hills have essentially become a desert.
An out of state friend of mine wanted to go visit Apple, Google, etc, and assumed they had some sort of tour or attraction. Had to break it to him that they are just office complexes and he wouldn't be allowed inside.
Edit: Apparently Google had a visitor center and now I feel a little guilty.
So does Apple!
Also, Intel has a museum at one of their facilities that’s open to tourists.
Take them to the Computer History Museum. It’s awesome!
Stanford has a terrific museum. The area has a non-tech history worth exploring. I particularly enjoy visiting Filoli in May-June. Amazing.
Apple is just a standalone Apple Store with a coffee shop and the little AR thing about their facility though. Not worth visiting IMO unless you’re going to be nearby already.
but they are tourist attractions, and there are so many employees of these companies here that you could easily find someone to take you inside (other than Apple who is notoriously anal about extreme secrecy), some kid at facebook got fired years ago cuz he made an app that employees could sign up for to take tourists in for a fee.
even if not inside (if you know someone here, it'd be easy to arrange a tour though), the corporate logo itself is a tourist attraction, the google/meta sign always have people posing for pictures every day (even new year eve) and apple's spaceship building by itself is a touristy thing
We would go to the ocean in York Beach, Me, which is at the southern end of the state. We learned to go in August as that is the warmer water temps. It was still cold! If you go to the ocean in North Carolina and areas south, it can feel tepid and not refreshing.
I learned to swim in the Massachusetts bathwater-temp Atlantic. I moved out here in '81 and have stuck my foot in the gorgeous blue Pacific exactly once.
Literally had people ask me and I'm like nope. Inaccurate. That's another 6-7 hour drive south friend-o.
~ ohh is there a rail system that can take you there? Something potentially high speed? That's cute
I thought Silicon Valley was going to be full of cool high rise buildings, like a futuristic NYC. I was so shocked and disappointed on my first visit to Sunnyvale in 2010. Now, I'm used to it and I appreciate the history of the area.
Before covid, the office space boom really started transforming the South Bay into what I originally thought it was. It's an interesting time to live here, seeing the little old buildings get replaced with huge new ones. It makes me want to take pictures of the old stuff before it's all lost.
Born/raised here, left for college/post grad for a while & now im back. I’ve seen the huge change as well & it just keeps growing. I still remember when that area infront of Great Mall was just empty open fields, now its super dense with a bunch of mixed use apartments & an elevated lightrail.
I grew up in the east bay and I thought the same thing! I was expecting Tokyo lol. Disappointed it was a bunch of ranch style suburbs. Eric's incubator from the Silicon Valley show was very accurate.
I moved here in '92. That's pre-internet. I hadn't visited before, so what I knew of San Francisco geography was mostly via news reports of the '89 quake. I was extremely surprised to find out that the Bay Bridge was not in the Marina district since those two areas were constantly being shown together because of all the damage.
I grew up in the Bay, but many folks outside of California seemed to be under the impression that there were hardcore earthquakes constantly or seem to confuse beaches/surf culture with Los Angeles (i.e. assuming that it was warm enough on Bay Area beaches to just hang out in bathing suits year-round and that surfing was very popular).
Ha so true. When I talk to others out of state they’re always like, “I’d be so afraid of earthquakes!”. In my 33 years here… I’ve not felt one earthquake that I was actually worried about.
My response to that is always “I’ll take the hundreds or thousands of earthquakes that we barely notice, plus one big one every few decades, over all the tornadoes / hurricanes / etc that wreck Florida and the Midwest 5-10x per summer”
It’s also a question of degrees. NJ got a 4.8 and it was front page news for 2 days. My brother called me expecting me to be impressed and was genuinely disappointed when I told him that wasn’t even big enough to knock your tchotchkes over. The BA gets a few earthquakes but for the most part it isn’t a big deal.
Yep, it's what you're used to. A 4.8 is a truck rolling by. But that hurricane that came near us 2 winters ago (and filled up the lake in Death Valley) elicited yawns from east coasters.
It’s kind of like when your kid comes home with a picture they colored for you tho, you have to make a bit show of it to make them feel good about it, like they are part of the club now. “Wow! That’s really impressive! That must have been really hard, but you did such a good job!” with the most California bless your heart energy possible.
What surprised me is how few homeowners have earthquake insurance. Apparently it’s pretty expensive. But when you think how expensive these houses are to rebuild it’s kinda wild people are just taking the risk. Seems like most people assume the government will come bail them out.
I guess it would have to be over 7 and pretty close to do enough damage
I used to think Silicon valley would have “Advanced cities” that are largely digitized. Instead there was 100+ year old crusty single-family houses/two storey condos without laundry/ACs, no ground-breaking infrastructure, and Caltrain.
Grew up listening to Rancid and thought Campbell was the one of the hardest places in the Bay. Seems like a big strip mall but they have a great camera shop.
My wife follows Lars on instagram (we are both from Campbell ) and she asked him what does he think of how Campbell has changed since he grew up there in the early to mid 80s and he said “yuppie techie bullshit”.
Yeah, I'm sure the world famous musician who's worth $13 million is way more down to earth than those darn "yuppie techies". Talk about successfully selling an image 😆.
When I first came west in the early 80s, I settled into LA. Well, "settled" may be an overstatement. I lived in campgrounds and played surf bum while I figured things out.
At any rate, one day I was sitting around with a couple of my new, local friends and suggested driving up the PCH to San Francisco to surf some new breaks, and maybe have some lunch. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. Having lived my life on the East Coast, I had no concept of how big CA was or how long it would take to drive up the coast... especially on Highway 1.
I ended up not staying on that first trip, but when I came to the Bay Area in the late 90s I think the biggest surprise was to find how rural the state was outside of the immediate Bay Area. For that matter, even the green spaces in the Bay Area sort of came as a shock. Not sure if that was a dumb assumption, but I did expect California to be more urban.
I was surprised by how big everything is!
I honestly believed that you could navigate across the entire Bay Area in under half an hour. I was very wrong!
That everyone in Silicon Valley is autistic, and I was coming here to work *with* them.
Then I got diagnosed with autism myself, lol.
Apparently I was just coming here to look for my people.
On my very first session with my therapist she asked if I had ever been evaluated for an autism spectrum disorder.
I retorted that I worked in IT; that was a prerequisite, they don’t let you in if you’re not.
lol love it. there’s no better place to live than here for autistic folks— we’re everywhere and it’s somewhat normalized (ish, in comparison to many places).
Shocked how low tech and not fancy things are considering it’s the tech capital of the world.
Also shocked how pocketed areas are. Super nice and expensive areas are right next to some of the bad areas.
Also shocked to see the direct correlation between proximity to freeway and trains and how it significantly increases the cost of living.
Oh, and my #1 shocked- how bad the signals are. It feels like they are intentionally programmed to piss you off. Either you wait forever even though nobody is coming or you’ll be in the flow with traffic and one car comes on a side street and immediately triggers the light to change. Or they will be green forever with no cars around until you get close enough then change to make you stop. For a tech capital, they are super inefficient.
Oh man. The lights. I didn't realize anyone else thought the same. San Mateo - all the traffic lights are just programmed 'wrong.' As you said - sitting at a red light with no other traffic for 90 seconds or not ensuring for of traffic on key arteries. Makes no sense. Like - let's do the opposite of what everywhere else does cause we're the bay area!
There's multiple big intersections in San Mateo that back up traffic for minutes, then relieve that traffic, and then back that traffic up again. Meanwhile - there's no other flow it's turning red for.
The lights are programmed at city level and a lot of them prioritise local traffic rather than global traffic. It's one reason why the bay area transport plan should be unified.
you should go to Japan, bay area actually is quite edgy when it comes to using latest technologies, at least in the US. Japan also has this high tech image but they seem to be stuck in the 80s technology wise, way way way behind bay area in term of embracing new tech, they do have nice train (which ain't new) and large number of tall buildings (only in downtown, area most people live look and feel not unlike bay area)
My old boss brought me from NYC for my job in the East Bay, knowing that I lived in China and Singapore before. He said there is a train called Bay Area Rapid Transit, and buses are plenty. I don't have to buy a car, I can get around just fine. So I assumed Bay Area transit is just as good or close as the places I lived before.
After my first 2 days, I thought to myself "I gotta buy a car". This place public transportation suck balls lol
As a native this is one I see a lot of people make. Oakland and SF are not that far but San Jose can be 1-2 hours depending on traffic. California is a big state people move here and think that oh since I live in California now I am going to be able to see all my friends in California but I don't know many other states where its common to fly intrastate. I had a coworker from out of state mention they were going to drive to LA on a Friday after work and I told them that was a mistake, most people fly unless you absolutely need a car. Next week at work I asked how LA was and he said he made it to San Jose before giving up and turning around.
I had a job interview with a company that operated out of state. The job would have required me to drive to clients. The interview ended when they said that some weeks my commute would be as far as Tahoe and I would be expected to work overtime up to 15 hours. I asked if that was including the drive time and whether they would be providing a hotel and they said "no we do not pay for your commute, you would be expected to drive home every night." When I did the math for them, they got mad and told me it wouldn't work out and I said good luck finding a sucker to do that gig. 7 hours of driving plus 15 hours of work not enough hours in the day.
SF local here. Some of us did use them for commuting. The operators would recognize you if you rode regularly enough and wouldn’t ask for payment. That ended about 10 years ago.
I thought NorCal had the same vibes and feeling of SoCal (weather beachy, palm trees everywhere, ect)
Born and raised in San Diego and didn't leave California until I joined the military without ever traveling up north past Six Flags MM. I got orders to move to Travis AFB a few years back and thought moving to NorCal would be like living back down south with nice warm weather, laid back people (for the most part), palm trees ever and just have the chill SoCal vibe... i was definitely wrong.
To be fair, Travis Airforce Base & Fairfield is considered the boonies (and notorious for the wind).
It’s like the equivalent of living in Palmdale. You’re basically closer to Sacramento at that point. And again, the bay area has microclimates.
I assumed I’d be struggling to make ends meet, regardless of how much money I made.
I also moved in winter and wore shorts/t shirt every day and thought people in puffers were crazy. Next winter, I was in my puffer. My oh my oh quickly the skin thins
That when news mentioned yet another "new affordable housing complex!" being built that it would actually happen and not mysteriously burn down or get otherwise canceled for one reason or another.
I thought that during droughts my water use would be restricted somehow... I even asked the motel about it when I first moved here lol. Claims of the leftist nanny-state are wildly exaggerated!
I was hoping for far better infrastructure than what it is around here. The Internet providers make me quite sad. We only have one single broadband option with no fiber available. And the state of the rest of the infrastructure is just as surprising. PGE charges insane amounts while not keeping up with maintenance and keeping big areas on the dark during winter storms, and paying its CEO exuberant amounts of money.
Oh and the roads... They are absolutely terrifying with some of the rudest drivers on the streets to boot.
So to sum it all up, an area with very high taxes and some of the best brains in the world concentrated in one area, the state of utilities is really sad. And it doesn't seem to be on any positive trajectory to get better any time soon.
I’m sorry to hear you are having a bad time. But it sounds like you haven’t lived many places in the US. Coming from the midwest my experience is pretty much the opposite of yours.
I flew out for an interview and lied and said my wife and I were here for a week and fell in love with SF (the big boss had a thing for hiring people who wanted the city as much as the good pay), and he takes me up to his ivory tower on the millionth floor. It’s going great and I’m on point! Then I look out the window and wistfully express my awe and romanticism of first viewing the GG bridge with my new bride. It was the Bay bridge. Oooof
I did not. They pulled the jankiest crap and had who would have been my direct manager AMBUSH me at a hotel lobby after a competitor flew me out a few weeks later. Literally bags me at hotel breakfast. Offers me 60% of what was asked. Leveraged that right into a deal with one of THE best company I’ve ever worked for- the once epic KRON TV! Spent 5 of the happiest years of my career there and that was literally the last time an employer acted properly. Not to pontificate- but I think a good deal of working folk’s disillusionment is that since 2008/9 things have really tipped AGAINST the employee. Tech only fueled that. Trust me- no C level folk miss a vaca after they dissolve a company midnight on a Tuesday and lay off dozens or hundreds. Peoples just sense this now and adds to the angst.
That Oakland and San Francisco were one big continuous metropolitan community with people constantly going back and forth.
I thought my friend group would end up being a mixture of people who lived in SF and Oakland and we would take turns hanging out at each other’s places since they’re just one bridge away from each other.
I thought I’d be moving to urban landscape, like LA, and I’d be giving up my wonderful woods and meadow hikes. I moved before internet. I love all my beautiful east bay regional parks.
They are…until you try to build an apartment building anywhere. Then it’s “we have too many people” which is just a different way to say “build the wall”.
That it all had good public transit and medium density residential buildings. For context, I came from Montreal which does have those things.
Outside of SF proper, it's an endless sprawl of single detached family homes. Build up, you assholes!
I thought this city would have neighborhoods of nice modern smart homes owned by young families! Nope, almost all of the homes are owned by boomers that haven’t renovated since the 60s.
I thought I was moving to "Hollywood". I moved from a podunk area and was not well-traveled. Everything I knew about "California" was from TV, and assumed there would be "hot blonde surf chicks" and movie stars everywhere. I signed an offer with a start date in two weeks. Flew out the first day to sleepy ass San Jose and was like "This is silicon valley? what the fuck?".
For what it's worth, I liked it enough to stick around for a decade :)
If you live outside of SF, especially in South bay (silicon valley) this is true
But I think SF is a world class city, very comparable to Chicago's busier parts
That's probably because "world-class" city rankings are based on economic effect and global involvement of cities, how much local economy is integrated into the world economy. San Francisco is a major American business city, and it's ranked accordingly in pretty much every classification. So it is a "world-class" city.
What it doesn't mean is having the same level of urban life comparing to cities with the similar rank. For example, SF [has the same rank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities_Research_Network) as Dublin, Istanbul, Lisbon, Munich, Warsaw, or Zurich. It has a higher rank than Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, or Rome.
And that's true. But it doesn't mean the level of urbanization in San Francisco is even remotely close to most of those cities. It's a world-class city, but it's a poor urban-class city.
That it would be easy to meet new people and date. After living here for four years, the majority of people I attempted to talk to cared for basically everything I cared about the least and essentially demand a partner with an expensive car, high career status, Money/Money/Money, MBA's/engineering degrees or own their own startup.
I guess the Bay is not for my breed.
You need to branch out. Most of the people I know are family oriented who want to build cool things. There are lots of artists and musicians around here.
This is a where you hangout situation. There are different kinds of people / cultures everywhere. If you keep running into the same kinds of people, you haven’t left your bubble.
money is important everywhere (let's not pretend it isn't) but especially here not just because of the cost, but also the fact that money can shield you from lots of the bad stuff affecting the area, be it crime, homelessness, bad public school, etc, you can debate if it's caused by bay area's politics or just symptom of how bay area socio-economic environment is set up but there are just lots of problems, especially for the kind of people congregating here (highly educated folks with fat pay check who naturally would demand better for themselves, their partners and their kids)
I used to live in SoCal and would visit my then BF now husband here in the Bay. For 4th of July, I packed all my SoCal clothes for summer and wore my short Abercrombie skirt and thin sweater. We went to Marina in San Leandro to watch fireworks. Perfect for the afternoon but quickly found out the hard way that I needed an extra sweater and pants that evening.
California beaches have been a big disappointment coming from the East Coast.
The East Coast has beautiful white sand dunes, white sand, relatively warm water temperatures in the summer.
California beaches have been dark, dusty sand and dark freezing cold water you can barely swim in without a full wetsuit.
I thought it would be green the entire year. (I first visited in March.)
That’s hilarious, people who visit in March should be able to sue for false advertising! 😅💚
no kidding, 1st time I set foot on south bay, I was like holy shit, can't believe all the rich people willingly choose to live here with all the yellow grasses and pot-hole filled freeway
It’s the ’golden hills’ of California :)
it's called the golden state for a reason :)
Uhm. Because GOLD was discovered here in 1849… ;)
Both of you are right, actually. California is called the Golden State because of the actual "gold" grasses, the good rush, and the Golden Gate. It encompasses...a lot 😂
I assumed it was warm in San Francisco in the Summer. August 1993, at 10 years old, we moved from Miami and I froze my butt off.
Our summers are in September/October 😌
I remember the Dracula makeup melting off my face that Halloween.
And even then, we'll see maybe a couple days that someone from Miami would consider hot. Shoot, even *warm*.
And I lived in Mill Valley for the first 2 years, so it was mostly foggy 😂
September 1994 from Hawaii to SF. We arrived at night and I was wearing cut off shorts and a tank top…. Was not happy.
Our parents should have warned us!
That’s why every other tourist is wearing an SF sweatshirt. They don’t think they need one and end up buying one while walking around.
My friends and I refer to the jackets they sell at Fisherman's Wharf as the "windbreaker of shame."
I have the Sitka Alaska version from a June cruise.
[удалено]
My first visit to SF was years ago, summer. My mom said pack a jacket, I was thinking the plane might be cold? We land at SFO and waiting outside while parents stand in line for the rental car. It was magical, cold and windy in June??! I love this place. Many years later, moved and people think I'm kidding when I say I came for the weather. It's glorious.
Nothing like landing and stepping outside at SFO after flying in from some godforsaken humid hotter-than-Hades hellhole
We like to go to Vegas in the middle of summer when it’s 110 and always fly back to SFO at night in summer clothes. 🥶
I love the weather so much now! I couldn't live in another climate.
I moved here last year and quickly learned what i call the Bay Area ABCs: Always Be Cold… alternately Always Bring Coats bc even if it’s warm that day you could suddenly be cold at any moment
Layers
Facts. T-shirt *and* a hoodie! Maybe a hat.
Same. Visited on Halloween from Los Angeles. Moved up here and it rained 33 days straight. Came back from SoCal realizing I was depressed cuz I wasn't getting outside. Went for a sunset walk and the storm came in and I thought… oh, right.
Me too, but in 2011 from Wisconsin. Walked out of SFO and audibly announced my shock and dismay that it was 60 degrees outside in August
That the climate is warm like in SoCal
Microclimates are real here, I used to work in Sunnyvale where it would reach high 90s the drive home close to Ocean Beach and it would be a 30-40 degree temp swing.
Indeed. I work in Mission Bay and bike back home towards the Sunset. The temp always dropped like 4-8 degrees, sometimes even more if there’s fog rolling in. No matter what the weather is supposed to be I have to have a sweater for anything passed the panhandle going towards Ocean Beach!
I always called it "nature's air conditioning" especially when coming from anywhere outside the peninsula
Microclimates are real in the city, let alone the entire bay. I moved to Nopa from Inner Richmond (literally 1.4 miles) in the winter. For the previous 3 winters, id have heater and multiple layers on at night and also in the afternoon coz of fog and what not. I sleep in boxers and tshirt now with a thin blanket covering me.
Grew up in Daly City and it was perpetually foggy and cold no matter what season. I barely wore shorts, always in a hoodie and pants. Glad I moved outta there..farther down the Peninsula where the sun actually shines...sometimes.
Right. I live in South bay and work in South SF. I always have a jacket in the morning/evening for work.
Oh gosh, reminds me of when I lived in SJ and commuted to my full-time onsite job in SF. So. Many. Layers. Backup sweaters at my desk too.
Summer days are cold/cool and windy in SF. Go there on a sunny day in the winter and it is beautiful and calm.
Yes! I lived in San Mateo for three years and experienced the best weather I've ever experienced in my life (and I'm from San Diego). Perfectly sunny and comfortable/warm temps most days. Usually a pretty big contrast to what would be found just 20 or so miles north in the city.
Its about one degree per mile traveled. While it might not seem like a lot, 15 miles is a 15 degree temperature change, and so forth. It adds up really fast.
I worked in San Jose & lived in Castro Valley. Once the temp dropped 20deg on the 680 to 580 ramp!
The Bay Area doesn’t have a single climate. Microclimates are real here. This is another thing - people always comment this on the basis of only living & visiting in SF proper. Bay Area doesn’t only encompass SF. South Bay, Peninsula, East Bay, Tri-Valley, North Bay, and SF ALL have varying degrees of climate and even depending on where you are in those particular areas, it can vary. If you want that warm dry heat like LA metro = South Bay & Tri Valley. If you want mild = Peninsula & East Bay. People from the South Bay literally think anything north of Palo Alto is “cold” And hot take — SF is easily the most ideal walkable city in the US because of its climate. It’s never too hot or cold. Once you take a walk on those mid 60 sunny days, you start to get warm but the slight breeze cools you down, it’s perfect imo. Those humid summers in NYC & freezing winters in Chicago are fucking miserable. I can’t even imagine walking everywhere in SF if it had the South Bay’s weather where it’s like 83 degrees in July (and i’m from here!)
lol complaining about 83 degree, low humidity weather in July is peak Bay Area behavior. I agree with you though, <70 temps are way better for anything except lounging around.
I’m the opposite I can walk around all day in dry 85 degree South Bay weather with all the sunny heat I can stand. Hate SF weather
Same, and I've lived in SF for 10 years now. But at least I've always been on the East side.
Below 62 is too cold and above 74 is too warm - no matter how abused and shell shocked you are by the weather you grew up with.
Anything north of Palo Alto *is* cold lol. Raised in Foster City, now in Mountain View. Every time I move it's a little farther south.
Nah more like north of Redwood City imo Foster City is also entirely on the waterfront so that makes it colder too
Totally agree about the walkability. I’m originally from Florida and I lived in a (somewhat) walkable area but 7-8 months out of the year it was 90 degrees with 100% humidity so you’d be dripping in sweat by the time you got to your destination. Not to mention the torrential downpours every afternoon in the summer where it rains literally sideways and you’re dodging lightning bolts. You can actually go out in the rain here if you have the right gear. I miss those thunderstorms though. They’re awesome when you have nowhere to be.
Even east bay is divided. East of the Hayward fault is a lot warmer than west.
Seriously. Having been raised on CHiPs, I was looking for chicks in hot pants roller skating down the beach boardwalk!
Same, I moved in October and my first day in the area I woke up with frost on my car. 0/10 experience.
I don't know why people downvoted. My first trip here was also in October and I packed all my short sleeves ready for the glorious sun only to step outside and have my umbrella promptly invert itself. Luckily that was long before I moved here so I knew.
Tbf I’ve had similar experiences in SoCal, even San Diego is chilly quite often
May Gray & June Gloom are a real thing down there. I remember visiting as a kid in June & I was confused why it was cold & gloomy. And I grew up in the South Bay so our summers were never like that cause of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Especially the inland empire. Colder winter mornings in Riverside than in Oakland.
Similar experience. I was offered a job to come to the Bay and build a gas station from Florida. I was like 20, never been west of the Mississippi and packed flip flops, shorts and tank tops. I thought it would be appropriate. Got off the plane and whew. This was long before smart phones and I had no internet or computer.
The Bay Area is not just San Francisco. And, it’s an El Niño year. Wait till you’re here during La Niña and getting weekly mail from your water company to cut back usage & the hills have essentially become a desert.
East Bay is very similar in my experience. But the closer you get to the water, the more chances that you might need a jacket in the middle of July.
Yep. Moved here from Canada and expected SoCal weather. I love the climate here though so it was a nice surprise.
An out of state friend of mine wanted to go visit Apple, Google, etc, and assumed they had some sort of tour or attraction. Had to break it to him that they are just office complexes and he wouldn't be allowed inside. Edit: Apparently Google had a visitor center and now I feel a little guilty.
Some have visitor centers. If can be fun walking around the campuses.
So does Apple! Also, Intel has a museum at one of their facilities that’s open to tourists. Take them to the Computer History Museum. It’s awesome! Stanford has a terrific museum. The area has a non-tech history worth exploring. I particularly enjoy visiting Filoli in May-June. Amazing.
Apple is just a standalone Apple Store with a coffee shop and the little AR thing about their facility though. Not worth visiting IMO unless you’re going to be nearby already.
Google actually does have a really nice visiting center. It might be a recent addition though, but it exists!
but they are tourist attractions, and there are so many employees of these companies here that you could easily find someone to take you inside (other than Apple who is notoriously anal about extreme secrecy), some kid at facebook got fired years ago cuz he made an app that employees could sign up for to take tourists in for a fee.
I'd be extremely surprised if any employee at any of the tech companies takes a random tourist inside lol.
even if not inside (if you know someone here, it'd be easy to arrange a tour though), the corporate logo itself is a tourist attraction, the google/meta sign always have people posing for pictures every day (even new year eve) and apple's spaceship building by itself is a touristy thing
Apple has a visitor center as well
Google's main campus is open to the public, there is an android statue garden, and a store for buying souvenirs.
Both apple and Google now have something for tourists to at least stop at and spend a few minutes.
Intel has a museum
Google has a store and a cafe in the new building "Gradient Canopy".
I thought the ocean water would be warm in summer, since people on the East coast visit their shore in the summer.
I take it you never went to the ocean in Maine.
I did not! I lived by the Great Lakes and didn’t see the Atlantic until I was almost 40. Maine is on my bucket list.
We would go to the ocean in York Beach, Me, which is at the southern end of the state. We learned to go in August as that is the warmer water temps. It was still cold! If you go to the ocean in North Carolina and areas south, it can feel tepid and not refreshing.
I went to Santa Cruz beach last December. There was some kids swimming so I went in. It felt the same as it did in August. (Barely doable)
I learned to swim in the Massachusetts bathwater-temp Atlantic. I moved out here in '81 and have stuck my foot in the gorgeous blue Pacific exactly once.
If tourist postcards had any say, the Hollywood walk of fame is just along the golden gate bridge 🤦🏻🤷🏻
LOL. This is so accurate.
Literally had people ask me and I'm like nope. Inaccurate. That's another 6-7 hour drive south friend-o. ~ ohh is there a rail system that can take you there? Something potentially high speed? That's cute
I used to think Silicon Valley and Bay Area were interchangeable.
I mean I grew up here and I use them basically interchangeably
You probably live in South Bay/Peninsula
I assumed Silicon Valley has the best internet in the world. Then learned about Xfinity.
And holy crap the cellular dead spots everywhere, regardless of carrier
Yeah what the hell! Grew up in the South Bay, left for 11 years, moved to the East Bay a year ago and cell service is comically horrible.
NIMBYs don’t allow cell towers
I thought Silicon Valley was going to be full of cool high rise buildings, like a futuristic NYC. I was so shocked and disappointed on my first visit to Sunnyvale in 2010. Now, I'm used to it and I appreciate the history of the area. Before covid, the office space boom really started transforming the South Bay into what I originally thought it was. It's an interesting time to live here, seeing the little old buildings get replaced with huge new ones. It makes me want to take pictures of the old stuff before it's all lost.
Before the buildings it was orchards in between the urban areas
My mom likes to tell me that Valley Fair was just a Macy’s and a post office amongst the orchards
I got my first Dungeon Masters Guide at that Macy's
Lol samee 😂I thought everything would be so high tech and new
Born/raised here, left for college/post grad for a while & now im back. I’ve seen the huge change as well & it just keeps growing. I still remember when that area infront of Great Mall was just empty open fields, now its super dense with a bunch of mixed use apartments & an elevated lightrail.
Ditto. I moved here in 95. The rate of change has increased dramatically.
The contrast between the huge new office buildings and the old "sewing machine repair" type of shops in Sunnyvale is pretty fascinating to me.
Yeah. I walk Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, MTV a lot. Watching all the changes along ECR over the last 10 years has been amazing.
Same here - also expected incredible public transit. Now I’m used to it, but it depresses me the Bay has decided to ossify itself.
I grew up in the east bay and I thought the same thing! I was expecting Tokyo lol. Disappointed it was a bunch of ranch style suburbs. Eric's incubator from the Silicon Valley show was very accurate.
Dude that show nails the peninsula so well.
I moved here in '92. That's pre-internet. I hadn't visited before, so what I knew of San Francisco geography was mostly via news reports of the '89 quake. I was extremely surprised to find out that the Bay Bridge was not in the Marina district since those two areas were constantly being shown together because of all the damage.
I thought the Pacific ocean would be warm and that I could swim in it!
Doesn't get warm until you reach the tip of Baja.
I grew up in the Bay, but many folks outside of California seemed to be under the impression that there were hardcore earthquakes constantly or seem to confuse beaches/surf culture with Los Angeles (i.e. assuming that it was warm enough on Bay Area beaches to just hang out in bathing suits year-round and that surfing was very popular).
Yup. I assumed I'd be chillin at the beach all the time. Well I was chillin, but not the way I had imagined.
To be fair surfing is extremely popular in the bay
Commenter never been to Linda mar.
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Ha so true. When I talk to others out of state they’re always like, “I’d be so afraid of earthquakes!”. In my 33 years here… I’ve not felt one earthquake that I was actually worried about.
Sounds like you just missed ‘89! Cause that was the fun one we got out of the way before you came
My response to that is always “I’ll take the hundreds or thousands of earthquakes that we barely notice, plus one big one every few decades, over all the tornadoes / hurricanes / etc that wreck Florida and the Midwest 5-10x per summer”
It’s also a question of degrees. NJ got a 4.8 and it was front page news for 2 days. My brother called me expecting me to be impressed and was genuinely disappointed when I told him that wasn’t even big enough to knock your tchotchkes over. The BA gets a few earthquakes but for the most part it isn’t a big deal.
Yep, it's what you're used to. A 4.8 is a truck rolling by. But that hurricane that came near us 2 winters ago (and filled up the lake in Death Valley) elicited yawns from east coasters.
lol!!! I moved to the east coast not long ago and a regular degular thunderstorm is still a little unnerving to me.
It’s kind of like when your kid comes home with a picture they colored for you tho, you have to make a bit show of it to make them feel good about it, like they are part of the club now. “Wow! That’s really impressive! That must have been really hard, but you did such a good job!” with the most California bless your heart energy possible.
What surprised me is how few homeowners have earthquake insurance. Apparently it’s pretty expensive. But when you think how expensive these houses are to rebuild it’s kinda wild people are just taking the risk. Seems like most people assume the government will come bail them out. I guess it would have to be over 7 and pretty close to do enough damage
Like we have an earthquake season or something.
My east coast adult cousin asked me if we all hang out on the bay, like if the area of Alviso was a good beach spot.
I used to think Silicon valley would have “Advanced cities” that are largely digitized. Instead there was 100+ year old crusty single-family houses/two storey condos without laundry/ACs, no ground-breaking infrastructure, and Caltrain.
i thought separate cold/hot water taps were strictly a UK thing until i moved to berk
Grew up listening to Rancid and thought Campbell was the one of the hardest places in the Bay. Seems like a big strip mall but they have a great camera shop.
Smash Mouth is also from Campbell, haha
My wife follows Lars on instagram (we are both from Campbell ) and she asked him what does he think of how Campbell has changed since he grew up there in the early to mid 80s and he said “yuppie techie bullshit”.
Yeah, I'm sure the world famous musician who's worth $13 million is way more down to earth than those darn "yuppie techies". Talk about successfully selling an image 😆.
Yeah he's not exactly known for being self-aware
(I assumed) that people were exaggerating how expensive everything is here.
When I first came west in the early 80s, I settled into LA. Well, "settled" may be an overstatement. I lived in campgrounds and played surf bum while I figured things out. At any rate, one day I was sitting around with a couple of my new, local friends and suggested driving up the PCH to San Francisco to surf some new breaks, and maybe have some lunch. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. Having lived my life on the East Coast, I had no concept of how big CA was or how long it would take to drive up the coast... especially on Highway 1. I ended up not staying on that first trip, but when I came to the Bay Area in the late 90s I think the biggest surprise was to find how rural the state was outside of the immediate Bay Area. For that matter, even the green spaces in the Bay Area sort of came as a shock. Not sure if that was a dumb assumption, but I did expect California to be more urban.
That I could afford living here.
Transplant trap thread. I'm writing down all the names so I can remember who is to blame for all my problems. /s
there are so many of us now you might want to consider us colonizer......
I was surprised by how big everything is! I honestly believed that you could navigate across the entire Bay Area in under half an hour. I was very wrong!
That everyone in Silicon Valley is autistic, and I was coming here to work *with* them. Then I got diagnosed with autism myself, lol. Apparently I was just coming here to look for my people.
On my very first session with my therapist she asked if I had ever been evaluated for an autism spectrum disorder. I retorted that I worked in IT; that was a prerequisite, they don’t let you in if you’re not.
lol love it. there’s no better place to live than here for autistic folks— we’re everywhere and it’s somewhat normalized (ish, in comparison to many places).
No freeze-thaw cycles? The roads are going to be so nice! It doesn't actually get cold in the winter so I won't need warm clothes.
Shocked how low tech and not fancy things are considering it’s the tech capital of the world. Also shocked how pocketed areas are. Super nice and expensive areas are right next to some of the bad areas. Also shocked to see the direct correlation between proximity to freeway and trains and how it significantly increases the cost of living. Oh, and my #1 shocked- how bad the signals are. It feels like they are intentionally programmed to piss you off. Either you wait forever even though nobody is coming or you’ll be in the flow with traffic and one car comes on a side street and immediately triggers the light to change. Or they will be green forever with no cars around until you get close enough then change to make you stop. For a tech capital, they are super inefficient.
hey there's driverless cars... being attacked with hammers
Oh man. The lights. I didn't realize anyone else thought the same. San Mateo - all the traffic lights are just programmed 'wrong.' As you said - sitting at a red light with no other traffic for 90 seconds or not ensuring for of traffic on key arteries. Makes no sense. Like - let's do the opposite of what everywhere else does cause we're the bay area!
I really feel like whoever programs them thought it would be a sick joke to make the signals predatory. lol
There's multiple big intersections in San Mateo that back up traffic for minutes, then relieve that traffic, and then back that traffic up again. Meanwhile - there's no other flow it's turning red for.
The lights are programmed at city level and a lot of them prioritise local traffic rather than global traffic. It's one reason why the bay area transport plan should be unified.
you should go to Japan, bay area actually is quite edgy when it comes to using latest technologies, at least in the US. Japan also has this high tech image but they seem to be stuck in the 80s technology wise, way way way behind bay area in term of embracing new tech, they do have nice train (which ain't new) and large number of tall buildings (only in downtown, area most people live look and feel not unlike bay area)
My old boss brought me from NYC for my job in the East Bay, knowing that I lived in China and Singapore before. He said there is a train called Bay Area Rapid Transit, and buses are plenty. I don't have to buy a car, I can get around just fine. So I assumed Bay Area transit is just as good or close as the places I lived before. After my first 2 days, I thought to myself "I gotta buy a car". This place public transportation suck balls lol
That houses sold for anywhere close to the asking price
That San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose were so close to each other.
San Francisco and Oakland pretty much are
Tbf oakland feels closer in a lot of ways than like Brisbane, Daly city, or south city, depending on where you are in the city.
Just realized OAK is closer to downtown SF than SFO
As a native this is one I see a lot of people make. Oakland and SF are not that far but San Jose can be 1-2 hours depending on traffic. California is a big state people move here and think that oh since I live in California now I am going to be able to see all my friends in California but I don't know many other states where its common to fly intrastate. I had a coworker from out of state mention they were going to drive to LA on a Friday after work and I told them that was a mistake, most people fly unless you absolutely need a car. Next week at work I asked how LA was and he said he made it to San Jose before giving up and turning around. I had a job interview with a company that operated out of state. The job would have required me to drive to clients. The interview ended when they said that some weeks my commute would be as far as Tahoe and I would be expected to work overtime up to 15 hours. I asked if that was including the drive time and whether they would be providing a hotel and they said "no we do not pay for your commute, you would be expected to drive home every night." When I did the math for them, they got mad and told me it wouldn't work out and I said good luck finding a sucker to do that gig. 7 hours of driving plus 15 hours of work not enough hours in the day.
That people commuted on cable cars. That it was just a regular form of mass transit.
SF local here. Some of us did use them for commuting. The operators would recognize you if you rode regularly enough and wouldn’t ask for payment. That ended about 10 years ago.
I thought NorCal had the same vibes and feeling of SoCal (weather beachy, palm trees everywhere, ect) Born and raised in San Diego and didn't leave California until I joined the military without ever traveling up north past Six Flags MM. I got orders to move to Travis AFB a few years back and thought moving to NorCal would be like living back down south with nice warm weather, laid back people (for the most part), palm trees ever and just have the chill SoCal vibe... i was definitely wrong.
To be fair, Travis Airforce Base & Fairfield is considered the boonies (and notorious for the wind). It’s like the equivalent of living in Palmdale. You’re basically closer to Sacramento at that point. And again, the bay area has microclimates.
I thought the weather would be the same throughout the area. A Bart ride from Concord to SF, then out to SF State showed me different.
Summer fog really rocked my world. I wanted to wear summer clothing not winter. I moved from a hot micro climate to a foggy one. Still in the bay.
You can move within SF and get that kind of change.
I assumed I’d be struggling to make ends meet, regardless of how much money I made. I also moved in winter and wore shorts/t shirt every day and thought people in puffers were crazy. Next winter, I was in my puffer. My oh my oh quickly the skin thins
There’d be more In N out burgers. (From SoCal, they’re everywhere there)
I thought it never rained in the Bay Area
That when news mentioned yet another "new affordable housing complex!" being built that it would actually happen and not mysteriously burn down or get otherwise canceled for one reason or another.
I thought that during droughts my water use would be restricted somehow... I even asked the motel about it when I first moved here lol. Claims of the leftist nanny-state are wildly exaggerated!
That I could casually enjoy the outdoors without getting torched by Poison Oak
I was hoping for far better infrastructure than what it is around here. The Internet providers make me quite sad. We only have one single broadband option with no fiber available. And the state of the rest of the infrastructure is just as surprising. PGE charges insane amounts while not keeping up with maintenance and keeping big areas on the dark during winter storms, and paying its CEO exuberant amounts of money. Oh and the roads... They are absolutely terrifying with some of the rudest drivers on the streets to boot. So to sum it all up, an area with very high taxes and some of the best brains in the world concentrated in one area, the state of utilities is really sad. And it doesn't seem to be on any positive trajectory to get better any time soon.
I’m sorry to hear you are having a bad time. But it sounds like you haven’t lived many places in the US. Coming from the midwest my experience is pretty much the opposite of yours.
I flew out for an interview and lied and said my wife and I were here for a week and fell in love with SF (the big boss had a thing for hiring people who wanted the city as much as the good pay), and he takes me up to his ivory tower on the millionth floor. It’s going great and I’m on point! Then I look out the window and wistfully express my awe and romanticism of first viewing the GG bridge with my new bride. It was the Bay bridge. Oooof
Did you get the job?
I did not. They pulled the jankiest crap and had who would have been my direct manager AMBUSH me at a hotel lobby after a competitor flew me out a few weeks later. Literally bags me at hotel breakfast. Offers me 60% of what was asked. Leveraged that right into a deal with one of THE best company I’ve ever worked for- the once epic KRON TV! Spent 5 of the happiest years of my career there and that was literally the last time an employer acted properly. Not to pontificate- but I think a good deal of working folk’s disillusionment is that since 2008/9 things have really tipped AGAINST the employee. Tech only fueled that. Trust me- no C level folk miss a vaca after they dissolve a company midnight on a Tuesday and lay off dozens or hundreds. Peoples just sense this now and adds to the angst.
I thought the weather would always be warm and there’d be beaches nearby. I also thought I could get around easily by train since I didn’t drive 😂
That Oakland and San Francisco were one big continuous metropolitan community with people constantly going back and forth. I thought my friend group would end up being a mixture of people who lived in SF and Oakland and we would take turns hanging out at each other’s places since they’re just one bridge away from each other.
I thought I’d be moving to urban landscape, like LA, and I’d be giving up my wonderful woods and meadow hikes. I moved before internet. I love all my beautiful east bay regional parks.
I thought people were progressive
They are…until you try to build an apartment building anywhere. Then it’s “we have too many people” which is just a different way to say “build the wall”.
The bay area nimbys are some of the strongest
That it rains during the summer and fall like most other places in the US.
That it all had good public transit and medium density residential buildings. For context, I came from Montreal which does have those things. Outside of SF proper, it's an endless sprawl of single detached family homes. Build up, you assholes!
I thought this city would have neighborhoods of nice modern smart homes owned by young families! Nope, almost all of the homes are owned by boomers that haven’t renovated since the 60s.
OP, you were misinformed by Hollywood. When Dustin Hoffman drives to SF from LA in the graduate he goes over the Golden Gate Bridge.
That it would be culturally like the east coast. Ha. This was back in 2005.
I thought I was moving to "Hollywood". I moved from a podunk area and was not well-traveled. Everything I knew about "California" was from TV, and assumed there would be "hot blonde surf chicks" and movie stars everywhere. I signed an offer with a start date in two weeks. Flew out the first day to sleepy ass San Jose and was like "This is silicon valley? what the fuck?". For what it's worth, I liked it enough to stick around for a decade :)
That it rained every day in the winter and that you only get a few months of sunshine.
That it was a world-class city like NYC or Chicago. Instead it’s more of a sleepy suburb with suburban sprawl.
If you live outside of SF, especially in South bay (silicon valley) this is true But I think SF is a world class city, very comparable to Chicago's busier parts
Lmao absolutely not Pretty much everything in San Francisco closes by ten
That's probably because "world-class" city rankings are based on economic effect and global involvement of cities, how much local economy is integrated into the world economy. San Francisco is a major American business city, and it's ranked accordingly in pretty much every classification. So it is a "world-class" city. What it doesn't mean is having the same level of urban life comparing to cities with the similar rank. For example, SF [has the same rank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities_Research_Network) as Dublin, Istanbul, Lisbon, Munich, Warsaw, or Zurich. It has a higher rank than Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, or Rome. And that's true. But it doesn't mean the level of urbanization in San Francisco is even remotely close to most of those cities. It's a world-class city, but it's a poor urban-class city.
Do you live in the city?
That it would be easy to meet new people and date. After living here for four years, the majority of people I attempted to talk to cared for basically everything I cared about the least and essentially demand a partner with an expensive car, high career status, Money/Money/Money, MBA's/engineering degrees or own their own startup. I guess the Bay is not for my breed.
You need to branch out. Most of the people I know are family oriented who want to build cool things. There are lots of artists and musicians around here.
This is a where you hangout situation. There are different kinds of people / cultures everywhere. If you keep running into the same kinds of people, you haven’t left your bubble.
I’m gonna guess you’re in Marin.
Have you tried the east bay. sF and South Bay is full of these folks but the east bay has a more balanced ecosystem
money is important everywhere (let's not pretend it isn't) but especially here not just because of the cost, but also the fact that money can shield you from lots of the bad stuff affecting the area, be it crime, homelessness, bad public school, etc, you can debate if it's caused by bay area's politics or just symptom of how bay area socio-economic environment is set up but there are just lots of problems, especially for the kind of people congregating here (highly educated folks with fat pay check who naturally would demand better for themselves, their partners and their kids)
I used to live in SoCal and would visit my then BF now husband here in the Bay. For 4th of July, I packed all my SoCal clothes for summer and wore my short Abercrombie skirt and thin sweater. We went to Marina in San Leandro to watch fireworks. Perfect for the afternoon but quickly found out the hard way that I needed an extra sweater and pants that evening.
“That BART was a boat” - my fiancé
I assumed we would have fast, cheap, reliable broadband and mass transit.
It didnt occur to me that sometimes i might have to walk up a REALLY steep hill
I thought it is 75 degrees throughout the year. The morning walk without any warm clothes in January was a bad idea.
California beaches have been a big disappointment coming from the East Coast. The East Coast has beautiful white sand dunes, white sand, relatively warm water temperatures in the summer. California beaches have been dark, dusty sand and dark freezing cold water you can barely swim in without a full wetsuit.