How Silicon Valley's Tech Reign Will End

theodp writes "Silicon Valley's stranglehold on West Coast innovation is in danger. The main problem? It's no fun to live in Silicon Valley. Technology is people, explains The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, and more people are choosing to live in cities. And Silicon Valley isn't like a city, it's like a suburb. 'What's happening now,' says author Bruce Katz, 'is workers want to be in Oakland and San Francisco.' So, how might Silicon Valley save itself? 'Silicon Valley is going to have to urbanize,' Katz said. '[There is a] migration out of Silicon Valley to places where people really want to live.'"

Comments

Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[TechyImmigrant]

>And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.

Have you been to silicon valley? There's plenty of bustle, just with worse traffic and no good restaurants.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

And SF or Oakland has less traffic and bustle?

BTW, Oakland? Really, Oakland? Most of Oakland doesn't want to live in Oakland.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been to the Bay Area twice, and I'd rather live in San Jose than SF or Oakland. You have to be nutters to live in SF or Oakland.

Actually, I'd rather live up near Sonoma or along the coast highway, but I don't think I could afford either :) Monterey was extremely nice, however.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

no good restaurants

I respectfully disagree, there are many good restaurants. They don't usually look very nice, but the food is good.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the food is good except when they put cilantro on everything.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Berkyjay]

AAAAHAHAHA!! San Jose is a hole and if you lived in the Bay Area long enough you would understand why. BTW, San Jose pretty much is Silicon Valley. Those suburbs are the suburbs of San Jose.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[HockeyPuck]

Yeah, the food is good except when they put cilantro on everything.

C'mon, the food in Alviso isn't that bad. Now the Mexican restaurants that try to be hip rather than serving Mexican food made by Mexicans in a restaurant owned by Mexicans, yeah that stuff sucks.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[ShanghaiBill]

Have you been to silicon valley? There's plenty of bustle, just with worse traffic and no good restaurants.

Sure, but the traffic has always been bad, and there has never been good restaurants. If this is what it takes to "kill" Silicon Valley, then Silicon Valley would have never existed in the first place. People have been regularly predicting the death of SV since the 1970s.

I live in SV (San Jose, to be exact). The weather is great. My kids go to public schools that are in America's top 1%. The restaurants aren't as good as in SF, but they aren't that bad. Workwise, there is plenty of talent, and it is easy to find people with almost any skill I need. If I get sick of my job, I can walk across the street and find another. Very few other locations has all these benefits.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[nanoflower]

I was out there a few times. I loved where BeOS had their headquarters. There was a little complex of houses just across the street so that you could walk down a tree lined street and cross one street to the office. Of course those homes, though only 2 bedroom, probably cost a million or so back in the 90s. Guess you can't have everything.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much sums up all of the us of a

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[sabri]

San Jose is a hole and if you lived in the Bay Area long enough you would understand why. BTW, San Jose pretty much is Silicon Valley. Those suburbs are the suburbs of San Jose.

I agree and disagree. I've lived in San Jose for three years and moved to Morgan Hill last month. San Jose doesn't have a real downtown (the thing that comes closest is Santana Row), nor anything else that the big cities have (such as decent public transport).

But while SJ claims to be the "capitol" of silicon valley, it is not. Many of the big names are outside of SJ: Apple, Facebook, Twitter etc. Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Mountain View are full of tech companies, more than SJ. And where SJ does have the tech, it is primarily concentrated in the triangle 101/880/237. This area may be part of SJ as far as geography is concerned, it doesn't even come close to the feel of being in a city.

The one thing that does suck tremendously is the traffic congestion on 101, 280, 880, 238, 85 and 87. Yeah, that's like living in LA.

Oh, and don't get started on Oakland. When you have documentaries named "Gangland Oakland", you know to stay the hell away with your 100k+ tech salary.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[ebno-10db]

they put cilantro on everything

I guess it sucks if you don't like it. It is everywhere. Personally I love it, although a lot of people think it tastes like soap. They should have a cilantro free side of the menu or something. Maybe a new restaurant, "Cilantro Optional".

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[pspahn]

Oh, and don't get started on Oakland. When you have documentaries named "Gangland Oakland", you know to stay the hell away with your 100k+ tech salary.

Except for the fact that if you were in the market for a very nice home with very nice views with friendly neighbors, you would probably choose Oakland over San Jose.

Oakland, +1

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[mikael]

Small cities aren't too much of a problem (~ 500,000 people) . Usually, you could always find somewhere to rent or own within four blocks, or within a bus-ride to downtown. And there aren't any wild-eyed drunk hobos crashed out on the streets either. Maybe a few homeless people selling "The Big Issue" and chuggers (charity muggers) trying get cash off you. And everywhere is within walking distance; doctor, dentist, stores, shopping malls. Large rows of apartments give you considerable anonymity.

It's the larger cities with the need for a 1+ hour commute by train or tube that are the most intimidating. Particularly having to squash up in tube carriages during rush hour because the central core is too expensive, and the inner suburbs are too dangerous. Otherwise they are more like twenty small cities grown into each other.

Silicon Valley is more like thirty downtown cores all connected by a train network, with each station have bus-routes as spurs. You can get from one city to another 10 miles away in 15 minutes by train. But it takes you an hour to get from one side of the city to downtown by bus. Even longer if you try and take a bus across cities. With somewhere like Sunnyvale, then everything is at least a mile to three miles away from where you are (shopping mall, supermarket, dentist, doctor). Trying to use public transport to get anywhere was like trying to plan a deep space probe mission. There were public transport routes that would take you one place to another, but trying to determine when and where they met up was the hard part. Sometime the map would should the two routes intersecting, but you find that they are opposite side of the street (an eight-lane expressway), with the overpass half a mile away on each side. Or there is a 1-hour wait as one service stops and leaves minutes before the other one. Almost done as if on purpose.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You have to be nutters to live in SF.

Or fruits.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

HA! I grew up in the Silicon Valley in the 60's and 70's during it's prime, then moved to Sonoma County mid 70's to now. Sonoma
County now is like Silicon Valley was back then. Now it's time to move north yet again.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[jythie]

'introverts' have generally been pushed out of that culture already. It is harder and harder to be an introvert in tech, esp at the trendy companies. The people they are hiring today probably would not have been programmers 20 years ago.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[beelsebob]

Have you been to a big city? Palo Alto/Mountain View/Cupertino are like small towns in terms of level of bustle. Sure they have big roads, but they are generally otherwise pretty quiet places.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[RabidReindeer]

And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.

Don't count on it. It's actually easier to ignore crowds than it is to ignore individuals. An introvert (speaking as a die-hard card-carrying member) isn't necessarily a person who's afraid of people. We just don't get our jollies by dealing with people.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[mellon]

There are tons of good restaurants in Silicon Valley. My favorite Korean soup place is in central Palo Alto. Fabulous Indian food. Sure, there's good food in Oakland and San Francisco, but it's population density and services that make those locations more desirable, not food. And really, neither San Francisco nor Oakland are particularly urban anyway—they're just _more_ urban than Silicon Valley.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[mellon]

Oakland is a big city (in terms of area, not population). There are _really_ nice neighborhoods, and it has a decent downtown. Great Chinatown. The gang thing will get less prevalent over time if Silicon Valley really does move there. If I had to choose where in the Bay Area to live, Oakland would be high on the list. For one thing, they have public transportation, unlike Silicon Valley.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Commenting to remove accidental mod.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

Actually, Stanford pretty much is Silicon Valley. San Jose is where they send you if you behave badly.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

SF doesn't have decent public transit either. All it has is a pathetically limited number of light rail lines and buses. Unless you're on the "corridor" it's a sardine tin like bus commute for you, that averages to be twice as fast as walking.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

I loved where BeOS had their headquarters.

Fat lot of good that did them.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

Silicon Valley is more like thirty downtown cores all connected by a train network...

"Network"? Ha ha, that's a good one. More like a conveyor belt with rusty rollers.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[tlambert]

Oh, and don't get started on Oakland. When you have documentaries named "Gangland Oakland", you know to stay the hell away with your 100k+ tech salary.

What exactly do you have against Oakland, other than the massive amount of industrial pollution, drug manufacturing, gang shooting, and having your $6000 entertainment system, which your $100K salary allows you to afford, stolen once a week, the windows busted out on your BMW, and taggers deciding your car and house are great places to express themselves, you know, when they aren't too busy doing other things, like mugging you?

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attractions_in_Silicon_Valley

PPS: Google alone has 32 restaurants on campus, most of which are managed by the same people who used to go out on tour and cook for The Grateful Dead.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

El Taco de Oro!!!

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[gl4ss]

And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.

you can be more introvert in a big city easier than in a town scenario.. in a big city nobody knows anyone they meet on the street but in a small neighborhood everyone knows everyone..

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever been to the Bay Area? With Oakland, there's some really shitty parts, there's also middle parts, and then some of the most expensive housing in the Bay Area, with excellent schools and no crime. I love to go hiking in Oakland's Redwood forests. This sort of dichotomy is also true of East San Jose - my girlfriend works for the schools there, it's 100% gang territory. But of course you wouldn't describe all of San Jose that way.

#1 on your list of attractions for the Silicon Valley: A "cactus garden." Silicon Valley is as boring as sin. The only real attraction is "go somewhere else."

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

The Grateful Dead guy is long gone.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Tough Love]

'introverts' have generally been pushed out of that culture already. It is harder and harder to be an introvert in tech, esp at the trendy companies. The people they are hiring today probably would not have been programmers 20 years ago.

And they aren't programmers now, they're script monkeys.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Megane]

They love cilantro in Tex-Mex too, FWIW. I hate the stuff, it tastes rancid to me. Basically any chunk large enough to see (more than say 1mm in any direction, and any stem piece) is too much. I always have to remember to ask for refried beans at Taco Cabana, and avoid the bits of cilantro that fall into the jalapenos in the condiments bar. Pico de gallo is right out.

Re: Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

About Resturants on campus".. PEOPLE don't want to BE on campus all the time. The whole point is that the Valley is a bunch of Isolated corporate islands surrounded by traffic actively hostile to oing anywhere on your feet.

If you are going to be like that, you can move to suburbs of Detroit for half the cost of living... Cities in mid-michigan like Troy or Novi are wall-to-wall plain concrete wastelands malls and enterprise commerce parks. I'm sure nice stuff goes on in each office complex, but they are designed to be hostile to doing anything "outside" but go to your car. Every city has areas like that... It was the corporate fashion for a long time.

People want to be AROUND OTHER PEOPLE. Back to my mid-Michigan example, everybody goes back to their houses on 2.0 acres (weird shaped minimum "country subdivision") where nothing is walking distance, even your mailbox, and if you have a sidewalk you are certainly discouraged from walking on it even for exercise. What people really want are small towns, where you can walk to coffee shops, library, schools, etc and mostly know everybody belongs. Even most small city downtowns are gutted because all the business went to big box stores 5 miles away next to the highway. There are whole cities here that are nothing more than a string of closed office parks and closed subdivisions with no "downtown" area at all, except maybe where cuti hall, the post office, police station all happen to be on the same street.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[tlambert]

Have you ever been to the Bay Area? With Oakland, there's some really shitty parts, there's also middle parts, and then some of the most expensive housing in the Bay Area, with excellent schools and no crime.

Oakland is a pit. There are suburbs of Oakland which are not pits, but they are not Oakland, which is kind of the point.

There is a good reason it costs to go over the bay bridge from Oakland into San Francisco, but that it's free to go over the same bay bridge when you are going from San Francisco to Oakland.

I love to go hiking in Oakland's Redwood forests.

I'm pretty sure you meant to say "Clarement/Piedmont/Rock Ridge/Joaquin Miller Park/Redwood Heights" here, rather than saying "Oakland". Which is to say, you meant to say that you are not in Oakland, but in the suburbs, since that's what's actually close to the redwood forests.

Emeryville is rather nice (we held the first BSD Con there, years ago, and Sendmail is located there, but it's a separate place from Oakland. It's mostly where Oakland drives to to get to the Ikea, since Ikea would not be caught dead with a store in Oakland itself.

I suppose you could claim the Oakland airport as an attraction, but everyone pretty much flies into SFO. TheOakland airport exists as a place to divert planes when SFO is being pissy about not being allowed to expand its runways and making planes come in on a single runway because they like to pretend the airport doesn't have a moratorium on planes that do not have a modern high accuracy ILS such that it could be zero visibility, and they'd still be able to take off and land on all runways, even if they painted over the cockpit windows. That's only because people don't want to add the extra hour and a half for the shuttle for the pit which is San Jose Mineta.

PS: It might also have something to do with the only thing the Oakland airport being a Hub for being FedEx Express, which is great if you've FedEx'ed yourself, but otherwise not so nifty for humans. They have ~13 non-hubbed airlines that fly in and out, compared to the ~40 airlines that fly in and out of SFO, which is a hub for both Virgin America and United.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Miamicanes]

> And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.

It depends... I'd argue that to introverts, "bustle" is just background noise that's easy to ignore, and maybe vaguely comforting in a passive-social-life kind of way. In contrast, the invasive social bullying you'll encounter in a small town "where everyone knows everybody" is positively soul-crushing. Being left alone when you're one in 4 million is pretty easy. Being left alone when you're one of 137 people living within 20 miles is a bit more challenging, especially if one or more of the 137 takes an invasive & annoying interest in you, or decides you don't neatly conform to their world view.

In a big city, you can buy a townhouse. It might share walls with 2 neighbors, but those walls are probably concrete and (if built within the past 50 years or so) devoid of openings & wall penetrations. If your back yard isn't surrounded by an 8-foot concrete wall, it probably COULD be done legally if you wanted one. Contrast that with typical suburbia, where you might have 12 windows and 10 feet of airspace separating you from your neighbors, and you probably aren't allowed to build anything more substantial than a 6' wall with 8' hedge before the HOA will come after you for creating an "eyesore" or blocking your neighbor's "view" (of your yard). In a city, your neighbors are closer, but you're also allowed to do more effective things to buffer yourself from them.

Narrow townhomes often have three, four, or more stories. Some people hate it, but for others, there's just something totally cool about a zig-zag floor plan where the front rooms are offset by 1/2 floor from the rear rooms & the stairs do double-duty as both stairways and interior hallways. Bonus points if you have a basement room that opens up into a walk-out excavated light court ( http://www.busyboo.com/2013/02/20/home-extension-uk-garden/ ), and official "jackpot" status if your garage has a pit-type hydraulic car stacker like this one (which allows you to independently park two cars in a single-car garage with high ceiling and pit) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3aJjCI0JSE :-D

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Bustle in Silicon Valley?

Maybe to someone from a country town.

But if you've lived in a real city (Boston, Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc) then you'll know what REAL bustle is and that Silicon Valley does not have "bustle."

Re: Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Public transportation - what for? Get yourself a car and then drive and park wherever you want. A convenience you don't have in big cities anymore. I'm anything but introvert but I'd never choose SF or Oakland over SV.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[russotto]

In a big city, you can buy a townhouse.

Unless that big city is New York or San Francisco and you're not filthy rich.

Contrast that with typical suburbia, where you might have 12 windows and 10 feet of airspace separating you from your neighbors

I live in very typical suburban NJ. One end of my house has two small windows, which face the blank wall of my neighbor's garage. In between is my garage, plus maybe 15 feet of my yard, a retaining wall, and about 20 feet of his yard, with a few evergreens and maples in the space. On the other side I have a blank wall (though I could add windows if I wanted to) facing the back of the neighbor's house though a thicket of trees. McMansion-on-a-postage-stamp developments aren't all there is to "typical suburbia", any more than high-rises are all there are to cities.

and you probably aren't allowed to build anything more substantial than a 6' wall with 8' hedge before the HOA will come after you for creating an "eyesore" or blocking your neighbor's "view" (of your yard).

No HOA, though municipal ordinances could be an issue. Probably not, seeing as one of my neighbors has a 10-foot chain link fence in their front yard. And if you think HOAs are bad (and they are), NYC rules are far worse. The only things worse than that are wetlands and historic district regulations

Narrow townhomes often have three, four, or more stories. Some people hate it, but for others, there's just something totally cool about a zig-zag floor plan where the front rooms are offset by 1/2 floor from the rear rooms & the stairs do double-duty as both stairways and interior hallways.

Here in suburbia we call that a split level.

and official "jackpot" status if your garage has a pit-type hydraulic car stacker like this one (which allows you to independently park two cars in a single-car garage with high ceiling and pit)

I suppose I could turn my 2-car into a 4-car with that, but I don't think it's worth the cost.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[mikael]

Yeah, I remember the dot com boom when they put on extra trains to handle the extra demand. Around mid 1990's, hardly anyone used the Caltrain between 9am and 10am. By the peak of the boom, every week saw another person competing for a seat, until there was a scrum of people trying to get on every day. Wasn't helped by Caltrain's policy of roping off the end carriage for school trips, or having direct access to the station from one side only. When they did bring in "new" carriages, these were some old Virginia Express carriages that had fold-up steps. I remember everyone going "OMG!! WTF!!!" when they first saw them.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[JDevers]

And really, neither San Francisco nor Oakland are particularly urban anyway—they're just _more_ urban than Silicon Valley.

I agree that both are more urban than San Jose and it's suburbs and really Oakland isn't that urban, but if you don't think San Francisco is urban you are really limiting your definition. In the US, Manhattan, Chicago, Philly, and MAYBE Boston and downtown Miami are about the only cities more urban than San Francisco.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[TechyImmigrant]

Or you fly into Oakland and drive in because the flight from PDX-Oakland + Hertz costs less than the flight from PDX-SFO alone. SJC is ok except it's only open between 3 and 4pm on alternating Thursdays in May. I'll fly to SJC if I can get on the corporate jet, but not otherwise.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[TechyImmigrant]

I agree completely. I have no reason to believe that the forces that make silicon valley silicon valley are about to change. Its about the network effect of diverse techy skills and investors all in the same place with high job mobility.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some pretty good restaurants in sunnyvale and mountain view. But I'll give you the traffic.

Re: Except, you're dealing with introverts

[mellon]

Yay, another thing to maintain and pay for, plus I need a place to store it. Party on! One of the great things about living in a big city is less crap to keep track of.

Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts

[billstewart]

During the 80s I lived in an older town in NJ (still suburbia, and most of the lots were 55' wide but some were 110' wide.) My house there made a nice downpayment on a condo in Silicon Valley when I moved here, but the early 90s were a bit of a real estate slump. I would have gotten an actual house in San Jose instead, but got laid off just before we made an offer, and we could handle the condo on one income.

Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Wants to live in an urban shit hole? I got tired of wading through shell casings, used needles, condoms, homeless cretins, assholes and the like and moved out of the hellhole Indianapolis had become. The place still has one of the highest murder, home invasion, mugging, vandalism rates in the country. When I was in L.A. it looked worn, old with a lot of trash and that was Rodeo Drive. If you're moving into an urban area in this economy you're a fool.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[DigiShaman]

Cheaper, better, faster. You can only pick two.

You can only live in the core urban city if you're wealthy. Being urban education is an abject joke, you live their with children knowing full well you'll be spending over 10 grand a year on private education for them.

The outer ring around the urban center is mainly lower-middle class to poor. These are the children that go to the urban public schools.

The second outer ring is primarily the sub-burbs. Typically 40 to 80 miles out from the core. The people that live here are solid middle class. Their children go to public schools that rate anywhere from fair to very good.

So in summary starting from the center urban city on out ranks as the following group of people. Wealthy - Poor - Middle class. In that order.

Re: Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing Los Angeles and San Francisco. I live in SF and find myself surrounded by beautiful Victorian homes & tasty restaurants. I suppose there's some litter, too, but that's a small price to pay. (Unlike my rent.)

Re:Only a fucking moron

[dgatwood]

Inelegantly worded, and I wouldn't go quite that far, but I tend to agree with your dislike of the city life in general.

Full disclosure: I live in the Silicon Valley.

I can't imagine the allure of places like San Francisco. They're dirty, overcrowded, and getting around requires insane amounts of walking because you're never going to find a place to park and you're taking your life in your hands if you actually drive up there. Half the places you want to walk, you're constantly being hit up by people begging for money (despite an ever-increasing homeless services budget—homeless are drawn to SF by the availability of those services, so the more they spend, the more homeless they get; you can't solve homelessness one city at a time—it must be fixed at the national level—but I digress). There are drugged out people lying in the streets. There are drug deals going down on the corner, and prostitutes drumming up business. And for this, people pay more to rent a small apartment than I pay in space rent for an 1800 square foot mobile home. Seriously, what the f***?

I know some people like the "hip" culture of bars and clubs in larger cities, but once those people get a few years older, the desire to go clubbing usually wears off, and they find themselves wanting to live somewhere safe and comfortable. Cities are not that sort of place. The young workers who still haven't figured that out can live in their San Francisco. That's the thing about the Silicon Valley: It's an easy commute from there. Companies that want to attract those young workers would do well to follow the lead of companies like Apple and Google, who provide buses down from the city, where workers can get work done while they commute.

As for the companies that decide to move to San Francisco, it's only a matter of time before they figure out that they need a balance between the young workers and their older, wiser elders, most of whom don't want to move to a city, will be much less willing to commute than their younger counterparts, and will be much less able to commute on commute buses because they are spread over a larger geographical area. It's easy to set up commute buses from a highly populated area to your campus in the suburbs. It's much harder to set up commute buses from the suburbs to a company in the city.

In short, the entire notion of this article is fundamentally founded in a false dichotomy and an incorrect assumption that everyone likes cities. Oh, and one final point: Anyone who says that "Workers want to be in Oakland" is probably holding on to real estate in that city that they can't sell because of Oakland having one of the highest violent crime rates of any city in this country. As far as I can tell, nobody wants to be in Oakland.... :-)

Re:Only a fucking moron

[theshowmecanuck]

...urban education is an abject joke, you live their with children knowing full well you'll be spending ...

Ummmmm... nah, too easy.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[afgam28]

You seem to be implying that it's only the naive young kids who want to live in San Francisco, and the older wiser folks are the only ones smart enough to make the decision to live in the suburbs. Maybe you prefer the suburbs, and that's fine, but here's why your younger coworkers prefer San Francisco:

The problem with suburbs in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, is that suburbs don't scale. This wasn't as much of a problem for previous generations, but these days Silicon Valley has grown to a point where it is. The traffic along highway 101 is terrible and is not easy to avoid. Caltrain doesn't go everywhere and the connecting buses are slow and poorly timed. The place is too sparse to get by without a car, so you absolutely have to get one. On the other hand, San Francisco has good public transport within the city (although not so much out of it heading into the valley). And that's only if you need it - it's also the second most walkable city in the country after New York. I think cars were once viewed as a symbol of freedom to previous generations, but these days they are seen as a ball and chain which ironically ends up limiting your mobility.

Also you may disagree with this, but to me it's also a much more pleasant environment - the Victorian housing, the city skyline, the parks and the waterfront along the Embarcadero and the Marina look beautiful compared to the suburban houses, office parks, shopping plazas and the freeways that connect them.

And as for crime and homelessness, if you exclude the bad neighbourhoods (Tenderloin, the dodgy part of SoMa west of 6th and the dodgy part of the Mission east of Valencia), then there's really not a lot of it. There are also an idea that, despite perceptions, the extra driving that comes with living in the suburbs is more dangerous than the crime in the city.

The article is not great, but it's more based around the idea that there is a generational trend towards urban living. It's wrong to think of it as either "everyone wants to live in the suburbs" or "everyone wants to live in the city", but when compared to previous generations more of Generation Y prefers city living.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[rasmusbr]

There is lots of crime in cities, but there is also a lot of people in cities, so the amount of crime per person present in the city at any time (many of who sleep in the suburbs/exburbs) is not particularly high. If you factor in that most of the crimes that happen in cities are crimes where the victim is either a criminal themself or a person from the underclass, often a sex worker or a drug addict (or both), cities begin to seem like rather safe places for most people. Just watch out for pickpockets.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[dgatwood]

The problem with suburbs in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, is that suburbs don't scale. This wasn't as much of a problem for previous generations, but these days Silicon Valley has grown to a point where it is. The traffic along highway 101 is terrible and is not easy to avoid. Caltrain doesn't go everywhere and the connecting buses are slow and poorly timed. The place is too sparse to get by without a car, so you absolutely have to get one.

The suburbs scale just fine. You do have to choose employment within a reasonable distance or move. You can arbitrarily extend suburbia out for hundreds of miles in every direction. Just look at almost the entire northeastern seaboard for proof of this. The only reason the suburbs can't spread quite as well in the Silicon Valley area is because there are too many mountains. Even still, there's no fundamental reason that it can't expand out in directions where it is feasible to do so.

The South Bay traffic problems would be significantly reduced if we eliminated Prop 13. Under Prop 13, a home's value is reevaluated only when the owner sells it (for the most part). As a result, homeowners who change jobs are forced to commute because selling their homes and buying otherwise identical homes closer to work would result in a huge property tax increase.

That said, for the most part, I've found 101's traffic easy to avoid. Highway 280 parallels it just a few miles away, and usually has fewer problems. And in the South Bay, 85 is frequently a better choice than either one. The only time I've been unable to avoid bad traffic on 101 is when I'm going down towards Salinas, and that stretch is only bad because A. the road desperately needs to be eight lanes all the way to Salinas, B. SR-156 needs to be widened to four lanes all the way to Castroville (greater Monterey), and C. there is no good parallel route beyond where 280 and 85 merge into 101 other than taking 17 down to Santa Cruz and going across Highway 1 (which always has serious traffic problems because it also needs to be 4+ lanes all the way to Monterey).

Also you may disagree with this, but to me it's also a much more pleasant environment - the Victorian housing, the city skyline, the parks and the waterfront along the Embarcadero and the Marina look beautiful compared to the suburban houses, office parks, shopping plazas and the freeways that connect them.

Attractiveness, perhaps, though that varies widely, depending on where you are, both in the city and in the suburbs. Functionality-wise, definitely not. In my standalone house, I can play my grand piano at 2 a.m. without the neighbors calling the police. In a multi-family dwelling, that would almost never be the case, because properly soundproofing the walls between two units dramatically increases the cost of construction. I can build a house that (assuming no HOA rules) looks like what I want it to look like, without the design decisions being limited by trying to cram square footage onto a postage stamp, resulting in hard-to-use three- and four-story buildings that use space inefficiently. There are large parks with actual trees and lakes. The schools are better (which isn't important until you have kids, but give it time). And so on.

The article is not great, but it's more based around the idea that there is a generational trend towards urban living. It's wrong to think of it as either "everyone wants to live in the suburbs" or "everyone wants to live in the city", but when compared to previous generations more of Generation Y prefers city living.

The problem with that assertion is that youth have always had a strong preference to city living. The author is suggesting that this is somehow new, but it isn't. That was true even forty or fifty years ago. On the average, that preference starts to change when people have their first kid, and people tend to strongly prefer the suburbs by the time their first kid reaches school age. I see no evidence that the pattern is changing significantly, notwithstanding people choosing to have kids a bit later in life than they used to.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[mrchaotica]

Of course, the trouble is that the people deciding where to put the offices are listening to idiots like the GP instead of you, so us folks who like the city and prefer not to drive end up having a stupid car commute anyway because we have to go out to the suburban wasteland to find a job!

(I live 4 miles from downtown Atlanta, but most jobs in my industry are 30 miles out in the exurbs -- and not in the same direction, either, so you can't even pick an exurb to live in because if you change jobs you're screwed anyway. It's a pain in the ass.)

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and one final point: Anyone who says that "Workers want to be in Oakland" is probably holding on to real estate in that city that they can't sell because of Oakland having one of the highest violent crime rates of any city in this country. As far as I can tell, nobody wants to be in Oakland.... :-)

My thinking, exactly. I thought it was a joke at the beginning.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Just Some Guy]

They're dirty, overcrowded, and getting around requires insane amounts of walking because you're never going to find a place to park and you're taking your life in your hands if you actually drive up there.

Who the hell drives in SF? I take a transbay bus to and from work because it's cheaper than paying the bridge toll, I don't have to pay for parking, and I can play with my iPad for half an hour while someone else drives. Once in the city, there are a lot of really good iPhone apps for getting from point A to point B via public transit as easily as possible.

I had never not owned a car from the time I turned 16 to right after I moved here, but almost immediately sold mine once I figured out the transit system. We kept my wife's minivan for tearing about East Bay but almost never drive it into the city because there's just no need to.

Half the places you want to walk, you're constantly being hit up by people begging for money

Then choose not to walk in the Tenderloin. You still see the random homeless in SoMa and Financial District, sure, but they leave you alone.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Tough Love]

Edwardian, not Victorian.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a counterpoint. I live in SF, moved out here nearly ten years ago from Ohio. I was a single guy working as a "consul-tick" flying around everywhere doing my thing. came out to SF for a longer term gig, and decided to ditch the hotel routine and got a sublet in a 4BR apartment. Could have easily afforded a 1BR or studio, but want to meet people. Met my future wife in a sailing class, rented a couple places in the city, got married on the lawn at Fort Mason. Bought a place during the down-turn, have a toddler and another on the way. We make fine money ($200k ish combined) but not crazy money thateveryone seems to imply you need.

I've been reading all the hate on SF and the Bay Area in general...too expensive and all that. But as a city, San Francisco is great and the Bay Area is fabulous. We're a short dirve from great hikes on the peninsula and Mt. Tam. Longer drives to the mountains...now you are in some seriously awesome scenary. Water is too cold to really swim, but beach days are still nice and we can rent a long board at Nor Cal when we feel up to it.

We have a sailboat ($13k) we take on the Bay. Ride my bike to work every day, share a nanny with some great folks down the street. And our little section of town (Noe Valley) is crawling with kids. Exploratorium, Bay Discovery, Dolores Park...It's hot this week so we went to the pool..The city has really worked out great for us. We to walk everywhere. We do have a small car, street park, not an issue.Gets like 6000 miles a year on it...

It's not for everyone, but its worked out great for us. Big question is kids and school. We're not making any promises one way or the other about if we stay, but just wanted to let folks reading out there know it's definitely doable, even for the "Married with Children" crowd.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[guises]

With the exception of New Orleans, public schools in the major US cities generally do quite well. They get a bad rap for having higher dropout rates, but those dropout rates go along with taking in the at-risk low income and troubled children that the public schools are required to admit. If you adjust for that then their graduation rates and college acceptance rates are no lower than with private schools.

This is true for Chicago public schools at least, and I believe true for most public school systems. I say this because I know that the New Orleans public school system in infamous for being the only major metropolitan school system in the country that does worse than charter schools (which are not private, so I'm making an assumption here, but I don't think it's out of line).

Of course, a person can also buck the trend you lay down simply by having no children.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[grantspassalan]

In the information economy we have today, the geographical location of many workers is becoming more and more irrelevant. Smaller communities and even many rural areas have reasonably decent Internet connections which are necessary for remote work. Remote workers have to be more self-motivated since they don't have their bosses of the beehive cubicles breathing down their necks. It is grossly inefficient to move heavy material objects such as people or their cars when those people are mostly dealing with information. The problem is that there are not that many diligent, honest, self-motivated workers these days anymore. Too many people want to get away with as little work as possible. Many bosses also feel that they do not have enough control over their minions if these workers are hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Most city folks can't even imagine what it is like to live in a place where the nearest neighbor is half a mile or more away. Many city folks have never seen a glorious mountain sunrise or the Milky Way and all the other stars. City dwellers rarely find out what it is like to breathe pure air that has not been contaminated by car exhaust and industrial fumes or drink pure water fed by an underground stream that arises from the melting snow of the surrounding mountains. City children don't learn how to saddle up and then ride a horse, raise a steer or pig, collect fresh eggs from the chicken coop and pick fresh raspberries and blackberries. Our children were raised this way and now our grandchildren are also growing up in an environment where they can learn how to live apart from the rat race of the big city.

I used to live in San Francisco when that was still a nice town and also in Palo Alto working for Stanford University. We gave up all the dubious conveniences of city and suburbia living for the country. With the help of Amazon and other Internet merchants I can have all the high tech toys I could possibly want. Once every month or two we drive 140 miles round-trip to Costco to stock up on items not available locally.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

It is probably noteworthy that these problems do not have to be as pronounced as they often are in the USA.

In the richer parts of Europe - France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and so on, you'll very often see decent middle class living standards -including education, public transport access, traffic-reduced streets, green areas, and residential small-scale shopping- already 2-3km from a city's core.

Switzerland, Austria and Germany in particular seem to achieve really, really high standards of life in some of their cities.

These population centers are often partly of medieval origins or at least old, so they usually aren't entirely masterpieces of ingenious planning by modern standards. Many parameters involved are far from optimal.

They just generally were incrementally organized and fixed over time to become nicer, with a lot enhancements being of recent or very recent date.

Chances are that US cities could also be fixed in short time, perhaps more entirely so, seeing how they were created with more modern designs in mind.

Re:Only a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't happen to move to Tahoe, did you? (you sound a lot like some people I knew who moved up here from the bay area)

Re:Only a fucking moron

[grantspassalan]

No, we live in the mountains of southern Oregon.

and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is incredibly boring, AND it is ridiculously expensive. It's not just a problem with "Silicon Valley" - tech money is slowly destroying the entire Bay Area, by destroying the ability of non-tech millionaires to live normal lives. It's starting in Berkeley. :-(

Re:and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

It's starting in Berkeley

Soon, it will be $5-BSD.

Re:and expensive

[coastwalker]

It looked like hell in 1991 when I visited from the UK. The highways must be just one big parking lot by now.

Re: and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

No, NIMBYs and ridiculous land-use laws are driving up prices. If we added as many new apts as the market demands using the amazing technological innovation that is the elevator, we wouldn't see the prices we do.

Re:and expensive

[TheGratefulNet]

if I need to be at work at 9am, its hell.

otoh, if I can be at work at 10.30, then its not nearly as bad as you say.

if you are allowed flex hours, its quite liveable. if you work for a company that still thinks like they did 50 years ago, well, you better live close to work..

Re: and expensive

[beelsebob]

On the other hand, the whole are would feel much more closed in, much less spacious, and generally more urban. The reason people pay less for apartments in high rises (or even relatively small buildings) is because it's a lot less pleasant to live in them than it is to live in suburban sprawl.

Re: and expensive

[ebno-10db]

No, NIMBYs and ridiculous land-use laws are driving up prices. If we added as many new apts as the market demands using the amazing technological innovation that is the elevator, we wouldn't see the prices we do.

Hear, hear! I get tired of people complaining that they can't hire enough people in SV. The obvious reason is that it's too expensive to live there, and the obvious solution is higher density. There must be some zoning and regulation in SV that keeps that from happening, which annoys me even more. I'm not anti-suburb at all. I've lived in them by choice almost my whole life. But you can't have your nice little suburban enclave and then complain you can't get enough people. Make up your mind.

Re: and expensive

[ebno-10db]

The reason people pay less for apartments in high rises

Not a valid generalization. In Manhattan the highrises are often the premium buildings. I've also lived in both garden apartments and a "highrise" (only five stories, but a real building instead of a two story pile of kindling). The real building was way better. The head of my bed was on the other side of the wall from a baby's crib, and I never heard that kid once.

Re:and expensive

[tutufan]

I had a really good offer for a major Bay Area company a year ago, and after running the numbers, realized that (largely because I have kids) there's simply no way to afford it. Maybe if my wife was also a tech person, but she's not. Ended up taking a job in NYC, as it's considerably more affordable if you have kids...

Re:and expensive

[geezer nerd]

Right on!

I spent most of my career in Silicon Valley. Lived in San Jose most of the time, Sunnyvale for a short while. Worked in different places in Sunnyvale and Mountain View with a short (very) stint in Redwood City. None of the jobs I had were customer-facing, and I always had flexible hours. Carpool hours on the freeway ended at 9am in the morning and at 7pm in the evening, so I arranged my commute to be at the office by 930 or 1000, and I left after 1900. That gave me a 20-mile commute in about 25 minutes. On the rare day I needed to be there earlier, the commute time went up to 60 - 90 minutes.

In those days, the car got refueled once or twice a week, and I drove 20000+ miles a year. Since retiring I moved to a much smaller place. Now I refuel the car about once a month and drive less than 15000 km a year. That is a huge difference!

Perhaps I should also chime in that, for me, cities have never been the answer. I do not like to even be in them, much less live in one. One thing I really, really liked about Silicon Valley, and that I have not seen otherwise mentioned in these comments, is that from all those towns in Silicon Valley a short drive of less than an hour can take you out into some pretty empty and very beautiful countryside. I liked to go out and walk the trails, and that is how I recharged. Try Grant Ranch County Park outside San Jose.

Re:and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say the cost of living and the cost to run a business in CA is probably what had lead to this, but i would also add tech companies were never really "stuck" with Silicon Valley, and thus have searched for other cities to set-op operations that are far friendlier for both the business and the workers.

Re: and expensive

[snadrus]

Having visited there, I have a greater appreciation of the problem: they can't grow for any reasonable cost. Why?
- Huge mountains on both sides that it's extremely unsafe an an earthquake-prone area to build atop.
- The finest silt sand all the way down. Build anything heavy and it'll start to sink.
- Earthquake & "Green" expectations / requirements (to your point). Though being one of the most toxic urban areas in the US, "Green" requirements are not unfair.
- The land's all taken: Something (possibly over 100 years old) must go for something new, and the new, high-density thing will be bigger, so you must find a group of neighbors willing to sell.

Re:and expensive

[Dahamma]

Yes, it is incredibly boring, AND it is ridiculously expensive.

Expensive? Sometimes. Boring? Only if you are *complete* shut-in, in which case why are you complaining anyway!?

In the past month I have gone to the beach in Santa Cruz (quirky fun) and Half Moon Bay (awesome - heard of Mavericks? - and relatively remote - dog loved it), hiked Big Basin (prehistoric redwood forest, better than Muir Woods IMO) and Skyline Ridge (hard to describe the views), eaten in some awesome Indian and Thai restaurants as well as great dim sum and sushi, and made dinner almost entirely from vegetables in my backyard (tomatoes, peppers, artichokes, green onions, and arugula in a salad and oranges, strawberries, plums, and olallieberries for dessert/snacks).

Next month I'm planning on going up to Lake Tahoe (only a 3 hour drive in the summer - a bit more in the winter but also world class skiing) - but you could do Yosemite in the same drive time if you wanted. Have some friends coming in September, will probably go on a wine tour in Napa then.

And you know what? Most of those things didn't even cost much money (having a backyard, maybe, but you can get the same stuff year round at all of the local farmers' markets).

The "Silicon Valley Tech Reign" is not going to end any time soon. And why? Because in fact it IS fun to live in Silicon Valley. I moved out here from the midwest 20 years ago and have no interest in moving back - same can be said of every coworker of mine (I think maybe 1 of 20+ of them are from the Bay Area originally). It's the fucking Mediterranean climate with 6 figure starting engineering salaries. Yeah, I have to admit those not in the industry will have a harder time with the housing expenses - and that is a valid issue that needs to be addressed - but that's irrelevant to the "tech reign"...

Re: and expensive

[ebno-10db]

The finest silt sand all the way down. Build anything heavy and it'll start to sink.

That doesn't stop anyone from building up. In Chicago for example you'll never get to bedrock, yet it has the tallest building in the US. You just have to design the foundation appropriately.

Earthquake

San Francisco and LA have skyscrapers. Experience has shown that highrises are often the safest buildings in an earthquake.

"Green" expectations

Manhattan is the greenest place in the country. By concentrating so many people in a small area you greatly reduce the need for cars, and avoid sprawling communities. Suburban lawns are anything but "green" (in the metaphorical sense obviously).

The land's all taken: Something (possibly over 100 years old) must go for something new, and the new, high-density thing will be bigger, so you must find a group of neighbors willing to sell.

Manhattan land has been all taken for over a century, and it certainly hasn't stopped Manhattan from growing.

Re:and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

What the guy above said.

Silicon Valley is boring AND it is ridiculously expensive.

But part of the boring is that all bars/clubs close at 2am. I mean WTF?

However, living in San Francisco is hell if you own a car and living in Oakland is just plain dangerous.

So all together, apart from money, Silicon Valley really doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of "life".

Re:and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked for a Fortune 50 Tech company based in San Jose for a long time and it continually amazes me why people choose to live in SJ. I work in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) in Raleigh North Carolina. Univ of North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina State Univ. are all within 10 miles of the RTP and RTP (Chapel Hill - UNC, Durham - Duke, Raleigh NC State) is home to not just IBM, Cisco, and tons of other tech companies but also a large number medical and bio-research companies.... very diverse and Red Hat's headquarters is in downtown raleigh.

In SJ you can pay $1Mil for a house that here would cost maybe $250K. A 4 bedroom, 4 bath house on 2 beautiful wooded acres filled with deer costs around $400K. I guess I don't understand what people think they are working for if they pay all of their salary in rent, gas for the commutes and end up with little to show for it in the long run. How do you want your kids to grow up? San Jose is just a rat race.

I see only two big pluses to SJ... the weather is nice... and you can job hop like a toad.

Weather here is nice too, mild winters and summers can be a little humid sometimes but 2 hours to the west are the Appalacians and 2 hrs to the east are the Atlantic beaches.

Many tech people live and "suffer" here and are pretty happy about it.

Re:and expensive

[mikael]

They were in 2001. It was most noticable in the evenings. Just looking out the office window or taking the train down, and you'd see back to back triple rows of red and white car lights all along the freeways, as commuters working in the peninsula were trying to get across the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges (http://goo.gl/maps/llXdt). It was faster walking, so long as there were actually sidewalks.

Re: and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

SV did try and build multi-story apartment blocks back in the 1960's. but the MVA meant that the somebody living in the house next door suddenly found their property tax going up by a magnitude. Other residents complained about the loss of sunlight, especially in Winter. So that brought the Proposition 13.

Existing apartment blocks complexes were constructed out of timber, so you would hear your neighbor walking about upstairs, the downstairs neighbor's stereo alarm clock and next door's waste disposal. Modern townhomes are built out of concrete, but the transportation of all that construction material pushes up the price beyond the reach of ordinary workers.

While it would be possible to build luxury concrete multi-storey apartment blocks with a supermarket, fitness centre, doctor and dental clinics all rolled into one (a.k.a condominium units in Canada), the average worker wouldn't be able to afford them, and you would still have the need to commute.

Re:and expensive

[jrumney]

I think this is the real problem with Silicon Valley. When it started out, the advantage Silicon Valley had over San Francisco was that it was cheap. Now it has lost that advantage, and on top of that it is a boring sprawl of suburbia and industrial parks. It has hung on for the past 20 years purely through momentum - the fact that so many tech companies are headquartered there.

Re:and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one earthquake could cure that problem, and they'll leave -- with their money.

These things go in cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know it's a cliche, but cliches are often true.

Yeah, I know that's a cliche too but... I ran out of them.

Really?

[clemenko6439]

The cost of living is insane out there. There are great engineers all over the world.

Re:Really?

[ebno-10db]

The cost of living is insane out there. There are great engineers all over the world.

Including other parts of the US. While SV is an amazing collection of talent (not everyone there, but enough) it's also one of the most provincial places I've ever seen. The idea that good talent can be found elsewhere in the country, at better prices no less, never seems to occur to anyone.

Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a major silicon valley company, and haven't met a single person who wants to live in Oakland. No matter how "hip" it is, the violent crime rate is 4x that of San Jose (the largest suburban city in Silicon Valley).

Source : http://best-cities.findthebest.com/compare/196-246/Oakland-vs-San-Jose

Plenty of techies do live in SF and commute to Silicon Valley companies every day. But SF isn't a city you want to raise kids in - the only people I know with children in SF are either too poor to move, or so incredibly rich that they can send their kids to private schools.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

And Tower of Power doesn't strike me as a geek band.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Trepidity]

The parts of Oakland near the BART stations have undergone considerable gentrification over the past 10 years, and yeah, a lot of it is due to techies moving there. The area around West Oakland BART is nothing like it used to be, although some of that is also due to the area being less cut off since the demolition of the Cypress Street Viaduct. Uptown Oakland (near 19th st BART) is also pretty gentrified, again largely with tech workers.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Hentes]

I guess it's an age thing. Kids would prefer to live on a farm. Adolescents and young people like the big cities. When they grow older and have children they move out to the suburbs.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Google sends at least one bus to Oakland.

Re: Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

and it never came back...

Re:Oakland????!!??

[im_thatoneguy]

Haha, that's what I was thinking too while reading the summary "Who the hell wants to live in Oakland? If I wanted to get stabbed every day I would just cover my walls in knives and swords."

Re:Oakland????!!??

[PolygamousRanchKid]

So, a couple of questions:

1) How did they gentrify the street gangs? A lot of other cities would like to know how to do this.

2) Where did the ungentrified folks move to? Just down the road, or some place else? I'm thinking of the "Law of Conservation of Gentrifity", which states that if one place gets gentrified, some other place must get ungentrified.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say, if people want to live in Oakland then exactly how bad has SV gotten?

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

PRK, it's largely same story as in other places (NYC, Chicago, et al.). I don't think gangs get gentrified. In the case of Oakland, I'd guess that they just moved to crappier areas of the city. Or, maybe Vallejo. :) In Chicago, some of the inner-ring suburbs have gone downhill socioeconomically over the last thirty years as pockets of the city have done uphill.

Aside: I just *love* it when Oakland residents proudly say where they live and then, on questioning, admit that it's somewhere nice (e.g., Rockridge). No "sketchy" points for you, hipster! See "Mission District, San Francisco," also (well, parts of it, anyway).

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Trepidity]

These days I don't think you really get sketchy points for anything in SF proper. Unless maybe you're living in an SRO in the Tenderloin.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple.

Gentrified Thug 1: I say, dear fellow, is that a bandana in non-local colors you are wearing?
Gentrified Thug 2: Why, yes, yes it is. How astute of you to notice.
Gentrified Thug 1: How unfortunate! I must inform you that this is neighborhood is the pervue of the Crips Club, and that by our most recent bylaws, we are not permitted to allow members of other clubs to conduct business while lacking the proper authorization.
Gentrified Thug 2: Well, sir, as a member of the Bloods Club, I must inform you that our Charter does not recognize the authority of any other club to dictate where our morning perambulations will take us.
Gentrified Thug 1: In that case, sir, I am regretfully forced to use this projectile launching device to forcibly insert metal slugs into your body.
Gentrified Thug 2: And I shall endeavour to use my own one-handed projectile launching device to perforate your fundament, after which I shall perform non-consensual copulation with your mother.
*bang* *bang*

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Darinbob]

Ya, this is bizarre. You live in Oakland if you're poor and have few opportunities to get out, or if you're amazingly wealthy and want to live in the hills so that your garbage rolls downhill towards the poor people.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a tech worker who used to live in downtown Oakland...street gangs were never a downtown Oakland thing, except maybe near the bus station on 14th and Broadway. You had to go to the other side of the 980 freeway, or maybe three miles away to East Oakland, for that. Like a lot of cities, Oakland has parts that are dangerous and parts that are quite nice - a house in the Oakland hills will cost several million, obviously that's not gangland (never was).

Recently there's a whole lot more bars and restaurants and so forth in downtown Oakland, I dunnow I guess it does draw more young people.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[coaxial]

Where do the ungentrified move to?

Richmond.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a couple of questions:

1) How did they gentrify the street gangs? A lot of other cities would like to know how to do this.

2) Where did the ungentrified folks move to? Just down the road, or some place else? I'm thinking of the "Law of Conservation of Gentrifity", which states that if one place gets gentrified, some other place must get ungentrified.

1) You ignore them and keep shoveling in rich yuppies, eventually even the most ballin' gang members can't afford the rent.

2) Typically they move to the suburbs where they can afford the cheaper rent.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

I work off the 12th street station and no way in hell would I live any where near Oakland. The beauty of BART is I don't have to.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[drinkypoo]

Try going downhill from Bernal Heights (towards the 280) and tell me what you run into.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

There were parts of Oakland that were almost completely abandoned after industry left. They built lofts and new apartment buildings and that's where the young techies live. All they displaced from empty space.

Some older techies with families moved out of SF and into the Oakland hills. But nobody--except real estate agents--pays any attention to what the over-30 crowd does, even if by the numbers and by the dollars they constitute a vastly more numerous demographic.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in SF for many years. Fine place to live when you are young, single and have a good job, but it gets old when you want to settle down. Moved to San Leandro for a few years (two blocks from BART). Actually got to work quicker, and when I had to go to the Palo Alto office it was an easy commute from SL to PA. Love the Bay Area, but the gridlock and daily expense can be grinding. No way I could put up with it without flex hours.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[volmtech]

Ah, 1950s farm life, The Walton's with electricity and indoor plumbing. You can have the rat race, I never left.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck no. As a kid I much rather lived in the city and had some choice of after-school non-supervised activity, than to be ferried from Boredomtown to the youth prison center 45 minutes away and back again everyday.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still buy a 3-story house for under $150k in some of the seedier ares of the City of San Francisco. When the housing market bottomed out three years ago, I saw rather nice detached houses for around $50k. Of course, I could never convince by wife to move to Hunter's Point.

Also, while some SROs are seedy, others not so much. There are far more SROs than people know, because if the place doesn't look dumpy they assume it couldn't possibly be an SRO. Many SRO house mostly middle-class residents--dentists, teachers, financial district workers, etc--and sometimes even have quite rich residents (i.e. million+ in the bank) who use it to cut down on their commute time. There are tons of SROs, for example, in Cow Hollow and the Marina district. There are even SROs in Pacific Heights. They just tend to blend into the community. Sometimes a "studio" isn't really a studio, it's an SRO. But building managers don't like to advertise SRO status.

San Francisco is an incredibly dense and diverse city. People assume it's all hipsters and young techies, but they constitute a small fraction of the overall population.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[DeathToThePatriarchy]

SF isn't terrible to raise kids in if one is not wildly wealthy, but it is a challenge. If you have arts kids, it is very good, in fact.

Re:Oakland????!!??

[CAIMLAS]

Oakland is a central East Bay/SF/Berkeley hub. It's quick and easy to get to most places in the Bay Area on public transit. And Oakland as a whole has seen a lot of "gorilla gentrification" in the past several years.

Why do they want to live in cities?

[Karmashock]

I have to think there is something more going on then lack of entertainment. Furthermore, married couples tend to prefer suburban settings.

Consider that the solution here is getting your engineers dates. If they marry then demographically they'll be inclined to stay and even avoid the city.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to think there is something more going on then lack of entertainment. Furthermore, married couples tend to prefer suburban settings.

Consider that the solution here is getting your engineers dates. If they marry then demographically they'll be inclined to stay and even avoid the city.

Except that getting married and having a family tends to keep them from spending every waking hour at work...

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to think there is something more going on then lack of entertainment.

There's a comparative lack of most things that aren't work-related. It's only comparatively "bad". But you know, the wealthier people tend to want the best. And Sillicon Valley has mostly people who're wealthy, plus their servants (sorry, I saw how little the other people get paid, servants is correct enough to me).

Urbanizing and diversifying would of course require infrastructure and cheap but decent housing for the not so wealthy. Nobody is going to pay for that, however.

Furthermore, married couples tend to prefer suburban settings.

Quiet streets and more affordable prices for larger housing what drives people to suburban settings, not the suburban settings themselves. It *could* be fixed with zone planning measures, but there's little will to do so, I think.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Karmashock]

Economic pressure is not what forces families out of cities.

Its the desire for an ACTUAL home and typically superior schools with safer neighborhoods.

Ask people that moved to suburban neighborhoods why they moved. There have been many surveys on this question.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Darinbob]

They think there's a party every night. Once they're there they realize the mistake but since there's rent control they don't want to give up on the good rate they got. So their next option is to try to play things up and try to get their friends to move to the city also. If you train yourself, eventually you don't notice that you're stepping over homeless people on your front step when you leave in the morning and you think that $9.50 is a great price for a single cupcake.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Darinbob]

Also, I find it really hard to envision Silicon Valley as "suburb". These were all standalone cities at one time, many with a rural feel. Now that there's a lot of business the rural feeling is replaced by rows of corporate buildings. But you don't see rows and rows of identical houses unless you get outside of what most people call Silicon Valley. There is no Levittown here.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[snadrus]

Bingo! You've hit the "social problem" most techies have.

I'd like to extend your answer to include those people working tech support before developing technology. Not only would that improve the world's tech support, it would teach social skills necessary to quickly connect & relate. And it's not "delaying top talent", but building advanced collaborative skills. I can personally say I needed that stage to be the developer I am now.

Re:Why do they want to live in cities?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably easier to get hookers in the cities.

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[DigiShaman]

DINKs (Dual Income No Kids) is what it takes to live in SF financially for most people. There are only two main groups that comprise of DINKs. The young, and the gay. Not a criticism. Just stating an economic fact. For everyone else, you have to be upper-middle class or higher.

Only applies to kids

[Anonymous Coward]

The 20-something kids that get used and abused by the start-ups want to live in SF. Oakland is a good place to get robbed or shot these days. Until they deal with some of their problems, Oakland will not be a big draw for wealthy tech folks.

The truth is that while the kids and their wacky start up ideas get a lot of press, once you get married and have a kid, Oakland and SF are not great places to live unless you have a LOT of money. I'm not talking "Hey I'm 29 years old and am worth a million bucks". I'm talking, my house cost $5+ million dollars, and my annual expenses are $500,000.

For the people between 30 and 60, who make up most of the workers in the tech industry, a 'suburb like' environment suits them fairly well.

Same precdiction every year

[JoeyRox]

Past favorites include cost of living, housing prices, traffic, taxes, tech bust, tech boom, blah blah blah. Silicon Valley isn't going anywhere and neither are the vast majority of startups.

Re:Same precdiction every year

[Anonymous Coward]

Thirty or forty years ago, Silicon Valley was a place that people were looking forward to moving to. These days, it's a place they move to because they have to, despite all its problems.

Silicon Valley is going to go on for decades still, but it isn't actually a place people want to move to anymore given a choice.

3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of living.
I'm telling you right now, after living outside the Bay Area for a few years.
There is NOTHING Silicon Valley has to offer except nostalgia of its past.
Today, we have zero land to develop on.

The city I am from, Mountain View, is in constant process to build these god awful HOA town homes, stacked one on top of the other. you might think its a wonderful place to be, and surely the weather has everything going for it.

But that's it.
The glory days are gone.
What is coming next is the city sprawl, you can count on it.

My family came out here to grow orchards back in the early 1920's, mostly Apricots and Almonds.
These are non existent today.

You can find the same quality of living with just as much cultural activity in many other places across the US.
And most importantly, the cost of living is far cheaper virtually everywhere else.
Seriously.

This place has become more of a status symbol for those who live and work out here than anything else.
There is also a growing divide amongst the wealthy and the living paycheck to paycheck classes in the Bay Area as well.
People are really wasting their money and time out here and they don't even know it.
They're missing the point imho entirely.

I'll be leaving again soon, this time I intend for good.
I'll miss Santa Cruz and The coast line and hills more than anything else.
But I know, there are plenty of those places left unspoiled all across the coast.

just my 2 cents.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm also a bay area resident.

one thing that keeps me here is the forward thinking attitude. acceptance of different lifestyles (for the most part) and the fact that its NOT required that you participate in a religion. quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors. I want no part of that kind of lifestyle and that elimnates about 80% of the US, for me.

the valley is stil the center for high tech, but with it being more and more h1b-based, locals are being pushed out of jobs - and that's definitely a down-side to living here. its hard to compete when you start to get older.

housing is pretty bad here. yes, too much HOAs and not enough space between homes, forcing people to live on top of each other.

but I keep coming back to the intellectualism of the area. if you are a thinker, you'll fit in well here. no one makes fun of you if you are smart, unlike much of the rest of the country.

food selection is as good as it gets here, too; with all the different restaurants and styles of food, its a major reason for me to stay here.

and finally, for hardware-oriented folks like myself, there are a lot of surplus electronics places that certainly help you keep your parts bin well stocked. I can drive down the street and buy parts that, in other areas of the country, you would never be able to find.

oh, and the weather. the weather! for a snow-hater like myself, it would be hard to leave the bay area and move back to the snow and cold.

too many positives to push folks like me out. some negatives, but more pros than cons, overall.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[timeOday]

I'll miss Santa Cruz and The coast line and hills more than anything else. But I know, there are plenty of those places left unspoiled all across the coast.

Eh, what coast would that be? Here is what Mt Everest looks like near the peak these days.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Bay Area veteran, I can confidently confirm to you that there are other places in America where you will not be mocked for being smart. In fact, even in bumfuck Kansas, intelligence is still attractive.

Honestly, I don't think SF/SJ is top of the heap in the intellectual department. The Bay is an engineer work mill, a secondary financial center, a tech startup hub, and a vacation destination.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

WTF? Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"? I've lived in several places around the country and have never seen that at all (TN, VA, AZ, MS), even though the places I've lived have not exactly been "forward thinking". In any town or city with a population greater than 300, there's multiple churches and people don't all go to the same church. In any normal city, tons of people don't go to church at all, and people just don't ask about it.

Finally, where have you ever lived where you needed to be "accepted by your neighbors"? In all the different places I've lived (probably about 20 different addresses), it was very rare I knew my neighbors well or said much to them besides an occasional "hi". Americans are famous for not interacting with their neighbors.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

But I know, there are plenty of those places left unspoiled all across the coast.

There won't be, once people like you are done moving into them.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Colonel Korn]

I'm a third gen native as well, now living elsewhere.

First, regarding the article, it's obvious that it's objectively wrong about the idea that people don't want to live in the valley because house prices in the valley are absurdly high and climbing. The market has spoken and it has conclusively proven TFA to be incorrect.

Second, regarding your comment...yeah, I largely agree. I miss a lot of things about the bay area, but whenever I go back it's sad to see what the place has become. I think new residents are the real problem. While San Jose/Mountain View/etc. are suburban, they were never at all like suburbs elsewhere in the country. They had character and above all, uniqueness. With all the overpaid, uncultured, unintelligent, fresh out of college people coming in to work at places like Google, Facebook, etc. there's a perceived demand for endless clones of hipster friendly restaurants and coffee houses that are essentially repeating the same half dozen archetypes found in any college town.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

"quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors."

I think you have a personal narrative about reality that you enjoy, which has as a possible downside having no correspondence with actual reality.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

one thing that keeps me here is the forward thinking attitude. acceptance of different lifestyles (for the most part) and the fact that its NOT required that you participate in a religion. quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors. I want no part of that kind of lifestyle and that elimnates about 80% of the US, for me.

Do you realize how not forward thinking your statement is? You are clearly have some stereotype of how the rest of the country lives outside of SV. I suggest you visit more of the so called "fly over country" before saying such things.

You are exactly the type of person that you profess to dislike.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint, he made it all up...

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

Maybe, but's he's been modded way up, so apparently the Slashdot crowd really does think that in 80% of the US, you'll be shunned by everyone in a town or city of tens of thousands of residents if you don't attend the one church there, which apparently has seating capacity for 10,000+ people at a time.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

He's most likely referring to places that aren't tourist destinations.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed x several. The parent poster is a classic naive Coastie. (Yes, they exist.)

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Alaska Jack]

Grishnakh -- HEAR HEAR HEAR!!

Exactly the same reaction. WTF? Has this guy ever actually lived anywhere else, or is he just spewing out what he knows surely MUST be true?

I've been all around the United States. It is possible that places like the ones he describe exist? Sure, I guess. Is it the norm, or even common?

No. No it's not.

lllll aj

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

did your family farm apples too? there's plenty of land. they just need to tear down all the old shit in MV, something that old timers are fighting till their last breath. not enough room in mountain view? drive 10-20 minutes in any direction from Castro and there are livable areas there.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[RussellTheMuscle]

I was born in Vallejo, raised in Sac, graduated from SFSU. I have lived on two continents and four states. Upon moving to Richmond, VA, I was asked incessantly, "What church do you go to?" These people absolutely judge by affiliation (mostly they just judge.) I have now lived in this state for ten years and much has improved, but much has not. I miss breaking down (nostalgia is what it is) on the Muni in the tunnel on a Friday rush hour packed train in which pierced leather guys were shortly joking with Brooks Bros. suit-types and no one thought anything about it. If you were witty and could turn a phrase, you belonged. Much acceptance. Much missed. I do not miss paying the taxes however!

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[mpaque]

"Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"?"

Idaho Falls, Idaho. They don't much hold with all that whacky stuff the liberals down in Pocatello do. Boy, do I wish I were kidding.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Rockoon]

here is the thing in a nutshell:

What he calls "forward thinking" is actually code for "big city liberalism", which isnt like regular liberalism. We are talking about the people that want to outlaw large sodas, outlaw salt in food, outlaw guns, outlaw lack of health insurance, and so on.. notice the common theme of "outlaw"

..then when his small town neighbors dont "accept" him, he rationalizes it as him being an atheist or whatever, rather than for him being the complete authoritarian prick that he really is.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

There are definitely a bunch of places in Utah like that. But that's a very unique state. Anywhere else, the only place you'd see stuff like that is in tiny villages in midwestern states, most likely.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

I partially grew up in Richmond, VA. I don't remember ever being asked that. What part of the city were you in? Somehow I doubt you'd ever be asked that kind of question in The Fan.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[RussellTheMuscle]

Definitely not in the Fan. I was in Midlo. Even though it was 300,000+, it had a rural mindset (no incorporated towns, few sidewalks and fewer streetlights.) Now I am in a small Blue Ridge town in which the question is not asked, but the answer is already known by far too many--with isolated disparaging remarks regarding our choice (Catholic.)

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors.

Utter and complete bullshit. I've lived on both coasts twice each in the last 20 years, and I've never had one single person ask me about religion.

Certain areas of the midwest and the bible belt in the deep South are the only two regions where this is true. The rest of the country really doesn't care what you believe in or worship.

Well, unless you're one of those atheists that insists on mentioning you believe in nothing all the time. Then you'll get treated just as badly as those fundamentalists that preach to everyone all the time. But that's easily avoided by not acting like you have snowflake syndrome or tourettes or something that makes it impossible for you to shut up and be civil and polite when the situation calls for it.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

/. has a well known bias against religion in any form. It can get pretty offensive, but I still like to read here anyway.

For some real amusement, try reading any articles or discussions here that claim the speed of light can be broken, or other "unscientific" theories. Then watch the armchair scientists march out and scream that it isn't possible because their book says so, and smile at the irony. :-D

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[tirefire]

What he calls "forward thinking" is actually code for "big city liberalism"...

+6 Correct.

One of my aunts recently told me that Michael Bloomberg is her hero. It broke my heart.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Rockoon]

One of my aunts recently told me that Michael Bloomberg is her hero.

Ouch.

More and more of my liberal co-workers are moving towards libertarianism (which isnt "right wing" like the liberals claim, more like "up wing") but a few are, like your aunt, instead embracing what they have been inaccurately accusing the republicans of all these years. Bloomberg is the greatest example of a billionaire meddling in politics, and he is a first class wholly unadulterated big city liberal.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, Midlothian's an odd place. I spent some years in Henrico county (not too far from Short Pump) when I was young, which is definitely more conservative, but I don't think that has anywhere near that rural mindset. Of course, I was fairly young at the time, and also maybe things have changed, but also interestingly, I was Catholic too at that time. But I don't think Midlothian is representative of the whole Richmond area.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

I never thought this place was as ridiculous as /r/atheism on Reddit; maybe I was wrong...

But I'm not so sure that even the people on /r/atheism would believe that silliness the OP wrote about 80% of America.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[coaxial]

As a born again college roommate of mine said on the phone with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, "That's like saying you're Catholic. That's as close to pagan as you can get and still call yourself a Christian."

I really wish I took a friend of mine's advice to put a statue of Mary on my monitor after that.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[deadweight]

BS - There is more to the USA than San Francisco and Amish areas.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[IndieVoter]

So, you are mad because the orchards of the 20s are gone. OK, so where will you go, at least in the US, that is the same as it was in the 1920? The only places that are the same are not places 99.9% of Americans would even consider living in. I have seen much of the US, and settled in Silicon Valley. I have lived in Mt View, and it is, overall, a nice place. Schools are good, traffic is manageable, and Castro Street is hopping every weekend. New HOA developments are nicely integrated into the community. Certainly look better that the old Miltons' Lumber Yard! The Valley is getting a very bad rap here. Suburbs are very similar anywhere in the US. Washington DC subs are a lot less exciting than the Peninsula ones are. Much less 'diversity' if that is the current watchword. Plus, the weather near Chicago, DC, Boston, or Atlanta is intolerable at least 3 months out of the year. The Valley has VERY few days near freezing or over 100F. Regarding SF. I have lived there also. A GREAT place to be IF you are young & rich, gay, old money, artistic, or can live on Raman noodles for the rest of your life. No one in their right mind would raise a family in SF, unless they were Asian and could handle living in the Outer Sunset. Outer Richmond and Sunset is FOG CITY much of the year, cold and dreary. Transportation sucks, parking sucks, streets suck. Marina is really fun for single people, but plan on at least an hour just to get out of SF. Two or more if you commune to The Valley. But, the Marina is wonderful if you do not need to leave often. Oakland? A couple of really nice neighborhood, such as Rock Ridge. BUT, you are never far from the crime. Lots of gang bangers from downtown and outer Berkeley. The numbers on crime is really depressing. And, don't count on the Police to protect you. They stated publicly they will not respond to many crimes, such as car breakins, petty theft, shoplifting, etc. We use to visit Rock Ridge regularly, but have been spooked away by all the roving teens and lack of Police presence. I was in the Rock Ridge area during the big Oakland Fire about 25 years ago. The only thing that prevented mass social disorder (eg looting) was the traffic. A lot of families left after that and were replaced with young professionals (sans children) and gays. May of them have left because of crime. Regarding innovation, forget most of the rest of the world. Innovators come to Silicon Valley. The other 'Valleys' are just PR stunts. Few will support startups, most are full of rich kids running around with MacBooks telling anyone who cares that they are doing a 'startup'. The Valley has the usual suburban issues, just at a much lower level then the rest of the US. Proof point? My son's public high school is only about 40% traditional 'white suburb' kids. Majority are children of immigrants, primarily Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Russian, with French, German, Swiss, and Brits thrown in. All here because of the innovation support system. Another benefit for families living in the Valley. Really no need to pay for private schools here, public schools are great. Privates are for rich Liberals who talk diversity, but pay for exclusivity.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Arker]

Yeah, Idaho Falls would be about the worst place you could possibly be. As you say, even just down the road in Pocatello you wouldnt find the same thing. There are actually VERY few places in the country to compare at all with that. The idea that everything outside of southern cali is just like Idaho Falls is... astonishing.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Small town folks like to keep their sodas, salt, guns, and lack of health insurance ONLY BECAUSE big city folks foot the bill for the social costs. Just about every big city has a huge net outflow of taxes funding social and government services in the suburbs and rural areas.

San Francisco and New York, in particular, are stellar examples of balanced budget management. For all of San Francisco's public services, it still manages to put away billions in its rainy day fund as required by city referendum, even though the median income is lower than most of the Bay Area.

It's not that big city residents want to be authoritarian, it's that unlike their small town cousins they actually have to pay their bills. These measures are fundamentally cost cutting measures. They want to ban guns because of the _cost_ of gun violence in terms of hospital bills and EMT and police man hours. If you pay attention to city politics, this is invariably the context in which such measures are proposed, but it's never how the media portrays them because it doesn't fit the narrative of liberals as spendthrifts.

Now, I don't personally agree with strict gun controls or banning big sodas. But I understand that cities have to actually face their problems, rather than rely on the state capital to cover their bills. Some of these ideas are ridiculous, but you never hear about the non-ridiculous measures.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting -- I'm an Oregonian who has lived in the Bay Area for the past 16 years (and 13 of that has been Mountain View).

Despite our generation and age difference, you and I have the same viewpoint and take on the situation.

And the weather here has nothing going for it, considering that all the buildings (barring those god-awful HOAs) were built in the 1940s (read: building construction and insulation is bizarre -- buildings that don't hold heat during the winter and won't cool off during the summer), backed by landlords who don't/won't install ACs. I still find it very strange how few apartments have AC here; for a region/state that, annually, has temperatures of 85F during the summer time to not have ACs is just bizarre.

For those unfamiliar with the city, the rent here for a 1BD/1BA (roughly 750sqft) is, on average, US$2200/month. Six years ago, that was $1500/month. Homes here tend to start at around the $1M mark (but end up selling for $700-800K), even if the home is old (i.e. I'm not exclusively talking about the aforementioned HOAs). Some folks I know who are native to this area insist its due to Google's presence, but I don't believe this -- I believe it's due to a much deeper-rooted problem:

Mountain View especially, but Silicon Valley in general is completely detached from reality and the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to anything financial (read: anything that involves money). There is a very strange thought process and mentality that happens here which is very hard to put into words. I guess if I had to try and summarise it (albeit badly), the belief seems to be that of "money grows on trees" and that material wealth is important -- all while damning that exact mentality/lifestyle. I saw a license plate the other day which might work as a better example: MTBPERU on a gold Lexus with all the options and in dire need of a wash.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny; in southern Nevada many years ago we had a large influx of people escaping east out of California. They were reckless drivers, their pedestrians thought they had right of way over God, much less any moving vehicle, They thought extremely highly of themselves, and considered themselves the cultured ones moving into a wasteland of tourism and service industry workers and were destined to show the poor benighted how things ought to be. Our schools got flooded, taxes soared to pay for more and more infrastructure and new schools trying to keep up (to be fair not all the pop growth was from the Cali crowd)

Now when I go back to visit southern Nevada and Las Vegas its hard to recognize the place. The significant majority of the changes not involving new hotel/casino development would not qualify as positive.

We called it "Californacation".

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Anonymous Coward]

A coworker here came from one of the most provincial and insular places in the country. He took a job across town from where he lived, and eventually moved to a flat nearby. Once his neighbors found out he was a political conservative leaning libertarian, owned a shotgun, did not care to be in a union, and didn't vote for (D), he was treated like dirt, his bike was vandalized, signs kept being stuck on his door for things he certainly would not support... and he had two windows broken out in the fall of 2008. He moved to the midwest (here) and has not had problems.

I don't know the specific location but his old stomping grounds were in New York City proper.

Religion comes in many forms, and has many enforcers.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

Where was this? It certainly wasn't NYC proper, since 1) you can't own a shotgun there, I'm fairly sure, and 2) people in NYC aren't in unions, unless they're tradespeople--Wall Street brokers and web developers certainly aren't in any unions, and 3) NYC has been electing Republican mayors for over a decade now. Anyway, NYC is nothing like the rest of NY state; it really should be its own state. From what I've heard, much of upstate NY is actually quite rural. Finally, I doubt many people in NYC know their neighbors.

Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here

[Grishnakh]

Except that he's not really liberal at all: he was a Republican from 2001-2007 (he's since switched to Independent). I know "Democrat" isn't synonymous with "liberal", but still, in America, anyone who claims to be a liberal is usually also a Democrat, and would never, ever, ever be part of the Republican party.

As for your coworkers moving towards libertarianism, which kind? It seems to me there's a few different flavors of it out there at the moment, and I suspect many people may be "moving" that way as a backlash against the actions of the Democrats (since many people still seem to think that's synonymous with "liberal") in the last few years. What some people seem to call "libertarianism" really seems to be more like "social libertarianism"; just look at Gary Johnson who ran for the Libertarian party in the past election: he was totally libertarian on social issues (gay marriage, drugs, etc.), but on economic issues he was really more like a traditional Democrat (which makes some sense since New Mexico has been Democrat-leaning for quite a while, has voted blue in the past several elections, and he was the governor of that state for a while): he was in favor of strong environmental protections, for instance, something no "true" big-L (Ayn-Rand-loving) Libertarian would favor. Since being a Democrat these days seems to mean being a slightly watered-down right-winger (pro-oil-wars, pro-war-on-drugs, anti-marijuana-legalization, pro-big-banks, pro-big-corporations, but pro-choice and sorta-pro-gay-marriage-maybe), I suspect many "liberals" are moving to "libertarianism" as a reaction to this.

A fairly narrow view point

[coolioisay]

So yes, there is a group of tech workers, frequently referred to as "hipsters" that want to live in the urban areas and do their hipster things. However, if you are a tech work with kids, which is actually the majority, you don't want to live in these crime-ridden, urine-scented, no-parking-available urban areas with bad school systems. The pattern I see is that one these hipsters get married and start popping out kids, they move to what people think of as the suburbs. But, they don't necessarily stop being tech workers. And I don't know why TFA says Mountain View isn't having a construction boom. I can count 2 new office buildings and 3 new housing complexes being constructed in its downtown area.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Trepidity]

All people who enjoy living in cities are hipsters? I guess like, 75% of Europeans are hipsters, because they prefer living in a nice part of London to some godforsaken suburb...

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

This matches my experiences as well. I work for one of the largest and most recognizable companies in Silicon Valley and the majority of people I know are moving OUT of San Francisco and closer to work. Some of them are sick of the city, some of them are raising families, etc., but SF has absolutely lost its allure to them.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

It's different in America. People tend to move to the suburbs to raise a family by the time they're in the '30s; some come back to the city after their kids go off to college.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

75% of Europeans are hipsters

Sounds about right to me and I am European!

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Intrepid imaginaut]

What? 370 odd million people prefer living in London? Save us from little englanders....

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Grishnakh]

That's because everything is different in Europe. By most accounts, cities there are actually nice, and it's the suburbs that aren't so great. The reverse is true here in America.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

Many European cities turn into ghost towns after "regular" (mandated) business hours. They are often crime ridden, overrun by tourists, dirty, and extremely expensive:

http://www.news.com.au/realestate/investing/pinnacle-list-worlds-priciest-property/story-fndbarft-1226594667286

Those prices are even more extreme considering the significantly lower disposable incomes of Europeans.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[stenvar]

The only people who can afford to live in a nice part of London are diplomats, bankers, ex-dictators, and oil billionaires.

US urbanization is around 82%, higher than the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[TeknoHog]

Damn straight! I lived in Europe before it was cool.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never met a "hipster" who had any kind of tech proficiency beyond using Instagram. What the heck kind of people are you actually thinking of?

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[benjfowler]

And the rest of London is still as expensive as hell, but full of grim run-down government housing full of the dumbest, most uncivilized motherfuckers on Earth.

ANYBODY with anything going for them leaves London at the first opportunity, and just commutes in. People who live here just accept that if they want to live like civilized humans, they have huge commutes.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[demonlapin]

Nearly everyone would prefer living in a nice part of London than a bad suburb, but there are crappy parts of London and really beautiful suburbs,

It's a lot like why I don't live in New York: if you are rich enough to make the unpleasant parts of living in NYC go away, then there's no better place on earth. But you have to be really, really rich to do that. Living in a small city (~300k metro) in a relatively undesirable part of the country means I have to get on a plane to see NYC, but it also means that I can afford to pay for those plane tickets as often as I'd like -- I have an 1800 sf house that cost under $200k, and I make almost twice what I would in NYC (not all jobs pay better in big cities).

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[coolioisay]

I've never met a "hipster" who had any kind of tech proficiency beyond using Instagram. What the heck kind of people are you actually thinking of?

Good point! I do use the terms "millennial" and "hipster" interchangeably. My bad.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Darinbob]

Actually some of that new building I think is misguided. New buildings being put up right next door to offices that are unoccupied. The new tech companies want to have new buildings to feel important and not some building that used to be leased to someone else.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Darinbob]

Cities are nicer in Europe (except London). They have better infrastructures that you don't find anywhere in the US except maybe Manhattan. The European cities are often not as crowded as US cities, and in a lot of ways feel more like "suburbs" here. And who can afford London? It's becoming more of a commuter destination more than a residential city. Workers I've known in Europe very often live outside of the core city anyway and commute in (or commute to businesses that are also outside the city more and more now). The real problem with US cities is that you don't have tiny villages nearby surrounded by farmland that you can live in while still catching the train to the city for your job.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

I have live in a number of west European countries now, for the last 8 years. I must tell you that you are talking out your ass. The population density is higher in most of these countries than you can probably imagine, in fact you sound like a typical New Yorker......but I mean no insult with that :)

Around most of these places, it is well understood that "america" (the USA) is still massive, quite empty, but nonetheless quite urbanized in pockets.....

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it is actually slowly changing in some gentrifying city centers, and if more people got their heads out of their asses and realized that it might start changing even faster.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Kohath]

News Flash: The US and Europe have different cultures.

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry that you had a bad experience in London - but you're obviously talking shit. Anyone who actually lives in London (or has spent significant time there) knows that there are plenty of nice areas to choose from. And while Londoners generally can be a bit brusque at times, for the most part they maintain their civility and decorum.

That is, unless you're acting like a cunt - then all bets are off. So next time, don't be a cunt. ;-)

Re:A fairly narrow view point

[benhattman]

The suburbs in America aren't actually nice. Next time you fly somewhere, look out the porthole during takeoff and approach. For the first 10 minutes, you'll mostly be flying over the suburbs. Give them a good look. Tell me they look nice.

Most (all?) the US suburbs I've spent time in are just sprawl after sprawl. The reason people prefer suburbs with kids is because everyone is so paranoid that their child will be kidnapped or kill themselves if left to their own devices, that people like to build fenced in play areas for their children to inhabit. That, and many of the city schools aren't as good because the people who care most about good schools think city schools are bad. So, the people who would improve the schools in the city move to the suburbs to improve those schools and the people who are left don't care as strongly.

Meanwhile, suburbs are bad for your health. People who live in cities walk much more. People in suburbs don't. People in suburbs spend much more time in traffic (trying to get to their job in the city).

And, probably most importantly, in America, a suburban house is seen as a status symbol. I've never lived in Europe, but it seems to me that massive homes are not seen as being such a primary objective to life there as they are in the states.

Try Austin

[HungryGhostTalks]

Austin is super cool and fun and way cheaper than SF or Oakland. Austin sort of has a unique mix of SF - Berkeley - Boston - Washington DC in one.

Re:Try Austin

[TheGratefulNet]

I've heard good things about austin.

problem is, its still inside texas.

I would not be caught dead in texas. sorry. but texas is too ful of Teh Crazy. and once you wander out of austin, you are now in crazy land.

Re:Try Austin

[mishehu]

I live in Austin and work in LA. Take your pick of poison... "Teh Crazy" as you put it, or "The People's Republic of California", if you will. I find Cali to be no less crazy than TX. It's just a question of how that crazy is expressed, kind of like your genes.

Re:Try Austin

[ganjadude]

That is actually where I will be moving in the next few months. Any areas you could recommend to move to or stay out of? My job will be near the IBM plant. and Ive been looking at places in brushy creek.

Re:Try Austin

[ganjadude]

I disagree, to me SF would be crazy land

Re:Try Austin

[Hartree]

Don't worry. It evens out. They may not want you there either. ;)

I've lived in a fair number of places including Texas. In all of them, most of the people are fine. They may be different than you in some ways, but that's what diversity is all about.

And, everywhere I've lived has had at least a sprinkling of assholes. It's not a function of the place so much as a function of there being humans in it.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's absolutely true. Austin is surrounded by crazy people. You might get shot just for looking at someone the wrong way, or just for breathing. There are roving lynch mobs. Not to mention the weekly cattle drives -- regularly people are mowed (or moo'd) down by stampedes.

So please, for the sake of all you hold dear, don't come to Austin. I'll... er, I mean, You'll regret it. Oh, and ignore all those scurrilous rumors about Austin being full; it's completely true, er I mean, totally false.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would stay away from Austin, that would be good. Thanks.

Re:Try Austin

[hwstar]

I agree. California is much better:

1. No noncompete contracts written on flypaper.
2. Temperature and and humidity are lower in the summer.
3. Sane limitations on invention agreements
4. More people beleve in evolution instead of creationism.
5. California has initiative and referendum. Texas doesn't.
6. Even though Texas has no personal income tax, property taxes are twice as high as California's.

Re:Try Austin

[fliptout]

This kind of post proves that provincial people exist everywhere.

Re:Try Austin

[plopez]

Austin is a part of CA. As is Santa Fe, Boulder, Jackson, Laramie, Aspen, Bozeman, Sun Valley, and Steamboat. All Californicated or soon to be.

Re:Try Austin

[ebno-10db]

We on the East Coast know that every place west of the Mississippi is nuts. Of course that's also true of places east of the Mississippi, but that's another story.

Re: Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I hear Ft. Worth is the only suburb of Austin worth moving to.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not be caught dead in texas. sorry. but texas is too ful of Teh Crazy. and once you wander out of austin

You mean bigoted people? Like yourself?

Re:Try Austin

[ebno-10db]

Not to mention the weekly cattle drives -- regularly people are mowed (or moo'd) down by stampedes.

I heard the real problem is getting drowned by a gusher, or is that another part of Texas?

Re:Try Austin

[TheCaptain]

Austin has it's good points, it's gained it's share of problems in recent years. Full disclosure - I've lived in Austin for over 5 years, many of my friends have been here for 10+. I'm looking to make a move back to one of the coasts in the next year or so.

1.) There is the climate. As I type this, it's 106F (40C) right now. It could be worse. It hit ~114F last summer. There's an awful lot of blacktop and concrete out there that's just baking in it. Walking around outside and breathing feels a bit like I'm inhaling from the business end of a hairdryer. I looked at the temperature around midnight last night and it was 90F. The hot season here makes going outside almost useless unless you REALLY like to sweat and/or gain skin cancer. Granted, the winters are mild and generally pretty pleasant. It's rare to see more than a dusting of snow, and that's gone within hours. Also...we're in a drought. The growth here is outstripping the water supply. The lake getting so low that you can't even see water from some of the boat ramps.

2.) It's mostly super cool in that most people say it's super cool. They have great marketing...I've give them that. Most of the originality here is gone...now it's just trendy. Thankfully I was still here in the days of Leslie. (A well known local homeless cross-dresser that ran for mayor once, among other things.) "Keep Austin Weird" used to have meaning. Now...most of the original old businesses are fading away. All they do is build more condos and gated communities. Seriously...the architecture isn't even aesthetically pleasing. (A bit subjective, I know...but I think most would agree.)

3.) Speaking of condos and gated communities - this is "business friendly" Texas, so the developers are running almost unchecked. They want to squeeze every cent they can out of everything they can get their hands on, and they generally do. Developers here seem to be able to throw up any size development they want, and they aren't asked to do very much with respect to infrastructure improvements to keep up with the growth. Want to pack more cars onto an already overtaxed highway? No problem...build baby build. When it comes time to address the roads, the tax payers will get the bill, rather than the even-more-wealthy developer.

4.) Culture. Austin is not really a mix of SF - Berkley, Boston, or DC. I really have no idea where that idea is coming from. I've been to all of those places and spent a fair bit of time in one of them. (DC)

5.) Traffic. Austin has been rated as the third worst area for traffic in the U.S. recently. Right behind LA and DC. Some people don't believe it, other people are screaming it from the hills. It depends on where in Austin you are, and where you're trying to go. Try driving around on 360 during rush hour. It's gridlock...and in summer, it's extremely HOT gridlock. Hope there isn't an accident, because it'll only get worse. If you drive a small economical car, bear in mind that this is still Texas. Probably 50% of the vehicles on the road here are gigantic pickup trucks, or yuppie luxo-barges.

6.) You're still in Texas. Did you follow the news lately? Wendy Davis barely filibustered in insanely tight abortion law that is about to be passed anyways. From what I've read, they're going to be down to about 5 abortion clinics in the state of TX. (Seriously...the state of TX is huge. It takes 12 hours to drive across it.) Glenn Beck just moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and he's been telling others like him to come here. The Republicans are calling the shots. It's a low-tax, low-service state. If you move here...you're ultimately going to get what you paid for. There are no free lunches. Ironically (for most Slashdotters)...if you're moving here and cite the financial reasons, you're proving the Republicans correct in many ways. Good luck with that.

Anyways...I've had a decent time here, but it's getting to be time for me to move on. The BBQ is great, and you can rent a machine gun at the range and go to town with it.

Re:Try Austin

[drinkypoo]

You need to live latitudinally close to work. Driving North-South through Austin has become nigh impossible. It was pretty awful ten years ago and by all accounts (I'm still in touch with a bunch of friends there) it's dramatically awfuller now.

When I moved out there I moved out of a $500/mo room in Santa Cruz. I moved into literally the apartment complex closest to work, a brick number next to the bank at the edge of the Arboretum, in the building nearest the bank no less — five minutes' walk from where Tivoli's offices were then located. In between lay many places to make you fat, places where fat people couldn't buy clothes, a movie theater, and a sharper image... I paid $600/mo for 600 sq.ft including a washer-dryer stack in a closet. But you'll want to be another exit North of there if you'll be near IBM, IIRC.

Re:Try Austin

[drinkypoo]

No really, once you leave Austin, you really are in crazy land. Austin is like someone took a piece of California (from Northern California, given the weather) and plunked it down in the middle of Texas, pointed at it, and say "nyah nyah! that's your capitol now!" Because everywhere else is so hostile to people who are different, most of those people have converged on Austin for protection. Even other college towns (like College Station) are good places to get beaten up for wearing funny clothes, or what have you.

Don't get me wrong, SF is also crazy land. But that doesn't make Texas any more sane. All you can really do is choose your type of insanity, and what kind of bad weather you'll have. Will it be cold and foggy 90% of the year, or will it be either blazing or sleeting 90% of the year?

Re:Try Austin

[ganjadude]

Thanks for the insight. I will keep that in mind

Re:Try Austin

[Ryanrule]

Lol texas

Re:Try Austin

[hendrikboom]

I've heard that Austin's motto is "Help Keep Austin Weird!" I don't know whether that was a joke or for real? I'd like to hear from someone who knows.

-- hendrik

Re:Try Austin

[mrchaotica]

I live in Atlanta, and based on your description it sounds like Atlanta is similar but better in every way:

1) Atlanta has hot, humid summers but they're not that hot. (Today's high was in the high-80s; I spent most of the day riding my bike.)

2) Certain neighborhoods in Atlanta, including the one I live in, actually do have the "keep ___ weird" vibe that Austin is reputed to have.

3) Developers run amok in the suburbs/exurbs here too, but there are nice (and reasonably affordable) places to live where they have less influence.

4) Regarding culture, I don't really have any experience of other cities to compare, but people say Southerners tend to be nice...

5) Atlanta's traffic used to be rated as bad as LA, but has been getting better recently.

6) Georgia apparently better government services than most of the rest of the South.

7) Barbecue: being in the middle of the South, Georgia has Texas and Carolina-style barbecue!

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want you in Texas anyways. Hell, we don't want bigoted assholes like you everywhere.

Re:Try Austin

[juancnuno]

But it's in Texas.

Re: Try Austin

[ganjadude]

I am pretty sure FT worth is closer to dallas than austin but im not 100%

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Austin is super cool

Of course I don't need to ask given that the website you posted on makes the odds extremely small but I'll ask anyway: Did you go outside today?
It was FREAKING HOT!!!. I left for my Saturday bike ride at 6:30 this morning and was home before noon (Coupland via Cele with a return through New Sweden) and it was 97F by the time I got home. No, I didn't go back out to do yard work as it was over 100F by the time I had lunch. Cool my A$$....

Re:Try Austin

[Darinbob]

It's damn hot too. And too much like Berkeley.

Re:Try Austin

[turkeydance]

Vinegar beats all. BBQ is a NOUN. bless your heart.

Re:Try Austin

[jaundicebaby]

I actually live in the Brushy Creek MUD and we love it here. Let me know if you have any questions, email on my profile.

Re:Try Austin

[Pulzar]

There is the climate. As I type this, it's 106F (40C) right now. It could be worse

Yeah, summers are rough. But, from about October last year until three weeks ago, it was nothing short of amazing. You're not going to beat California weather anywhere, but Ausitn weather is still way ahead of most of the country, especially in winter.

To me, the weather is much more of a plus than a problem.

When it comes time to address the roads, the tax payers will get the bill, rather than the even-more-wealthy developer.

Considering that we don't get any new roads, ever, it's not really a problem, either ;).

Re:Try Austin

[Kohath]

Yes, indeed. Texas is for people who aren't bigoted against Texans.

Re:Try Austin

[evilviper]

1). I love the desert. Skinny people handle the heat just fine, and the constant fluid intake displaces most solid food, so there's a lot of motivation to lose weight. Ladies walk around in tank tops, spaghetti straps, swimsuits, or even less. People that haven't lived in it long don't know how to dress, but humans evolved as one of the most heat-tolerant warm blooded animals around. You'll still feel like walking some more, long after your dog is ready to pass out. Just take plenty of water along with you... And there's no reason to get sun burned. Walking upright, only your nose/ears/shoulders are exposed, so wear a hat and you won't even tan, unless you lay down by the pool, or similar. Shade like trees or awnings makes like infintely more comfortable.

6) Texas Republicans are losing out to demographics. They've done a 180 on immigration because they'll disappear over the next decade if they don't expand their base somehow, and it hasn't worked yet. Whatever their reasons for moving down there, as long as newcomers vote against the republicans, it's a positive, and will speed the conversion from red to blue state.

Re:Try Austin

[Megane]

You should probably not live in the area bounded by 183, Parmer, Cameron/Dessau, and a few blocks east of Metric. I-35/Rundberg is the epicenter, APD has even set up street cams there because of drugs and prostitution at night. Brushy Creek is well out into the suburbs, so no problems there. (FYI, that big undeveloped area with the cement quarry in the middle is the Robertson Ranch. The current heirs just don't need the money/taxes from selling it off all at once.)

Re:Try Austin

[TheCaptain]

Yeah...those are the nicer months of the year. October and November tend to be almost perfect. I can't argue with that....it's pretty frigging awesome. I do think some of the things going on here can even make that a little harder to enjoy though...I'll explain below:

I live in North Austin. (And I mean North Austin, not Round Rock or Pflugerville, etc.) I'd love to live downtown...I could actually afford to live downtown. I could even swing buying a decent condo down there even at the elevated prices we're currently seeing. I'm not an overly wealthy guy, but I've been in this business for about 15 years now and I've saved my pennies. (Never bought a home and I live within my means, etc.)

I'm somewhat deterred from the idea for one or two big reasons, and they come from actual examples in my life. One of my coworkers owns a beautiful (and not cheap!) condo downtown...very close to Zilker. (For those of you who aren't from around here, that's the big park where Austin City Limits goes on.) ACL is a HUGE music festival. You'd think that living there is awesome, and at first, it is...and it would be. But then reality hits. They pretty much close Zilker for a week before the festival to get it ready, and it's obviously in use for quite a few days during the festival itself, and then for at least a week afterwards to fix everything after hordes of people have milled through it for days. They hold ACL in that ideal window of time...October. (And this year, ACL is being expanded to two weekends because one just isn't enough...) So to make a long story short, the huge beautiful park that is right next to his condo is completely unusable for at least 3-4 weeks of the most ideal weather of the year. (And that's not counting anything else they might have there, etc.) It's probably available right now though...it peaked at 108F today. That's...great...

And then there is the extreme uptick in traffic that he gets to deal with every time they hold another major event (ACL, SXSW, etc.). And Austin isn't exactly big on public transportation...it's kinda busted.

I literally don't know where to begin when describing the problems I'm seeing with the whole thing. Austin has it's charms sometimes, but they're becoming fewer and further between for me. I'm happy for the people who are happy here, but I'm looking to move back to one of the coasts next year. Austin is fun to visit, and apparently a decent place for families, but living here isn't doing it for me.

Re:Try Austin

[ganjadude]

yes I looked at the crime reports for the area and it looked like all the crime was in a triangle formation and most of the surrounding area seems fine. With the job I will be getting I should be good to spend up to 1000 a month for a 1 bedroom and i already drive 45 min each way to and from work so the suburbs make more sense.

Re:Try Austin

[TheCaptain]

Yeah...before I moved here, Atlanta was on my short list of places that might be nice to try. It's closer to family for me, but still has milder winters.

Interesting thing about the culture down South. There is some truth to the whole Southern hospitality thing...and I would miss that. It's not all bad in the North though either...they're just a little more up front with their feelings, and sometimes initially stand off-ish.

The whole "Keep Austin Weird" thing has a pretty sad story, to be honest. The very saying of it was originally meant as an anti-corporate support the local business thing, and a push for people to be themselves and be independent. And then it got trademarked, and commercialized. It's pretty much all a bunch of fakery for people who haven't spent enough time here to see through it. More of Austin's fantastic marketing.

Speaking of Austin's marketing...there was a funny story recently about them trying to bring the X-games here. The sad part was that a Nashville based consulting firm was running their campaign for them.

My favorite line is on their right now. It says "Show detroit who has soul by voting here". Seriously...Austin. You want to compete with Detroit and you go with a soul showdown? It sounds like something that someone would say if they never spent much time outside of their bubble.

Like I said...Austin has the best marketing department of any city I know right now. I'm not here to stop anyone from falling in love with the place and moving here...but check it out carefully first. It might take a little while before the honeymoon phase wears off. It sure has for me and quite a few other people I know. (But yeah...some people really love it here. YMMV.)

Re:Try Austin

[TheCaptain]

As for the climate, if you can enjoy the heat here...good on you. I don't know if I really consider it to be a desert though. It has a bit more humidity, but granted - not alot. I think it retains more heat than deserts at night too, but that might depend on which desert we're talking about. Either way....you're speaking the truth on dealing with heat and sun.

Haha...and yeah...there are two sides to the ladies in skimpy clothes. Some you want to see, and some you're better off not seeing. Obesity rates in Austin proper are low...but it's surrounded by Texas. You're taking a lot of bad with that good. :)

As for politics...I know TX is changing politically. I'm probably stating the obvious when I say it's going to take a long time for it to really change though. I'm all for people moving here if they're willing to keep fighting that fight, but between the heat and the politics I'm kinda tired. I need to go recharge my batteries at somewhere that feels more like home to me. Again...if this works for you, more power to you!

Re:Try Austin

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

What in the blue f**k are you going on about? I've never experienced this in Dallas.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but it is only Urban Liberals, with NYCers being the worst, who actually believe that they are not provincial.

I remember moving to Berkeley many years ago and going to interview after interview trying to find housing. Whenever I mentioned to the interviewer that I had gone to college in TX, I could hear the click of a relay in their head, their eyes would become unfocussed, they would say something akin to 'I'm can't tolerate people from TX. Texans are so intolerant.' and then they would give me the bum's rush out the door.

Eventually, I learned to tell them that I grew up in Michigan, which helped, but it wasn't until I figured out that you had to pay people an under the table "finder's fee" if you want to easily find a place to rent in Berkelely.

Re:Try Austin

[deadweight]

Austin and San Antonio are like little islands of a cool coastal hip city somehow defying the "Texas" that surrounds them.

Re:Try Austin

[mrchaotica]

My favorite is northern-Alabama "white barbecue sauce" (think vinegar sauce + mayonnaise), but vinegar-based sauce is a close runner up.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just another bigot, like so many that post about Texas.

Re:Try Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in the Brushy Creek area for 17 years - Nice place. Try to pick a location that you do not have to use the toll roads. That is legalized robbery.

Re:Try Austin

[IndieVoter]

Austin is nice. But, the weather is awful much of the year. And, you are landlocked. But, Texas has a LOT of advantage for young families. A reasonable alternative to Silicon Valley. I, however, am staying in the Valley.

Re:Try Austin

[IndieVoter]

small minded East Coast Lib, no doubt. Probably believes that Obama is competent....

How about spreading it out past the Bay?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a whole country out there filled with smart, creative and industrious people that would rather avoid the Bay Area/Seattle/NYC/Boston areas altogether.

Re:How about spreading it out past the Bay?

[Hognoxious]

s/country/planet/

Some people like SF

[eviljav]

Some people like San Francisco.

Others find it to be a crowded dirty place that smells like urine.

Nobody wants to live in Oakland.

Re:Some people like SF

[CAIMLAS]

Oakland, at least, doesn't smell like shit and urine 3/4ths of the year. It's also not frigidly wet for an overlapping 1/2 the year. And it's a lot cheaper. You can get from Oakland to SF in as much time as you can get anywhere with SF. So what does living in SF have over Oakland?

I'm seeing exactly the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Sunnyvale. I work in Santa Clara. I used to live in Manhattan.

I had a blast living in NYC, and I still love going there, but with a family and kids, I don't see myself going back to a big city anytime soon.

Yes, cost of living is the Bay Area is somewhat insane, but so are the salaries, so we don't really notice it. The weather is fantastic. The mountains are all around you, as are the park for hiking and mountain biking etc.

There's construction all over the place (though that may be just anecdotal.)

I don't know anyone who want to move to San Francisco, much less Oakland. (Oakland? Is this a joke?)

This whole article seems to come from a different reality.

Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley?

[HockeyPuck]

It's too f-ing expensive.

Almost requires an IPO or your startup to be bought to buy a home in a decent location around here. I guess that's the benefit of telecommuting. You can live way down in Gilroy and VPN into your company located in Palo Alto without having to drive for 2 hours.

"Starter homes" around here which I'd say is a 1500sq ft with almost no land 10ft from your side walls to your neighbors' and your house is 20ft from the back property line), costs $500k and up. Want to live in a district with good schools? Take that same 40 year old house and crank up the price to a cool million. Oh and you'll need to put in about $50-75k worth of upgrades to replace that cracking wood shingle roof, worn out carpets and pipes that have been moving hard water for 40 years. That's ok for the seller because they know someone will move in to put their kids into the top schools around here. Oh don't forget the $15k worth of property taxes each year and potentially $400/month in HOA fees.

Housing prices are now higher than during the bubble, dot-com or housing bubble. It didn't help that all the sellers sat on their homes in the hopes that some Facebook millionaire would want to buy their house.

I live in the silicon valley and can't wait for the day to sell my home and move to another part of the country and pay for a 3k sq ft home for $500k with an acre of land on a lake.

Silicon Valley, like NYC but spread out and requires a car.

Just driven by hiring costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the companies in SF are getting a huge portion of their staff coming in by train via BART and caltrans, or are even running their own shuttles. The same happens in reverse going down further south. Companies like Facebook have shuttles going south.

What matters is total cost of talent, as that's these firms largest expense. No location in the bay area is perfect in that regard. SF was better for a while because there were fewer attractive companies drawing local talent, but that trend ended some time ago. The big firms are building multiple offices and shuttling people around as that allows them to draw from the largest area, and thus get people more cheaply.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

No really, everything changes.. why is it so important that 'silicon valley' remain intact?

Now you're getting somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of living is insane out there. There are great engineers all over the world.

What is going to kill Silicon Valley is their pathological need to have the "best and brightest", the "stars", and the "super geniuses" - all to make yet another social networking website or app or yet another push advertising app.

When I see a tech entrepreneur whine and complain how she can't get enough qualified people - like JavaScript engineers - and claims that there are only 25 people in the World who can what she needs to be done in JavaScript, they're headed for a downfall.

Silicon Valley lost its creativity and innovation. Many of the creative folks have gone back home - like back to India and left the Steve Jobs wannabees.

Re:Now you're getting somewhere

[plopez]

You're right, the wannbees will kill it. And the management leechs that live off of them.

Re:Now you're getting somewhere

[Grishnakh]

I'm in the NYC area, and I see a lot of the same thing: a bunch of hoopla about the "Silicon Alley", a bunch of events for people to "network" at, and a lot of talk about VC funding for "great ideas", which are all just Yet Another Social Networking website or app or the like.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet has decentralized all of culture. There is no way in hell I could have stood living out here in rural central Indiana 20 years ago. Now nerds can live about anywhere and still tap into freaky, weird and highly technical things.

  I sold a small townhouse in one of the tech hub cities 10 years ago and for the same money bought a 19th century country house on 5 acres of land, outside a small town that has a high quality private college. Things are slower and quieter, but nobody is isolated anywhere now that the net reaches anywhere. If I want the latest parts, Digi-Key and Element 14 deliver here as fast as anywhere else.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[Grishnakh]

Mostly agreed, except for the bit about Digi-Key and Element 14. I order all my stuff from Mouser, Avnet, Arrow, and onlinecomponents.com. Digi-Key has a great selection, but their prices are the highest in the industry. And Element 14 seems to have prices even higher than Mouser, so I'm not sure what the attraction there is. For finding parts, the most useful site I've found is findchips.com: it'll show you what the prices and stock levels are for any part from dozens of distributors at once.

However, one big problem with living in places like that is that you're not near a lot of city services and amenities. A big, big one is restaurants: small towns don't have them; they'll have a handful of crappy places and that's it. (College towns are a little better, but not that much since students are cheap, but they're a lot better than your typical hick town where there's absolutely nothing except fast-food.) While obviously urban areas aren't exactly chock-full of the highest-quality fare, due to their sheer size there's surely something within a short drive that you'll like and that isn't going to give you food poisoning, and the larger and more expensive the area, the more really high-quality restaurants you'll find. Unless you or your spouse is an amateur chef (and doesn't mind cooking all the time, without a break), it really sucks having only 1 or 2 restaurants you can go to, or worse none at all.

Of course, the other thing you miss out on is shopping; it's hard to pick out clothes that'll fit well on a website (though it's probably easier for men than women, but last time I went shopping for jeans I found that I had to have different sizes for different styles of cut, and that's just for pairs of pants all from the same brand!), and you generally get better sales and discounts when you go to stores in-person. However (esp. if you're a typical guy), you probably don't go clothes shopping that often so as long as you're a couple hours away from a decent-sized city that probably isn't that much of a problem; you can just take a trip every 2-3 months and satisfy all your in-person shopping needs and get everything else on the internet.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[demonlapin]

But it doesn't have to be a really big city - any metro bigger than about 100k will have two or three very good restaurants, and by the time you hit half a million you'll have at least ten to choose from, plus numerous local spots that produce a solid meal.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[grantspassalan]

Anyone that can cook or has a spouse that can, shouldn't need to go to a fancy restaurant all that often. I know that I prefer the home-cooked healthful meals my wife makes above any restaurants I have ever been in. Cooking at home is the only way to know for sure that you are eating healthful foods that have not been concocted in some chemistry lab. Avoiding things prepared with high fructose corn syrup and damaged fats is difficult, because most restaurants don't publish the ingredients list of their foods.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[Grishnakh]

Anyone that can cook or has a spouse that can, shouldn't need to go to a fancy restaurant all that often.

I'm not talking about fancy (high-end, expensive) restaurants actually, I'm just talking about good restaurants, ones that make quality food for reasonable prices. They're hard to find these days, and you'll almost never find a chain that serves quality food. Your best bet is family-owned non-chain restaurants (which are still hit-and-miss, but that's better than a 90+% failure rate like you'll get with the corporate chains). You're not going to find many of those in smaller towns; they've all gone under because people are cheap and go to fast food places.

Avoiding things prepared with high fructose corn syrup and damaged fats is difficult, because most restaurants don't publish the ingredients list of their foods.

Exactly, but you're not too likely to find that in a non-chain restaurant I think.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[volmtech]

People in small towns aren't cheap, they're poor.

Re: Now you're getting somewhere

[cwsumner]

Small towns have good restaurants, it's just that everyone knows where they are except you! They don't bother with big signs because everyone grew up there and knows where everything is.
But small towns don't have as many good places as a big city. On the other hand, everyone has guns and you can walk down a dark street without getting robbed. Some places they don't even bother to lock their car doors!

SF not that great

[Animats]

San Francisco is not as "fun" as it used to be. Higher rents drove the artists out a decade ago. SF has about 8,000 homeless people, out of a population of only 750,000. Most of the bookstores have closed. The nightclub scene is slowly being crushed by gentrification.

The financial district is struggling to stay relevant. The big SF banks either tanked or merged with banks elsewhere.

Re:SF not that great

[drinkypoo]

The nightclub scene is slowly being crushed by gentrification.

Are there actually any big clubs left in SF? I mean warehouse big, not like big for a coffeeshop or something.

Re:SF not that great

[Animats]

Are there actually any big clubs left in SF? I mean warehouse big, not like big for a coffeeshop or something.

Movie-theater-big like Ruby Skye, yes. Warehouse-big like King St. Garage (closed 2002), no. All the vacant warehouses in SOMA were converted into dot-coms or torn down for new buildings. Oakland has some warehouse-sized nightclubs, but those have too many shootings.

Re:SF not that great

[Anonymous Coward]

Bookstores across Europe and the UK have closed - Either you can download the book for free, or you just purchase online from Amazon. The bookstores that are still open just specialize in "Crime" and "Tourist maps".

Re:SF not that great

[Anonymous Coward]

San Francisco is dead. Long live San Francisco.

The financial district struggling to stay relevant? Then why has the cost of office space continued to increase apace?

_Everywhere_ is booming, both in Silicon Valley, around Silicon Valley, and elsewhere around the country.

But there's one thing that can't be denied about Silicon Valley... it's wwaayyyyy easier to find a good job there. All of you people who feel over-secure in your current jobs elsewhere in the country... just wait until your company goes under, gets bought, or you get canned. It'll be 3x harder finding a new job, and there's a good chance you'll be forced to move. I've known people who moved away and then decided to move back Silicon Valley just because job prospects are better. It's still common to hop jobs every two years here just to spice up your resume. Try that in the Research Triangle or New York City and see how many months you're not drawing a paycheck.

The prices are high in Silicon Valley and San Francisco for a reason. For those who can get a comfortable corporate job where they're safe for 20+ years, good for you. For anyone else in IT, if you want to mitigate your risk of unemployment to the maximum extent while, simultaneously, minimizing your risk of boring work, it doesn't get any better than Silicon Valley. Period.

People commute all the time

[gspec]

From SF to Silicon Valley and vice versa. Also from Alameda County where houses are a little bit cheaper (looking for a place with many new developments? Come to Dublin right now). The only real problem of the Bay Area (not only Silicon Valley) is the housing price. If you are in high-tech/computer related industries there so many jobs and opportunities, that is why people are here. You want to be where the jobs are, even when most of your income spent on housing. At least if the housing market keeps up with the inflation rate, you are not losing money.

I (heart) SV

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can make it in Silicon Valley, you can make it anywhere!

cue the music....

It already ended

[citizenr]

Ever been to Shenzhen?

Re:It already ended

[plopez]

As long as you don't mind getting lung cancer, lead poising, or oppressed by a brutal Communist regime; China is a GREAT place.

Re:It already ended

[ebno-10db]

Nah, the Chinese food sucks.

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much applies to all larger international cities these days. They have become no-go zones for young, professional families with children. I turned down a job offer for an engineering management position in Munich and took a lower-paying job in a smaller city where home ownership is much more affordable. Having four children was probably the biggest factor in my decision, as it's next to impossible to rent an apartment in Germany if you have children, especially four.

Some of us prefer having a house and a yard

[Anonymous Coward]

I love living in San Jose. On the rare occation I want to do something in a big city, I can drive or take a 1 hour train ride to san franciso. I'm not sure why anyone would want to live in Oakland...

I'm not sure why another posted was complaining about restaurants in SJ, or the South Bay in general. There are both great little hole in the wall places, and some good proper restaunts too. I definitely can find better Pho in east San Jose than I can find anywhere in SF (I've looked). South Bay restaurants have the additional advantage that none (to my experience) are pretenious, and unfortunately I wish I could say the same about my experiences with SF restaurants.

I think living in "the City" is for younger people. The rent is only a bit more than the south bay, and the commute is do able. Plus there are plenty of good jobs in SF, and more being added all the time. (although not in my industry, all the silicon is still in Silicon Valley, even if the software and web media is moving up the pennisula)

Re:Some of us prefer having a house and a yard

[ebno-10db]

I'm not sure why another posted was complaining about restaurants in SJ, or the South Bay in general.

My experience as a frequent visitor is that while there are definitely good places, there are also a surprising number of mediocre to poor ones. If you live there, or ask a local with decent tastes, you'll do well. If you walk into a random place because you have no other information, your odds of hitting something decent are much less than other areas I visit. I have no idea why.

Re:Some of us prefer having a house and a yard

[mellon]

Yelp is your friend. I've had very good luck with it in Silicon Valley.

Re:Some of us prefer having a house and a yard

[sydneyfong]

1 hour train ride? Maybe, if you plan it beforehand and take the bullet Caltrain at a specific time of the day.

And that doesn't count the fact that to get to anywhere interesting from King & 4th you'd spend another half hour on public transport (or walking).

Driving is a bit better (1 hour is doable) if you can find somewhere to park in SF, and of course avoid the hours where the city is full of traffic...

I consider it lucky to be able to get from SJ to SF under 1.5 hours with public transport, and just assuming it will take 2 hours will make things less frustrating most of the time...

Re:Some of us prefer having a house and a yard

[TechyImmigrant]

That was me complaining about the restaurants.

I only visit for business (I live in Oregon so day trips are easy) and the place seems beset with chain restaurants and non chain restaurants that want to be chain restaurants. I don't deny that there might be good restaurants, but they seem inaccessible in the eating times available to me. With better knowlege or research I might be able to find better places, but I've got other things to be getting on with. SF, Portland, Seattle, San Diego and other west coast cities are not like that. I can't comment on LA because I never have a reason to go there.

Not all the gays are in SF

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the lesbians are living in the South Bay and East Bay. It's painful for them down here though, because the commute to the Giants or A's stadiums is so long.

California people...

[YrWrstNtmr]

People in California seem to think that everyone else has this burning desire to live in California.
We don't.

Re:California people...

[foniksonik]

You can't beat coastal CA weather. NoCal is pretty good. SoCal is even better, 55-95 F temp range. 10 months a year it's 65-85 F. You live outside all year. Beaches are 5-25 min away. Mountains are 25-60 min away. I lived in a house with NO air conditioning. Just a ceiling fan and getting out to a movie or the pool in the afternoon during August. Coastal breezes cool it off after 5pm (rather than the heat rising until the sun goes down).

It's a different way to live and if you've never experienced it before it can seem like no big deal. It is though. Not being stuck inside for half the year from heat or cold makes a huge difference.

Re:California people...

[router]

Its really because we can't live anywhere else. I tried, failed. If you're from here, the rest of the country has seasons/bugs/religion/closedmindedness. If you grew up without those things, its really hard to live somewhere they are endemic. Look, if you grew up in the frozen wasteland, the weather _anywhere_ is great. If you're used to thunderstorms, you can handle hurricanes. Humidity is the same everywhere, and if you grew up with it, its no big deal. "Worshiped on Sunday, forgotten all week?" You know the system, you can adapt to the new god(s).

If you were cursed to grow up without this stuff, you are forced to stay in the only place in the country without them. If all the people not so cursed could find it in their hearts to take pity on us, and stay away, we could live out our pitiful existence without the astronomical cost of housing you all bring with you. It would really be helping us out.

andy

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

"People in California seem to think that everyone else has this burning desire to live in California. We don't."

Awesome. Please stay out.

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not we think everybody wants to live here, its the non-stop immigration from the interior that makes people think everybody wants to live here.

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

People in California seem to think that everyone else has this burning desire to live in California.
We don't.

Don't kid yourself.

Not being able to afford to is a different thing than not wanting to, and I have yet to meet the person who having spent time in California, would not happily throw their home state to the wolves had they the ability.

Re:California people...

[ebno-10db]

You can't beat coastal CA weather.

Very idyllic, but whether you like it is a matter of taste. After a few weeks of warm, dry and sunny weather every day I start to go nuts. Rain is a treat after that! I enjoy snow. My standard joke about CA is that I can't tell whether I'm indoors or out, so why go outside? I like real weather because it makes me feel alive.

Re:California people...

[drinkypoo]

People in California seem to think that everyone else has this burning desire to live in California.
We don't.

If your neighbors were like you, we'd have no problem with you and yours. Unfortunately, they are still reading Sunset and making relocation plans. By all means, keep out. I for one was born in Santa Cruz, which has been gentrified beyond all recognition, largely by people who were neighbors of people like you, who don't want to live in California.

Re:California people...

[ebno-10db]

I have yet to meet the person who having spent time in California, would not happily throw their home state to the wolves had they the ability.

You haven't met them because they left California. I've known people who've moved to CA, some loved it and stayed, others didn't like it and left. It's never been my permanent residence, but I've spent extended periods in SV for work. My reaction was "it's okay". There are certainly worse places to live, and I understand why some people like it so much, but I've never had any great desire to live there. It's a suburb with a few more Asian take out places and idyllic weather that many people like, but I find boring. It's all a matter of taste.

The worst thing about CA is that there are too many people who think it's the promised land. Texas and NYC suffer from a similar problem. I live in the NY area so they're especially enjoyable to make fun of. Interestingly I find that people who've moved to CA are more prone to the promised land syndrome than the natives. The first time I was in San Diego we ran into an ex-pat New Yorker who asked my wife and me how we liked it. We told him we thought it was a great place. Then he asked if we wanted to move there. When we said no he acted incredibly offended.

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

If all the people not so cursed could find it in their hearts to take pity on us, and stay away, we could live out our pitiful existence without the astronomical cost of housing you all bring with you.

Just tell them about the earthquakes. Describe it to them like, "Having an epileptic seizure, while the ground splits open and demons come pouring out.". Then mention something ominous about the "real" Sunnydale (the documentary that inspired the fictional show), and claim you're not allowed to explain it by state law. (j/k)

I'm content to live in Minnesota. We have mosquitoes for four months, and winter for eight months. It usually doesn't snow until late October, but then it doesn't stop until May. We have the Halloween capital of the world, but our hellmouth was destroyed by Norwegians in the mid 1800's. By accident, really... (If you must know, they emptied an entire lake into the underground mine where the hellmouth was, which happened to be chock-full of blessed salmon).

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Worshiped on Sunday, forgotten all week?" You know the system, you can adapt to the new god(s).

And I thought I hated religion but I've never seen anyone so whiny about it. I live in the Midwest, contrary to your belief no one here really gives a damn if you're an atheist. I've been here 31 years and never once been asked if I belong to a church or if I even have a religion. The only time I've set foot in a church was for the occasional wedding and even then only if it's a close friend or family member.

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also really funny how offended Californians get when you tell them it's been fun visiting but that there are many much better places to live and that you're happy with where you live, although they will try very hard to appear not offended.

Re:California people...

[demonlapin]

Meh. The weather's fantastic, I get that. I really do. But the cost of living is astronomical and not all jobs pay more in big cities. I work three miles from home, and if the traffic is really bad and I hit every red light, it takes me seven or eight minutes to get there. I'd take about a 30% pay cut to move to one of the desirable parts of CA, and what will buy you a 5000 sf house on an acre of land here will get you a 1400 sf shack on an 1800 sf lot there. Obviously that tradeoff is worth it to you. Not to everyone.

Re:California people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its really because we can't live anywhere else. I tried, failed. If you're from here, the rest of the country has seasons/bugs/religion/closedmindedness.

Do you not see your own closed mind? You assume that simply because you step outside of California somehow the people are different and more closeminded? You sound like the close minded one. Oh and enjoy the fucking earthquakes.

Re:California people...

[Arker]

And yet those that live in California but have the means to move have been doing so in droves for many decades. To the pacific northwest, among other destinations.

I've been to cali many times and you couldnt pay me enough to live there. The weather may be nice but there isnt much else to like about the place.

I've lived in a number of different US places

[Anonymous Coward]

Attending church has never been what you've described, and that was true even in the great Theocratic state of Utah.

Re:I've lived in a number of different US places

[tie_guy_matt]

Utah is the most religious state in the union by far. I understand that bars are actually illegel. Of course they make it really easy to become a member of the local "private club" that sells beer and looks a lot like a bar. But once you get a beer it is (or was at one point) "near" beer as full alchol beer is illegal.

My company used to send me to field tests out there all the time. One day someone left a copy of the free alternative Salt Lake City newspaper. After reading the rag for about 1 minute it became obvious that even in Utah you can find pockets of forward thinking, progressive individuals. Any city with over 100,000 people is bound to have a section where all the hip people hang out.

The only place I know of where people might ask you about your church is in the South. And even there it is usually a getting to know you type of question and not a why don't you pray to my sky bully type of question.

Not for me:

[Hartree]

I'll take my small rural town in the Midwest.

Cities are great for those who like them, but they seem an endless expanse of concrete canyons and people to me. (Yes, I've lived there.)

Like many others, I suspect that it's the younger types that are more up for central city life. When they have a family, more opt for the burbs or even farther out in the rural to quasi rural areas. This isn't very surprising as their needs have changed.

One item that's lacking here is good mass transit. For those who can afford cars, that's a cost or an inconvenience, but for the young or not so well off that can't, it sorta traps them here in a little burg of 1300.

Strangely enough, mass transit used to be here in the early 1900s. There was an interurban electric train system that linked the small towns to the larger ones. (About 20 miles to each of the two in the area.)

Re:Not for me:

[ebno-10db]

I'll take my small rural town in the Midwest.

No, no, no! There is only one Greatest and Best Place to Live (though there is a debate about whether it's CA, Texas or NYC). There is no room for individual taste or preference! So much for open minded and tolerant people.

Re:Not for me:

[benhattman]

That's fine to say, but the overall point is that people must "prefer" "cities" due to the fact that people are moving to them. And that's all people. From all over the world. Not long ago, the earth's population was predominantly rural. That's not true any longer. People are free to have their own preferences, but it's pretty clear that for an ever increasing percentage of the population, things like art, culture, restaurants, nightlife, mass transit, and jobs more than compensate for the reduction in privacy.

Also, the complaint about too many people is really the strong point about cities. With more people, you can find someone who has your same esoteric interests. You might be able to find a club of such people. You might be able to find a club of such people who like to meet on Tuesday evenings after work. They might even be a couple of miles from your home.

I'll agree with the cement complain though. I really wish there were some cities, even just a few trial ones, that completely banned auto traffic. Put in enough pavement to walk/bike, and then build a very dense and walkable center. Use the money that would have been spent on roads and apply that to some monorails or something. Take all that land that would be devoted to paved roads, and make it into some form of parks or green belts. It'd be a little bit like a typical college campus in a way actually.

I'll pick all three

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Living in SJ is cheaper than living in SF
2. The quality of life in SJ is better than SF. More parks spread around the area. Quieter and more peaceful living. Fewer weird aggressive homeless people in the south bay compared to SF.
3. The commute to most tech companies is shorter if you live in SJ (although Santa Clara or Sunnyvale is more ideal for commute)

* and I can choose all three because it's relative and not absolute. just wanted to point out the fallacy in your glib remark.

"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[bkgoodman]

How about more like Bejing or Herzelia. I'm really sorry (and a bit ashamed) to say/admit it - but they Valley was all-it back in the 90's - but we're livin' in different and scary times...

Re:"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[plopez]

As long as you don't mind living in an oppressive Communist nation.

Re:"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[RabidReindeer]

As long as you don't mind living in an oppressive Communist nation.

We're working on it. We're certainly well down the spying-on-citizens part.

Re:"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[plopez]

At least the US hasn't run over any peacefully demonstrating citizens with tanks.

Re:"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true, they shot them instead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Re:"Silicon Valley"? Not quite..

[plopez]

That was due to an over-reaction by edgy poorly trained troops. As opposed to on a command from the central leadership.

Wants to live in silly valley?

[plopez]

Try, "can afford to live in silly valley". Six figures is minimum wage there. I interviewed for a job in Pittsburgh. The more I looked at it the more I liked it. I would've made more money and paid about $100k less for a good house in a decent neighborhood. In a city home to CMU, University of Pittsburgh, Biotech companies, and regional energy companies. And brew pubs.

If you want a good standard of living, go east.

Been outside the west coast much lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the rural midwest and people really don't care if you go to church or not. At most you'll get offers to attend and those aren't so much witnessing to you (trying to convert you) as they are just, "hey, meet some people".

SF is a toilet

[Anonymous Coward]

It was really fun when I couldn't get out of the Mission to catch the last train out because of a murder. Or when some homeless man broke a bottle on my shoe when I refused to lend him my cellphone. (he wasn't polite about asking, so I didn't give him a polite response). Or when a guy shining shoes insisted I pay him $20 for a shine that I did not ask for or want, and which amounted to him dropping some polish on my shoes then wiping it off quickly. I ended up giving him the money because the way he was shouting was pretty embarrassing and I didn't how else to avoid the conflict.
There is a colossal amount of litter in San Francisco, it's a rather disgusting place. And the amount of urine I have to smell just walking down some of the streets is shocking.
I realize many people love their little city by the bay. But to some of us, it's an ugly place. The only redeeming part of SF is perhaps Golden Gate Park.

Re:SF is a toilet

[HornWumpus]

Don't go anywhere near golden gate park after dark. Unless you are Chuck Norris in a hazmat suit or there is a free concert going on.

Re:SF is a toilet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I visited SF last year and it was the biggest shithole I have ever seen.

Amen, will never live in Cali or other smog areas

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a rather talented software developer who simply won't relocate to that coast due to my love of cars.

Cali only has 91 octane max which simply is piss gas. My 2.0 turbo 4 cylinder with AWD is pushing out over 600 horsepower running on 93 octane here in michigan. If I ran 91 I'd have to retune the car and give up a good 50-70 horsepower and run less boost. I'd get more knock which means my timing curve would have to be adjusted lower as well.

But before that, I'd already be majorly illegal because my huge aftermarket turbocharger was not "CARB" approved. My exhaust would be illegal and that too would have to come off. By the time I get the car within legal specs, I'm back to the 300 horsepower it came with. I can't even push the smaller stock turbo much farther because the car was designed to run on 93 to just make 300hp. With work and tuning I could hit 330 or so on 91 octane.

So tell me again why I would move to Cali only to make a bunch of money I can't really spend the way I want to? Nothing really beats the pleasure of destroying a V10 Viper or supercharged Corvette with my little turbocharged 2.0 liter 4 cylinder. The emissions regs are mostly targeted at tuner cars like mine and guys with cammed out V8's get free passes to bypass the checks. I know because when I owned my V8 Mustang Cobra no one cared what I did to it because it was "'Merican". Even though four wheel drive and a turbo small engine is WAY better because it's lighter and can use the power and torque it makes when the 2wd V8 is spinning tires....

Anyways... I'm sticking to Michigan and Cali will lose out on my programming talent.

You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[theshowmecanuck]

Cities are a better way to be alone than the suburbs, if you like that. In fact you can be more anonymous in a city than in a suburb. And there are more things to do by yourself than in a suburb.

And one more very, very important thing: what most people think of an introvert is actually a myth. Being an introvert doesn't always mean wanting to be alone. In fact, most introverts like people too (really!). In general what the reality is, is that for most introverts, being an introvert means that when you need to power back up, de-stress and get centred, you do it by getting some 'me time'... being alone and relaxing, getting time to process/meditate on things you have experienced lately. And yes, you can be alone in a crowd. Extroverts, by the way, relax by interacting with people. People who just don't 'get' other people or don't want to be around them are actually classified as misanthropes... or sometimes having Aspergers syndrome. It doesn't mean introvert. I am a strong introvert. I hate the suburbs and love the city.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[jythie]

The problem is both myth and 'realty' are both true, all we have are different groups of introverts trying to say 'no, we are the actual introverts, stop talking about us like we are THOSE people!'.

Though I think part of the original point is that for many it is much harder to get downtime in the city since the population is much denser. I know plenty of introverts who really stress being in the city, even in private spaces. I also know plenty who are perfectly happy in such enviroments.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

A misantrope is someone who hates all humans. Simply not understanding people or not wanting to be around them isn't being a misanthrope. The former is called poor social understanding and the second is called being a loner. I think you'll find that there are very few misanthropes in the world.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[mellon]

The other kind of person is a misanthrope, not an introvert. I'm an introvert, and I definitely enjoyed living in San Francisco more than living in the valley. I enjoy still more living in Vermont, though. The real thing that's killing the valley is that you don't have to live there anymore, not that it's gotten worse.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[mevets]

That is crazy talk. How could there be more than two types?

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Cities are a better way to be alone than the suburbs, if you like that. In fact you can be more anonymous in a city than in a suburb. And there are more things to do by yourself than in a suburb.

I realise this comment will probably be completely lost, but I wanted to say something anyway, because I completely agree here.

I'm introverted, but I don't mind being around people; I just don't like being bothered* by people, generally preferring to be left alone so I can focus and think. Contrary to what one might expect, being "alone in a crowd" can be very good for this, because, despite having people all around you, they don't pay attention to you, and the sounds and movement tend to be less distracting because they blend together into a sort of white noise you can easily ignore. This is especially nice if you need to think about a problem or need inspiration, because 1) you are left alone to think, while 2) the activity around you can influence your thoughts subconsciously. Sometimes that last bit of inspiration you need comes from an unlikely source, and you would never find that in a controlled environment.

As comparison, when I'm actually, physically, alone I have problems focusing because a quiet room makes every small sound stand out, and using things like music to distract me from these sounds ends up even more distracting.

* A small group of people (such as at a workplace, or small shop) can work similarly to a crowd, with the sounds blending into white noise, but the fewer people around you, the more likely you'll be interrupted by questions or curiosity, at least in my experience. Someone always wants to break the 'awkward' silence in a room with four people, but in a room with forty, there's enough random noise that I guess they don't get as uncomfortable.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found the reverse to be true. In plenty of suburbs if you don't have kids it's easy to get in your car and go somewhere, then come home and disappear. It's even true of people with kids. Nothing's really close enough to walk to, so you never walk anywhere.

In a city there are areas like this, but their are also plenty of neighborhoods where I walk to the grocery store - not the super market, but a tiny, neighborhood grocery store. I walk the the restaurants I like. And other people are walking too. . . so I'm likely to interact with them, even if it's just to say "hi". Don't get that in the suburbs AT ALL.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Cities are a better way to be alone than the suburbs, if you like that. In fact you can be more anonymous in a city than in a suburb. And there are more things to do by yourself than in a suburb.

Being an introvert is not about being anonymous, or having nearby activities to do by yourself. A small apartment crammed next to hundreds of other apartments, with the sounds, smells, and vibrations of hundreds of other nearby people while you're trying to decompress in your home is definitely not what being an introvert is about.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the suburbs are terrible if you want privacy and alone time. Every suburb I've ever lived in has been non-stop gossip mongering and passive aggressive power plays. Worse, you get on people's shit lists if you think all the drama isn't worth worrying about.

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[riondluz]

Hi:

More simply put, according to Meyers-Briggs
  (visit similarminds.com) , I's get their stimulation internally and E's externally.

Like you, I'm an I, was a died-in-the-wool city-rat who drove gypsies and EMT, who now lives in the greate rural beyond.
Most I's I know, as well as aspies, love watching and being in the middle of things; they are just a bit disconnected from it at the same time. Sort of akin to voyeurism.
It maybe just a coping mechanism, because I-vs-E is as much about thinking (ideas) versus doing (actualities).

I's, unlike E's, don't seem to always have to be out socializing and doing "stuff".

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[theshowmecanuck]

Yeah, exactly. I always tell people I'd rather live right in the city or *way* out in the country. The suburbs to me is worst of both worlds. Unfortunately right now, I'm in a suburb because the commute time would be worse than living in the burbs... but only because my job is 5 minutes away by car and 20 to 25 by bicycle (going the long way). Wasting 2 hours a day commuting is the only thing I hate worse than suburbs. Too stressful. Had to start back after a couple years off because of spinal surgery, so gotta do what ya gotta do. Next gig will be back in a city. A downtown with any luck. Work in cutting edge mobile software and cloud (AWS and Azure) so shouldn't be hard to get a good locale after this. :) Would go rural and get a horse if it didn't fuck my back completely to ride. [sigh]. Bicycles don't trot so have to deal with their smoother ride and just get my zen dodging cars. It's my opportunity to force the thinking machine off so the priority attention is not getting killed by automobiles. :)

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[riondluz]

First, aside, VT happens to be one of the biggest 'bike' states in the US; so riding must be comfortable for most. But like any ruality, cars are an absolute necessity. Telework is really the only option unless its just a home base for a traveller.

Odd that i hear the fact bandied about that 75% of us live in cities. They must be including the burbs; or places like the bourroughs completely skew the mean.

Strange thing is, though like you i loathe the burbs, most ppl i know prefer it exactly because it's (kinda) midway between where they work and where they recreate.
This is what make the burbs a bedroom community for those who can afford it. They rarely see the sprawl or they perceive it as "Oh, lets go to starbucks!, Home-Depot,....
They really never spend anytime anywhere. Commute straight to the office and back, weekends away and M-F in their modest backyards.

The reason I left THE city was that it was no longer affordable; the arts etc... and everyone i knew just hung out. The reason I can't go back (for more than a visit) is seeing how detatched city folk are from nature, green, food sources, starlight, etc...
That and becoming adicted to the sounds of silence:)

Re:You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously

[maharvey]

I see, so I's are female and E's are male.

oh really?

[Goldsmith]

I'm not sure this writer has been to silicon valley in the last 10 years. There are "walkable, urban" spaces all over the place. The problem is that they're crazy expensive.

The valley is not full of the sleepy suburban areas from 30 years ago. There's a significant amount of high density housing, hip restaurants and bars. A lot of it looks like what you'd expect to see around a large college campus - cheaply built apartments with "interesting" architecture, gelato, coffee, smoke shops and international cuisine. The single family homes actually in the valley are not an option for anyone you might consider a "worker."

The only still-suburban spaces are squeezed between the urbanizing centers in the valley and the two cities: San Francisco and San Jose. Talking about Oakland as an important city to Silicon Valley is... weird.

I know there are several companies in Oakland, but it seems more like a separate, nearby community than part of Silicon Valley. San Jose is larger in population than both San Francisco and Oakland, but is far more spread out. San Francisco still dominates the local political landscape, but San Jose long ago took over the role of counterbalancing city to SF in regional policy and diversity - Oakland is just another set of SF neighborhoods now.

Re:oh really?

[coaxial]

San Jose sucks. It's a giant suburb, as is the entire bay area outside of SF and Oakland. Oh sure, there's occasional four block areas on streets that don't suck to walk on. Castro in Mountain View. University in Palo Alto. Whatever the main drag is in Los Gatos, but the vast majority of the area is completely boring strip malls surrounded by $700k 2 bedroom houses.

The single family homes actually in the valley are not an option for anyone you might consider a "worker."

Yeah. "workers" can't afford them.

Re:oh really?

[IndieVoter]

Oakland is a pit, and a dangerous one at that.

Author didn't get the memo right

[digitalFlack]

Wow, an author from the online Atlantic needed a subject and found an intellectual from the Brookings Institute with an opinion on Silicon Valley. Better warn Apple before they spend a gazillion dollars in SV on a spaceship for their 25,000 employees. And Google, eBay, Oracle, HP, SalesForce.com, Microsoft (SV), Lockheed, the incubators, and Stanford need to get the memo... their 250,000 jobs will be in San Francisco and Oakland soon! And San Francisco better start building schools for their children..(BTW, S.F. is the largest school district in the country with a shrinking enrollment... the re-gentrification is raising prices so much that working and middle class are moving out.) These companies and the university create the spin-offs that attract the VC and the talent pool can't (and wouldn't) just up and move to Oakland, or Austin, or Chicago. The author mistakes regular seepage from Silicon Valley for a mass migration. Of course there are other opportunities and locales near S.V. and around the country, but for a long time the S.V. tech star will continue to have critical mass and to suck the majority of the VC funding into its orbit.

Every few years some academic looks at a growth spurt (like Pixar, Leap Frog and IKEA in a small town like Emeryville) and makes social and economic forecasts that can't be implemented in the real world. Then journalists assume that their academic degree validates the theory - and write these silly puff pieces.

How about next time we Spare the Electrons!

Re:Author didn't get the memo right

[mikael]

Apple would have been better building their campus into a Tensegrity Sphere. Then they could relocate their campus whichever city offered the cheapest airspace taxes.

Not well put, but you make some good points ...

[scribble73]

The points the author notices are effects; not causes.

In the 1950s, San Jose and its suburbs adopted an urban growth strategy that was essentially no planning strategy at all. They minimized zoning and urban planning, assuming that giving developers the freedom to develop land without much oversight would somehow produce a quality urban environment as a side-effect.

So San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Campbell, Mountain View and Cupertino spread out because developers opted to build where land was cheap. However, city streets were not extended in a sensible way. To run personal errands on Saturday, we had to start driving five miles (and through a dozen stoplights) just to find a grocery store. Three or four other errands could require fifteen to twenty miles. Add traffic and stoplights, and it could take you five hours or more, to run just three local errands.

In addition, cities here allowed commercial property to mix a little too closely with residential property. This raised crime rates, lowered property values, and made everything ugly. No one planned for parks or shopping centers or other public amenities. When shopping centers were finally built, traffic patterns were ghastly. When planners were forced to route freeways through the area; they were routed where the land was cheap; not where they were really needed -- first they cut neighborhoods in half, and then in quarters. Parks were placed, twenty years late, where more land was cheap, or where well-to-do neighborhoods were still located.

All this turned the valley into a happy little piece of Houston, Texas, only with worse freeways.

The good things about Silicon Valley arose from areas that were planned: Stanford. Large Aerospace companies along Bayshore freeway. Aerospace died, but by then, silicon had taken the place of airplanes. Then silicon died. Today, we run on software and business momentum from the old days, but the momentum is formidable.

... the Valley is no longer egalitarian, the way it was in the 50s and 60s. We have a greater disparity between the rich and the poor than almost any city along the Pacific Coast, and the rich here still love Libertarian chaos... so, real estate prices are too high. Rents are too high. No parks. poor schools. Easily 7000 homeless just in San Jose. Tens of thousands of homes foreclosed over the last seven years. And even with Google Maps; local business are infernally hard to find and ugly when you get there.

As bad as all this is, it won't ultimately kill the valley. I think lack of professional creativity and opportunity will finally kill us. Large companies here never did value what the Harvard Business School calls 'disruptive technology.' They do not hire creative problem solvers. Business startup costs used to be low: Today, they are through the roof, and getting higher. Venture Capital has ruled the roost since 1997 or so, they are getting stronger, and they do not value original ideas.

Major companies here are all slowly dying (like they always have -- remember Fairchild Instruments, DEC and Atari?) -- the difference is; that it is much, much harder to start a new company here than it used to be -- and new companies are where the big companies come from when the old companies finally die.

tt77

Not exactly banging down the gates

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this migration is real, but is taking a long time. There are still an awful lot of ordinary tract homes in Si Valley 'burbs selling for 1 or even 2 $million.

That said, "peak tech" in the Valley seems like a very real possibility, even if the balloon slowly deflates rather than popping. We've got a stadium being built in Santa Clara for example. Stadiums go hand-in-hand with declining property values over time. They pull in traffic, crime, noise. You can get a real spiral; but once again it takes time. Santa Clara becoming an armpit wouldn't surprise me in 30 years, but it would in 5.

One thing that'll kill some of those areas is high speed rail if it ever comes. The construction and then the train noise will kill property values, just like a stadium. At least it'll get rid of all those pesky grade crossings though.

Re:Not exactly banging down the gates

[6]

The Shark Tank has certainly done the opposite to that area of San Jose. Lower crime and increased property values. It's one of the reasons why Santa Clara wanted the stadium

Decentralization and diversification

[divisionbyzero]

The tension created by "City vs. Suburbs" is strictly for the benefit of the story. Existing companies are opening new offices in urban areas but for the most part they aren't closing offices in the suburbs. Sure, new companies are often starting in cities but they will likely open suburban offices if they survive long enough. It's a healthy kind of diversification that will likely reach some sort of equilibrium over the next decade or two. Does that mean the stature of suburbs will decrease a bit while that of cities increases? Sure, but talk of "winners" and "losers" in some binary or zero-sum sense is overblown.

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

London is like that too.

Ever lived there?

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I have. It sucks. It's not actually a city, it's more like a long series of 80s era malls which have been reworked to house Trader Joes and suchlike.

The grocery stores are like, C- grade, the place is sprawled out all over and the downtown, which is largely irrelevant to what's know as Silicon Valley- Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, is unremarkable , dull and smallish. The housing it of course through the roof in price while being only mediocre , find-it-anywhere 80s and 90s style apartments.

The houses are just ordinary ranch houses albeit with 750k price tags. really, the whole place was better, just *better* before Fairchild Semi-conductor started it on the path that is now Silicon Valley.

I was only too happy to get out of there. Nearly any place whose name you know, SF, Portland, Austin, etc has more to offer someone looking for something to do on a weekend never mind NY NY or Boston or San Diego or even Kansas City has more to offer young, single people ...

Maybe it has great grade schools...

Re:Ever lived there?

[istartedi]

It's not actually a city, it's more like a long series of 80s era malls which have been reworked to house Trader Joes and suchlike.

Anybody who complains that Si Valley is too suburban has not lived in Northern Virginia. The Peninsula and the corridor down to San Jose has lots of little cities with smallish but eclectic centers strung like pearls along El Camino, 101 and Caltrain. Compared to the Beltway's endless fields full of asphalt and cookie-cutter tracts, it's a walkable urban paradise.

Yup the new urban tech center is... Detroit

[Glasswire]

A real city with real people that's doing cutting edge tech not just a bunch of expensive suburbs like the valley, Fantastic cheap place to be.

Re:Ob

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You could have done much better than that. For example:

Technology is people

That's obvious, because Soylent Green is technology.

Yeah, it's ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

People with their desire for something scenic or rustic yet convenient and full of services are rather like bacteria colonies. There is a fringe of growth and activity, constantly leaving a shit pile of death and decay behind as the fringe keeps moving on. When you are lucky, you eventually get some fungus like hipsters that will come in and start the cycle all over in the dead core... I'm not sure what type of people can eventually rehabilitate it back into scenic or rustic though?

are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

SF and Oakland have become hugely expensive, dirty, and crime-ridden. They're probably great if your business revolves around social networking, partying, and hobnobbing, but they are horrible in terms of getting space to work, commute, or even just buying high tech gear. Silicon Valley used to be nice because it was fairly inexpensive, quiet, easy to get around, and had a great infrastructure, but obviously it doesn't have that either anymore. I think the entire Bay Area is on the decline. I moved away a few years ago and haven't regretted it.

San Francisco is Grand!

[Mazgula]

Last time I was there I saw a bum drop trou and shit on the sidewalk.

I can't wait!

[Bruce Perens]

For a few months I am consulting in San Jose and driving from Berkeley. I can't wait for all of those folks to move to the cities and get off the roads! Typical commute is 1.5 hours to drive no more than 49 miles. Even getting on the road at 6 AM doesn't beat the traffic.

Re:I can't wait!

[rsborg]

For a few months I am consulting in San Jose and driving from Berkeley. I can't wait for all of those folks to move to the cities and get off the roads! Typical commute is 1.5 hours to drive no more than 49 miles. Even getting on the road at 6 AM doesn't beat the traffic.

I really wonder what the average anti-public-transport folks are thinking - if people who want good public transport (just gimme a train from south bay to tri-valley) got what they want, the bus/train riders would leave the roads freeing them up for folks who do want to commute.

Corrupt politics is the root (or most visible symptom) of all the major problems our state/country faces.

Re:I can't wait!

[Bruce Perens]

The Silicon Valley Leadership Council has in general been for better roads and against mass transit spending. It's the typical business short-term thinking. They don't care what the situation will be in 15 years, just now.

Re:I can't wait!

[russotto]

The OP takes 90 minutes to do 49 miles, driving. I take public transit, and it takes me 60 minutes... to do 15 miles. And this is in the NYC area, which supposedly has the best public transit in the US. Public transit isn't an answer.

Anyway, I think the city thing doesn't have all that long to run. The bulge of the millennial generation is getting older (and city schools haven't gotten any better, by and large -- not all these millennials are forever-virginal slashdotters. Not to mention mass transit seems a lot less appealing when you're trying to drag kids around on it), and city cost of living is getting higher.

Re:I can't wait!

[rsborg]

The Silicon Valley Leadership Council has in general been for better roads and against mass transit spending. It's the typical business short-term thinking. They don't care what the situation will be in 15 years, just now.

If this is the group you're referring to, then it seems they've been around for 35 years. 35 years of "bigger roads + no mass transit spending" seems to me have resulted in a whole lot of backwards policy - that misguided future seems to be here, and have been here for decades.

Re:I can't wait!

[IANAAC]

The OP takes 90 minutes to do 49 miles, driving. I take public transit, and it takes me 60 minutes... to do 15 miles.

San Francisco's public transit truthfully sucks in comparison with other cities. When I lived in SF (early 90s-2005), I lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood between the panhandle and USF. I worked first in Sunnyvale, then in Fremont. Getting to either place was a hassle, and a large part of it was due to SF Muni (before I ever set foot in a Caltrain or BART station. I could take the Fulton or Hayes bus, which supposedly would come every 10-15 minutes (much less between runs in the early 90s). The reality was that the buses would stack up for 30-40 minutes, then all show up at once. It would take at least a half an hour to get downtown - a mere 3 miles or so. Once there, Caltrain or BART would be another 50-55 minutes to either Sunnyvale or Fremont. And that is assuming you didn't have someone jump in front of the train or the train didn't break down, or there weren't BART switching problems.

Don't even get me started on SF's taxi situation.

When I moved to Chicago, I thought I was in heaven with their transit and taxi system (and Chicago has PLENTY of transit problems, but nowhere near the amount that SF had for 1/4 of the population.)

Re:I can't wait!

[FooAtWFU]

You must be taking the slow bus. Metro North can do ~23 miles in ~25 minutes (White Plains to Grand Central).

Re: I can't wait!

[Bruce Perens]

While the group has been arounf for 35 years, it's different people every 5 or so. Whatever CEOs are riding the wave at the moment. They know that any mass transit that we start now is on a longer timeline than their exit strategy.

Re:I can't wait!

[sconeu]

San Francisco's public transit truthfully sucks in comparison with other cities

Except for LA's. Then, BART and Muni look like a shining example.

Re:I can't wait!

[IANAAC]

Except for LA's. Then, BART and Muni look like a shining example.

LA is really a special case, as far as public transit goes. It's *so* spread out. Considering how spread out it is, at least they have bus lines (and a couple trains/light rail) that'll get you downtown or to the airport relatively easy, albeit it not so quickly. Compare it to another equally spread out city like Phoenix and you'll see that the coverage more complete in LA.

I think taking a taxi is LA is also MUCH easier than in SF. At least they'll come when you call them, unlike in SF. That so infuriated me in SF - you'd call for a taxi and one would never arrive.

Because more people are choosing to live in cities

[PJ6]

... is like saying "because larger containers hold more water".

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[mellon]

What, and Silicon Valley is an economical place to live? HAH! Try buying a house in Palo Alto, Mountain View or Sunnyvale and then get back to me about how cheap it is to live there.

It may be that SF is more expensive than the valley now, but it hasn't been that way historically, and that's _certainly_ not true of Oakland. Oakland is much cheaper than the valley, has better public transportation, as good food, less traffic, and better views. And you're closer to the east bay hills, which are fantastic for recreation, and closer to Yosemite, and I could go on and on...

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

I just visited SF for a week, and as a single income, young & cheap guy, my budget went out the window real quick. I'm not saying I couldn't do it right and be very frugal there, but it is a challenge.

But, not having to deal with the families with kids and the open and accepting people in SF makes me wish that there were other states in the US where you can find this along with good weather.

A giant sterile Starbucks wasteland

[EmperorOfCanada]

Anecdotally a friend of mine turned down a pretty damn good offer from a nice company in the area due to the place being "a giant sterile Starbucks wasteland".

He loved San Fran though.

Maybe in CA....

[maz2331]

...but here in the Pittsburgh PA area, the suburbs are only a few miles from Downtown. We do have upper middle-class areas within the city, but the vast majority of the population would rather live in a suburb to avoid the crowds and crime that bleeds out of the poor areas and their associated gang issues. My house is 15 miles from downtown, across the street from a golf course, costs me 775/mo in rent. You can't rent a shoebox in SF for that much.

Really, tech is going to move away from areas like Silicon Valley, the Bay area, etc. in favor of smaller cities across the country. Collaberation via the Internet makes it possible to group smart people regardless of geography - and cost of living DOES matter. Especially once you go past 30 years old and care less about the club scene and more about what you get for your money. And it is a good deal for employers to hire someone at 60k in Pittsburgh that they would have to pay 120k in CA - and the employee can have a higher standard of living too.

I left after 21 years

[AlexOsadzinski]

I spent 21 years in the Valley, doing 4 startups and then 8 years in venture capital. It was great, and I couldn't have had the same opportunities anywhere else.

But I got sick of it, and moved right at the end of 2011 (hint: don't have a moving truck drive across the US between Xmas and the end of the year...it freezes itself and all of your stuff) to North Carolina, in the Research Triangle Park area. The Bay Area's crowding, expense and divided society issues began to bug me more and more.

So now I can compare the world's leading tech area with another tech area, way lower on the totem pole.

The cost of living is much lower and the quality of life is much higher in NC for most people. Housing, at almost every level, is one sixth the price of the Bay Area. Average household incomes are about the same (yes, really, about the same....most people in the Valley aren't rich), but a regular family making $50k per year can afford a 2,000 sq ft house on a quarter of an acre in NC. Everything costs less in NC, e.g. my garbage is $16/month instead of $50, water is $21 instead of $100, sales taxes are about 3 points lower, so everything benefits from that, and gas/utilities/groceries are all noticeably lower. Healthcare is great in both places if you have good insurance. Public schools are, overall, better in NC. There are very good local colleges, and there are more PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the US. You don't have Stanford and Berkeley, of course, but you have Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State; I'm really impressed with what comes out of those schools in terms of people and tech.

The weather in NC sucks in July and August; I personally find it too hot and humid. But that's what A/C is for. The rest of the year you have seasons. The Valley has better weather.

BUT BUT BUT.....nothing compares to Silicon Valley for the combination of vast amounts of (venture) capital, vast numbers of experienced tech people, including startup execs, a ton of tech startup infrastructure and a very fluid job market. The RTP area is chock full of startups, with more in the "we make stuff -- chips, materials, devices" category. Capital is much harder to find. There are good banks and lawyers and other services that startups need. Developers flood out of the local schools, but not all stay here. You can pay a developer much less than in the Valley, and (s)he can actually live on the salary (as you can rent a decent HOUSE for $1200, and buy a starter home for $130k).

I've seen multiple attempts worldwide to duplicate Silicon Valley. If I had about $500B and 30 years (I'm a little short of the former, and hope to make the latter), I could replicate the Valley, maybe. But I doubt it. The Valley pioneers were amazing people; check out the documentaries on the subject. They had perfect timing. It's hard to see the same confluence of events happening again, at least in tech.

Re:I left after 21 years

[ebno-10db]

I've seen multiple attempts worldwide to duplicate Silicon Valley. If I had about $500B and 30 years (I'm a little short of the former, and hope to make the latter), I could replicate the Valley, maybe. But I doubt it. The Valley pioneers were amazing people; check out the documentaries on the subject. They had perfect timing. It's hard to see the same confluence of events happening again, at least in tech.

Why SV is where it is is a perennial debate. Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. The Traitorous Eight that left Shockley Semiconductor Labs to start Fairchild Semi were an amazing group and the real genesis of SV, but why were they in SV in the first place? Because Shockley was there, of course, but why was Shockley there? Apparently because his aging mother lived there. That's it. Happenstance, which is an explanation that many don't like. No other explanation is convincing though.

Stanford and UC Berkeley were and are excellent universities, but there many others. MIT and CalTech are hardly also-rans, not to mention a number of other schools that, especially back when SV started, had as good or better reputation than Stanford or USB. Three of the Traitorous Eight (and Shockley) were MIT alumni. Only one of the eight was a Standford alumni and one UC Berkeley. Only Moore was native to the area.

Shockley was able to start the labs in what became SV only because of his fame. The backers were Beckman Instrument, which was in SoCal. Most the of the semiconductor expertise at the time was in the east. Mostly the Traitorous Eight were lured from the east because they were young, fairly rootless, and thought working for a Nobel Prize winner was a great opportunity. In other words, there was really nothing to recommend what's now SV other than the fact that Shockley's mother lived there, but nobody wants to admit that Shockley was the real grandfather of SV.

Re:I left after 21 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived all over the continental US. Nowhere has weather comparable to silicon valley. If the Shockley story had played out in Boston— for example— with its miserable weather perhaps it would have just fizzled because once no longer hitched to shockley people who left wouldn't start companies in the same place, they'd go someplace more livable.

Re:I left after 21 years

[ebno-10db]

I've lived all over the continental US. Nowhere has weather comparable to silicon valley.

SoCal is better, especially San Diego. Moreover Shockley was from SoCal, and his backer Beckman Instruments, was in SoCal.

If the Shockley story had played out in Boston— for example— with its miserable weather perhaps it would have just fizzled because once no longer hitched to shockley people who left wouldn't start companies in the same place, they'd go someplace more livable.

Except that lots of MIT alumni have started companies in the area. Route 128 hasn't been quite the same since the minicomputer died, but there was DEC and Data General. These days Kendall square is pretty hot, and there are companies like Analog Devices, Raytheon, etc.

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you are young and gay doesn't mean that every couple without kids is either young or gay.

To everyone quitting the bay area:

[Snufu]

I can I haz ur house?

Unless some other land mass rises out of the Pacific ocean, the regions of coastal California between Marin and San Diego counties will always be the most desirable (expensive) in the country because it is the only part of the country with temperate weather year round.

Re:To everyone quitting the bay area:

[ebno-10db]

Much of that stretch is not heavily populated. Take the coastal route from San Diego to San Francisco and you'll see. Personally I'm happy if it stays that way because there is some beautiful scenery. The weather is kind of bland though.

That IS Silicon Valley

[SoftwareArtist]

For all practical purposes, San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley. Sure, originally it meant a small cluster of towns in Santa Clara county, but today Silicon Valley really includes everything surrounding the southern arm of San Francisco Bay. There are lots of people who live in San Francisco and work in Palo Alto. You just can't divide it up any more.

Genetics

[stoploss]

they put cilantro on everything

I guess it sucks if you don't like it. It is everywhere. Personally I love it, although a lot of people think it tastes like soap. They should have a cilantro free side of the menu or something. Maybe a new restaurant, "Cilantro Optional".

Interestingly enough, the cilantro quale is genetic. Cf.
Love To Hate Cilantro? It's In Your Genes And Maybe, In Your Head

It's just another allele, similar in concept to the one that causes certain people to have the inability to smell cyanide. I have certainly tested my cilantro sensory interpretation, but I hesitate to test cyanide.

Re:Genetics

[ebno-10db]

I hesitate to test cyanide

I do it all the time. They're called almonds (especially appropriate for CA).

not want to live

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not a matter of where people want o live, its a matter of where they can afford to live.

If people didn't want to live in SV the way it is, then it wouldn't be so fucking expensive to move there.

Re:Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley

[Assmasher]

I used to live in Tamalpais Valley in the Bay Area, paying $900/month for a single room in a house, this was in 1996. Things have gotten astronomically worse from what I hear from my friends. Heck, a pair of friends dropped $300k on a crappy little house in the canal district of San Rafael that year as well. I didn't tell them this, but it was a sh**hole! Things are just insane out there.

While I have a very nice $500k house now in the South-East, and the cost of living is great, I don't think you're going to be finding any decent lake property for $500k with a house on it without wheels ;).

I think the only way I could afford to live in the Bay Area without living in a dump now would be a live-aboard on a nice boat - the only problem is that getting a live-aboard permit in the Bay Area is supposed to be nigh on impossible (although I'm sure tons of people are doing it illegally.)

Silicon Valley's death

[Anonymous Coward]

To predict what will kill Silicon Valley you will have to understand what created it in the first place.

And it's not what you mention.

I haven't digged into it myself but if anything I would guess it was a combination of the two of the best technology universities plus the very mild weather and the cheap land in the area.

Add to this all the venture capitalists that gathered in the area, and Silicon Valley is by no chance going to due because you don't like living there.

Re:Silicon Valley's death

[ebno-10db]

To predict what will kill Silicon Valley you will have to understand what created it in the first place. And it's not what you mention.

I haven't digged into it myself but if anything I would guess it was a combination of the two of the best technology universities plus the very mild weather and the cheap land in the area.

The universities are very good, but that's hardly unique. Think MIT, CalTech, Carnegie-Mellon, Princeton, Champaign-Urbana, etc. In fact while both Stanford and UC Berkeley have always been good, they've attained much of their current status because of SV. I'm sure the weather didn't hurt, but many tech hubs like Boston aren't known for their idyllic weather. For that matter SoCal has more idyllic weather, especially San Diego. The cheap land was hardly unique.

The only plausible explanation I know of is Bill Shockley's mother lived there.

Add to this all the venture capitalists that gathered in the area

The VC's are there because it's SV, not the other way around.

Re:Silicon Valley's death

[Anonymous Coward]

To understand how Rome fell, I don't need to understand what started it.

As a tech worker in Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you that I did not want to live in either San Francisco or Oakland. In fact I wanted to get away from those two places, (It is awful living there).
I moved out further to a country area where the noise ain't so bad. The air smells like air. You can see the stars at night. Your neighbors don't stick their noses in your business. (And it's a lot cheaper to live.)

Introverts are old news

[dutchwhizzman]

Every startup is hiring brocoders now. They want to live in hip city centres where you can get 15 different nationalities of food on every intersection and live your whole life on foot. Introverts are sooooo 2011.

Re:Introverts are old news

[Fancia]

Just a reminder that it's perfectly possible to like food and walking and also be an introvert.

bay area

[ericartman]

The bay area has one great thing going for it, as I sit in 105 degree heat, its weather. A few days with a little heat, some rain, smog gets blown to other parts of the state. I lived there for many years, Fremont, Saratoga, San Jose, Redwood City. It started to get a little crowded for me so I left but I sure do miss it's weather.

Re:Workers want to be in San Francisco

[Just Some Guy]

I live in East Bay but work in SoMa. That's pretty much my perfect combination: I get to run around the city during the day but go home to a small town at night. Rents are way cheaper here, too, perhaps by half.

Re:Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley

[coaxial]

Almost requires an IPO or your startup to be bought to buy a home in a decent location around here

It takes more than an IPO to buy a nice home in Silicon Valley. I know. $200 a share still isn't enough.

I live in the silicon valley and can't wait for the day to sell my home and move to another part of the country and pay for a 3k sq ft home for $500k with an acre of land on a lake.

I've been considering Seattle. It is just so damn depressing how expensive it is to buy a house.

Re:Amen, will never live in Cali or other smog are

[Anonymous Coward]

Cali only has 91 octane max which simply is piss gas. My 2.0 turbo 4 cylinder with AWD is pushing out over 600 horsepower running on 93 octane here in michigan. If I ran 91 I'd have to retune the car and give up a good 50-70 horsepower and run less boost. I'd get more knock which means my timing curve would have to be adjusted lower as well.

The traffic's bad enough you'll never get to use more than 300 of those horses. Unless you've got a Tesla, in which case 0-25 acceleration is as much fun as 0-60, and you get to do that at every stop light no matter how crappy the gas is :)

sure - when the rents

[Ralph Spoilsport]

for a business space in SF are as cheap as say, Burlingame. Or Santa Clara. Or San Jose. Not. Ever.

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell wants to live in a city?

High cost of living. Lack of space. Parking is a PITA. It's noisy. Utilities are overpriced and overburdened. Too many people everywhere you go. Too much traffic for driving to be any fun.

Seriously, I'm convinced city slickers are either crazy or drugged to want to live there. Being able to walk to a bar isn't worth all the above drawbacks.

Rather not live in SF or Oakland

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't enjoy being in San Francisco or Oakland, so I wouldn't want to live in either or them. I prefer to live in an area like Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Cupertino - more calm, and easier to drive and park in. (I hate to drive in San Francisco.)

Re Crime in American Cities

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree,

I live in Tokyo. It (still?) is the world's biggest city. Random violent street crime is almost unheard of. You do not get panhandled, there are no crazies on the subways and in the streets. It is safe, clean even at 3AM for a single lady walking home (in a short skirt even).

What is happening in American cities is not normal for other developed parts of the world (given what I see in the US, I wonder sometimes, how developed it actually is...it is like a rich, but still third world country in so many ways (no universal health care, armies of street people in most major cities..etc..etc)

Muni is the Best

[Anonymous Coward]

Muni is the greatest system in the world for lazy people. You can catch a bus on almost any block. The downside is that once you get on, you're stopping every damn block. Near my place there's a 3 block stretch with 5 stops for the same bus line in going in the same direction.

It's alo the perfect city for senior citizens. You can walk out your front door and get to any place in the city without having to walk more than 2 or 3 blocks. That means easy for older folk to get to the doctor, or the store, or a community center. At the same time, you can incorporate as much walking as you want into your daily routine.

And for city supposedly overrun with hipsters, there's a surprising number of facilities which service senior citizens.

I moved my mother to the city specifically because of the city services, and to make sure that she can meet more people her own age, instead of slowly becoming isolated in her house as she got older.

I'm in Silicon Valley

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I'm in Silicon Valley. I want to live in Nevada, far enough from the neighbors that I can't hear their HIFIs in the daytime or see their lights at night.

I want to live in Nevada so much that I built a house there - a few miles over the state line near Lake Topaz. Fully paid for. Marvelous view. Good neighbors. Also rabbits (jack and cottontail), quail, coyotes, deer, antelope, bobcats, cougars, and black bears. Gun laws are a lot different there, and I have a Nevada CCW that's also valid in many other states due to reciprocity (though not in CA).

For the Town House near work I also moved across the bay from Palo Alto. Just off the other end of the bridge, for less than I was paying in rent in Palo, I was able to BUY a two-story four-bedroom with 7,000+square feet of yard and remodel it. 200A electric service (two 20A circuits to each room for starters). Satellite TV and Cat 5E everywhere. (Only running 100M at the moment but I hear that with house-sized runs you can get away with 5e for gigabit Ethernet.) The yard is now a garden and orchard. We get most of our veggies from it - and our eggs. We were also on the Bay Friendly Garden Tour last year.

They tell me the city here on the Back Bay has a gang problem. But for several blocks around our house it doesn't. It's much like in Palo Alto (where the burglars worked their way down Loma Verde street and skipped only two houses - ours and the retired cop two doors down). It seems the crooks don't like to bother NRA instructors, and the wife's "Ducks Unlimited" sticker tells them she can hit a spot the size of a duck (or a human heart) with a shotgun, from 50 yards, even if it is flying at the time. B-)

Of course NV has no such crime issues. Even machine guns are legal there. B-)

Move to a SF or Oakland? By preference? You've GOT to be kidding.

Suburban office parks and tech hubs are the B-ship

[xenoc_1]

I moved out here from the midwest 20 years ago and have no interest in moving back - same can be said of every coworker of mine (I think maybe 1 of 20+ of them are from the Bay Area originally).

Well yeah, compared to Omaha or Topeka or even Kansas-Google-Fiber-City, sure, it's exciting. Compared to a few miles away in SF itself it's boring as hell. And you're not just going to pop out at lunch to hit up that new trendy lunch kiosk or the funky clothing store. Or after work catch a play in a small off-off-Broadway type show that you are intrigued by, that perhaps your coworker is in. Nor pop out for your own audition, or to record a voiceover, or to meet your girlfriend/boyfriend (or both!) the dancer at the studio. Or join a group run training for a marathon.

It's not like those things, or their equivalents, aren't possible or arent' even available in the boonies. They are. Mostly. But they're all damn inconvenient and time-consuming to get to, require multiple transportation modes or at least costly long trips in your must-have car, and are all in different directions.

I've worked in office parks that were technology hubs in the overall New York Metro but in New Jersey, in the Greater Boston Metro on the Route 128 Corridor, but half-hour or more away, in some cases in another state (eg the failed/killed DEC's real-estate in NH taken over by BigGreenPyramidFinancialCo). In North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, but thus not in Raleigh nor Durham city centers or urban village areas themselves. In Zonamerica in greater Montivideo, Uruguay, which is out in the frakking boonies north of the airport, half-hour or more by bus to anywhere interesting in Montevideo. 20 minutes at least by car, if I wanted to have one here, to anywhere interesting at all.

It's mind-numbingly boring. Mind-numbingly suburbanized. Horribly non-green, even with things like Google buses or the Zonamerica shuttles.

I've also worked on Wall Street iitsellf (literally, address on Wall St.) or right around the corner on Broadway, and up a few blocks on Greenwich. On 57th St and 5th Av in midtown Manhattan. In downtown Boston. In downtown Denver right on the 16th St. Pedestrian way with the vast amount of funky restaurants, shopping, entertainment. Almost worked in the Montevideo World Trade Center in Pocitos when they were moving out of Zonamerica, but bagged the job to start a venture with my wife based out of our casita 3 blocks from the beach in a funky small town that is a walkable micropolis urban village with fibre-to-home and a variety of walkable pleasures.

During times living/working in one of those places, it was very possible without hassle and without car to do pretty much all of the stuff I mentioned above.

Hell of a lot more fun, any of those places. Either the big city, or the self-contained micropolis. Out in the boonies of tech parks, everybody knows this is nowhere. Eventually the real talent who are at all multifaceted in their life preferences go somewhere more stimulating to their many wants and needs, not just their tech-and-money needs. Leaving the B-ship people. Yes, we need the B-ship too. But that's not where creativity happens. That's not the one the multii-talented multi-intelligenced people want to be in for their career and life journeys.

Living outside the bubble

[sjbe]

I've got nothing against the bay area. Cool place and I like it. If it suits you then by all means live there and enjoy it. But please don't act like it is the only decent place in the US to live. That's just wrong and frankly kind of offensive.

one thing that keeps me here is the forward thinking attitude. acceptance of different lifestyles (for the most part) and the fact that its NOT required that you participate in a religion. quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors. I want no part of that kind of lifestyle and that elimnates about 80% of the US, for me.

You are incorrectly presuming 80% of the US believes something you clearly have no knowledge of and frankly if you want acceptance of your lifestyle it's a good idea to start by accepting those of others. You seem to want others to accept your lifestyle but do not seem willing to return the favor. You want forward thinking attitudes and acceptance of different lifestyles? Come to (almost) any college town. Austin, Ann Arbor, Madison, Ithaca, Evanston, Boulder, Chapel Hill, etc. There are tons of them. You'll find exactly what you are describing. Same thing with a lot of large cities. Get a big enough population together and you'll find plenty of acceptance of anything.

It's pretty clear you haven't lived a lot of different places because you are making assertions not based in actual fact. I've lived on the east coast, in the midwest, bits of the Mississippi valley, and the south. I've also worked as a consultant at one time or another in about 2/3's of the lower 48 states. I have NEVER seen a community where you are "required" to participate in a religion. In fact I've never even been in one where the community gave a crap whether you were religious or not. There probably are exceptions in very specific areas but in 99% of the US no one really cares unless you waive it in their face. Presently I'm living in the Midwest which accounts for about 1/5 of the US population and I assure you that no one here cares what religion you are or aren't any more than they do in San Francisco. I could fairly be described as an atheist (never been to church a day in my life) and I've never felt excluded anywhere, even in places in the so called bible belt where I have a lot of family. I've lived and spent tons of time in places not noted for being "forward thinking" and the problem you describe simply does not exist.

but I keep coming back to the intellectualism of the area. if you are a thinker, you'll fit in well here. no one makes fun of you if you are smart, unlike much of the rest of the country. food selection is as good as it gets here, too; with all the different restaurants and styles of food, its a major reason for me to stay here.

OK, now you are just making shit up. Nothing against the Bay area but it is hardly the only place in the country that has a lot of smart people or good food. I was in Ann Arbor recently and the average person there is ridiculously well educated and the food is as good as anywhere I've ever been. Go to ANY of the college towns and you'll find exactly what you describe. Smart people, good food, progressive attitudes. I can point you to food and restaurants where I live which are the match of anything you'll find in the Bay area and yes I speak from personal experience. It might be a bit different but it is every bit as good.

oh, and the weather. the weather! for a snow-hater like myself, it would be hard to leave the bay area and move back to the snow and cold.

The bay area is pretty temperate compared to lots of places. Austin is an awesome town and the Bay Area is an ice box by comparison. And for the record the snow and cold aren't that bad and can be pretty fun even for someone like me that doesn't like the cold much.

Idaho Falls, population 57,0000

[sjbe]

Idaho Falls, Idaho. They don't much hold with all that whacky stuff the liberals down in Pocatello do. Boy, do I wish I were kidding.

So a town of roughly 50,000 somehow is representative of the rest of the US? Curious...

Yogi Berra calling

[sjbe]

It's too f-ing expensive.

Is this like Yogi Berra's argument that "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded"? Prices go up because people DO want to live there. They may not be able to but if they didn't want to live there, real estate prices would be falling.

Silicon Valley, like NYC but spread out and requires a car.

Both are fine but Silicon Valley bears little resemblance to NYC beyond absurd real estate prices.

Tech reign coming to an end

[poofmeisterp]

....and Bus tours of the abandoned city and abandoned buildings will start at $200/person. Profit's gon' be had!!!

The state government will kill Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too expensive because of taxes, punishing requirements put on companies, and indulgent social policies that attract the worst of the worst.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

[isdnip]

That was a hit song by Dionne Warwick in the 1960s. It extolled the small-town life of what was then a pretty small place, when the Santa Clara Valley was still agricultural (anyone remember Paul Masson vineyards, the bulk-wine producer just west of town?).
"LA is a great big city, put a hundred down and buy a car."
San Jose was the opposite of LA, the place you went back to when LA got you down.
Now, of course, San Jose is more like LA than any other place in northern California. Bigger than SF or Oakland, and sprawling all over. Suburbs in search of a city.
No wonder I like it here in Boston.

Re:Straight Talk about Cities

[volmtech]

They're almost done with Paula and George, you better lay low for a while.

Re:Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley

[riondluz]

sounds like a good description of any working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, CT

Re:Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley

[randyleepublic]

The boss of my biotech startup is the smartest guy I know - he located us in Reno. Great weather, great skiing, and no traffic!

Re:Suburban office parks and tech hubs are the B-s

[Dahamma]

And you're not just going to pop out at lunch to hit up that new trendy lunch kiosk or the funky clothing store.

Which is something about 1% of the engineers I have met have any interest in doing at lunch on a workday. Did you RTFA? *Tech Reign*...

Or after work catch a play in a small off-off-Broadway type show that you are intrigued by, that perhaps your coworker is in.

Saw my coworker in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum a few years ago at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, actually. I've also gone to a few local premieres of PDI/Dreamworks and Pixar movies via friends who worked on them. And though I live a bit outside of SF now I have been to a bunch of plays and concerts there, of course. Ever hear of the Fillmore?

Nor pop out for your own audition, or to record a voiceover, or to meet your girlfriend/boyfriend (or both!) the dancer at the studio.

And something about 0.01% of the engineers I have met have any interesting in doing...

Or join a group run training for a marathon.

Now that's just silly, group runs are everywhere around here.

I've worked in office parks that were technology hubs in the overall New York Metro but in New Jersey, in the Greater Boston Metro on the Route 128 Corridor, but half-hour or more away, in some cases in another state (eg the failed/killed DEC's real-estate in NH taken over by BigGreenPyramidFinancialCo). In North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, but thus not in Raleigh nor Durham city centers or urban village areas themselves

Ah, I see, you are one of the NYC snobs, where "anything more than 10 miles from Manhattan is the boonies" and can't imagine that anyone could possibly enjoy nature more than wall-to-wall buildings, constant noise pollution, and a dull glow in the sky every night.

Well, I don't see the Bay Area on that list, so I'm not sure why you are talking like you really know what life is like here. I have lived all over the Bay Area, from the city, to the "suburbs", to the hills with a 50-mile view from my back porch. For a few years I even lived in the northern Santa Cruz foothills and commuted 20 miles (which on 280 is about 20 minutes - probably less than many commutes on public transit in NY) into SF.

MANY people (me included) honestly don't want to live in the middle of a city, and it's absurd to pretend many of the "multii-talented multi-intelligenced people" can't think the same way. If you want to be in or around a world-class city, San Francisco is SO much more accessible than New York. No one here thinks "oh my god the city is 20 miles away I can't imagine going that far!" Plus you are 3 hours from world class skiing in Tahoe, 3 hours from Yosemite, an hour from Napa and Sonoma, 1/2 an hour from world class surfing, 1/2 hour from hiking though old growth Redwood/Giant Sequoia forests, probably the some of the best roads for cycling Skyline through the Santa Cruz Mountains, not to mention Monterrey, Big Sur, etc. And, sure, you need a car to get to most those, but who cares? That's kind of the point - to get OUT. I also love to drive cars, and there are some amazing twisty roads in the mountains as well as 2 world-class race tracks (Sears Point and Laguna Seca) within 2 hours where I can track my C2S.

I suppose Californians will never really understand New Yorkers and vice versa. Different lifestyles, but both can be equally valid and fulfilling, and there are PLENTY of people wanting one of the other to keep both regions thriving, as long (in both areas) people can continue to afford living there. I'm not knocking the NY or the city lifestyle, I know lots of people who love it, but I know many more who don't. And many of those who do have still decided to move out once they started raising a family - despite what the media wants you to think, for every 20 year old college dropout starting a company there are dozens of experienced senior engineers (who have done the urban lifestyle and are ready for something else) doing the same (or actually making that 20 year old's idea work).

Oakland is the West Coast's Brooklyn

[billstewart]

It's apparently where the hipsters are moving, now that the Mission is full.

Huh? There are great restaurants here

[billstewart]

Downtown Mountain View typically has 25 different cuisines in its 4-block restaurant drag, ranging from greasy spoon Chinese to Michelin star (depending on who's chef at TJ's that year.) You can get better Korean or Indian down on El Camino, and there are some other cuisines you have to look around for, and it can be worth driving to Milpitas for some kinds of Chinese. (And sure, Nolan Bushnell had to open his own restaurant just to get one he thought was good enough, but that was the 80s and just because he built Chuck E. Cheese didn't mean he was going to eat there.)

And yeah, if the traffic isn't bad, it's because the economy is, but it's still better than LA or NYC. And unfortunately the trains really only work for going to the city, not coming from the city down here to work.

SF and Oakland are still Silicon Valley

[billstewart]

Sure, you can live in a city or you can live in burbs, and there are parts of the Valley you can't easily reach from the cities without an ugly drive, but it's still the same region and you get the cultural advantages of all of them if you want to pay attention. (On the other hand, I did get married before moving here, so nightlife has been a lot less important than if I were single. I had one friend who moved from San Jose up to the city because of that, but ended up falling in love with another musician who didn't live in the city either :-)

Little Silicon

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to live in the Bay Area but the very high prices that often don't match the wages drove me away. Not so surprisingly, there are other "little silicons" dotting the country now as more and more of the software companies find more affordable places to do business. Utah is one of them. Lots of the Disney games are developed here. Austin is another. As SV prices itself out of competition, at least there are other places a software developer can go.

Re:Little Silicon

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to live in the Bay Area but the very high prices that often don't match the wages drove me away.

When wages match housing, that signals the closing of the loop of inflation. This is how inflation has been under control since the 1980's: Keep wages flat. Import brains from overseas for a fraction of what a native brain would charge.

panic: racist truth encountered.

[Anonymous Coward]

The undeniably racist and inconvenient truth is that back several thousand years ago, Asians traded humanity for efficiency. Liberty, individuality and the ability to metabolize alcohol have been bred out of that gene pool. They are culturally mask-programmed to succeed. If they fail to succeed they are programmed for suicide. That is why the term "ROM-head" was coined.

Beehives and anthills are efficient for that same reason. Liberty and individualism could only have arisen in that part of the world where recessive traits could be cultivated.

Tyranny is dominant, liberty is recessive.