No, I don’t live in a bubble. While I’ve spent most of my life in the Bay Area, I’ve lived in the Midwest and spent considerable time elsewhere. I travel often and make it a point to vacation internationally at least once a year. If you’ve visited more than 26 states and 32 countries, welcome to my bubble.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, although I am an advice columnist, but I believe very matter-of-factly that the San Francisco Bay Area is the best place to live and work. I very much welcome your rebuttals and opinions in the comments.
Employment
I present to you Exhibit A which details the most recent unemployment rates for the largest cities in America. Take a look at SF, coming in at a very low 5.9%. Seattle’s got us beat by more than a percentage point. Damn you, rainy city! I need to look into that. I figure Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon are dominating the labor market up there. As a comparison, the country is at 7.3% unemployment.
It’s not surprising that the opportunities to make money in this town are limitless. Pink-slipped? No problem! Take your jalopy of a car and make about $40/hour driving for Sidecar, Lyft, or Uber which were all founded in this very city. You can’t take full advantage of this opportunity living in car-less Manhattan!
Sign up to run errands for TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit was founded in Boston, but they decided to move their operations to SF. DOH! Sorry Boston!
If we really want to get old school, puhleeze, this is the birth place of Craigslist. That site where you found your first apartment, that used couch, your casual encounters or missed connections? SF Bay Area is the original Craigslist location.
Even for the gainfully employed, you can always make an extra buck in this town. Dean and I rented out our piddly 1-bedroom apartment on AirBnB to the tune of several thousand dollars in 2012. Money is growing on trees in this town.
Innovation
Sure a lot of these companies have opened up sites and locations throughout the U.S., but remember they were founded here. Not only were they founded here, they were most likely funded here. You don’t start a company and fly to Seattle to get funding. You’re coming to Sand Hill Road. You’re dining at Buck’s.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Dropbox, AirBnB, Square…SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA IN DA HOUSE!
Standard of Living
Yes, it’s really fucking expensive to live here. Home prices and rents are sky-high, but it’s not something a little creativity can’t solve. You don’t have to live in the center of the city to experience everything that San Francisco has to offer. Rents in the outer neighborhoods (Richmond, Sunset) are perfectly acceptable. And these days, lots of people are making the move to Oakland where both rents and homes are much cheaper. It’s akin to living in Brooklyn.
Prices are high because paychecks are high. I don’t know if you saw my tweet a month ago about a city in Silicon Valley.
In 4Q12, the avg San Mateo earner made $168k/year—the top earning county in the US, w/ paychecks 50% greater than Manhattan.
If you’re not following me on Twitter, you can here @cgacad. I tweet regularly and the tweets are pretty informative.
We’ve got a lot of other problems too besides a high cost of living, like a backwardly-evolving transportation system (complete with regular strikes and shutdowns). But it’s not unlike any other city. We’ve got our rampant homeless situation just like Detroit has its vacancies and NYC has its rats and bedbugs.
We’ve also got the best universities (UC Berkeley and Stanford), world-class wine and food (Sonoma and Napa)…I could go on and on. But I wouldn’t want to brag 😉
Please share this post and let’s get this debate started!
What city do you think is best?
What do you like and dislike about San Francisco?
JAnine Huldie
Being an wast coast girl, I can’t help, but love NY and NYC specifically, but then again I think home is truly where the heart is. So, I totally understand how you feel about San Francisco, because I think no matter where you travel or roam, you will always have an affinity for where your home is (if that makes sense).
Catherine
yes, that definitely makes sense because i am totally biased when it comes to SF. that said, NYC is my second fave.
CeCe @Pink Sunshine
I’m biased because I pretty much love SD to pieces and can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s still expensive here; but not nearly as bad as SF or NYC. I love the weather here so so much. I thrive on warmth and sunshine. My little sis lives in SF and she loves it. She went there for college and never came back. It is a beautiful city.
Catherine
cece, i haven’t been to SD since i was a kid. i need to go back. my husband lived there for a few years and says great things about it.
Dana
I don’t agree or disagree with you, Catherine. I do know that San Francisco is a wonderful place to visit. My town was rated #8 out of 100 in Money’s list of best American small cities, so I’m pretty happy where I am. As far as large cities go, SF would be hard to beat.
Catherine
dana, you should blog more about your hometown. sounds like a wonderful place to live!
The Dose of Reality
I adore San Francisco. ADORE. My husband’s company is based there, so moving would be a possibility. We honestly thought about it at one point, but I just can’t imagine how we’d manage given the high cost of living. Honestly. It’s just so much more expensive to live there than Charlotte that it would really affect the way we were able to live. But if that were not such a big factor, I’d be there in a heartbeat!! –Lisa
Catherine
lisa, i work for wells fargo, so we are in lock-step with charlotte because of the wachovia acquisition. i am dying to get out there. i see pictures from my coworkers and i keep telling my boss, “when are we going to have an offsite in charlotte?!”
The Dose of Reality
My husband works for Wells Fargo, too! (He was with Wachovia before that) I hope you make it out this way for a trip eventually!! –Lisa
Catherine
oh wow! we both work for the stagecoach. it’s a hard company to leave, that’s for sure.
Tamara
No real rebuttals from me. San Francisco is my favorite city and I lived there for two years. The only reason we live here is family. That’s it. I can’t seem to get my family to go west. So we deal with the humidity and energy costs I never had in SF, but we do get some nice seasons..occasionally.
I wish I could win the lottery and have a house on both coasts!
Catherine
great minds think alike, tamara. if i suddenly became rich, i would totally be bicoastal.
Patrick Weseman
I have lived here most of my life. I have traveled all over.
When I was a kid and young adult, I wanted to move away but after the Navy I came back.
Even though it is costly to live here and they don’t pay educators and teachers well, I like living here. Here some of the reasons:
– The amount of culturally different things to do. We have everything from concerts to the theater to movies to all the different museums to street festivals to reliving history with the California missions. It is amazeballs what you can do.
– You are very close to many different things. From my house it is an hour to Santa Cruz and great surfing and about three hours to Sierra mountains and snow. You can’t beat that.
– Many different cultural opportunities. I have taken my kids to different cultural events around the bay. They have learned about different cultures (even though I am not a business type), I think it is good in this global marketplace that young people are exposed to different cultures because that way they at least know a little bit about different people and their ways.
– Sports. For college football we have three D-I teams, for the rest of college sports we have six D-I teams (not counting Pacific in Stockton-more Central Valley). We have two NFL, two MLB, an NBA team, a MLS team, a NHL team and an Arena Football League team. We just hosted the America’s Cup and our little race track in Sonoma is one of the few in the country that hosts NASCAR, Indy Cars and the dragsters.
Just a few things about the Bay Area.
Catherine
YES PATRICK! i was going to get into the cultural diversity of the bay area, but then my post started to get too long so i cut that part out. but you aren’t going to hear any complaints from me. this place has got it all!
mcm
Thought you might be intrigued by this SFist piece, which sort of sums up my thinking: the Bay Area is a great place to live for those in higher income brackets, but it’s really tough to have a middle class life here. I mean, yeah, you can earn extra income via Sidecar or Taskrabbit… but is that really how you want to spend your precious free time?
http://sfist.com/2013/10/28/in_sf_the_lucky_string_together_tas.php
Don’t get me wrong, we love our life here and feel lucky to be able to afford it… but I just don’t understand how this cost of living is sustainable. And I suspect that in the long run, it won’t be.
Also, I must admit I still miss the Chicago theater scene! But that’s just me being a theater snob….
Catherine
michaela, thank you for sending that article. i hadn’t seen that. i do think this place is stereotyped as being a home for the wealthy, but i have family and friends (my parents included) who are definitively middle class. my dad, in fact, does not have a college degree. they shriek when i tell them our price range for a home, but honestly if i wanted to be more economical, we’d focus on cheaper neighborhoods like alameda where my parents live. there are affordable areas within the bay area that run counter, i think, to the unsustainability.
Nellie @ Brooklyn Active Mama
It sounds fantastic and I love how much you love your city. It reminds me of the exact way I feel about NYC 🙂 I will be visiting San Fran at the end of July next year with a buddy and even though it will most likely only be for a few hours (staying in San Jose) I can’t wait!
Catherine
nyc is my next favorite city, nellie!!!
Stefanie @ The Broke and Beautiful Life
I’ve been wanting to rent out on airb’n’b but NYC is dealing with some major legal pushback. I did it several times when I lived in Jersey and loved it. Talk about easy money.
A kid I went to high school with is the co-founder of lyft.
Catherine
we’ve had some similar issues with airbnb, but i believe they’ve been sorted out. cannot believe you know the cofounder of lyft. that is celebrity status over here.
FitBritt@MyOwnBalance
I haven’t spent a lot of time in San Fran, mostly just at the airport and driving through on my way to wine country but it looks like a beautiful place. The only thing I couldn’t cope with is the foggy/cool weather in the summer. I really like NYC except that it is freezing here for 6 months out of the year! I think I would be happiest in Southern California!
Catherine
well nyc is definitely my 2nd favorite city and if i had to pick a 3rd, it would probably be LA. that constant sunny weather is to-die-for.
InTHEMIDDLE
We went to SF this summer and I fell in love with it! While I love and adore west Texas if I had to leave and it was my choice, hands down I would pick San Fran. Love all your info friend!
Catherine
that is awesome. i’m so glad you had a great time in SF!
michelle
I can’t speak to city living because I am not a city girl. I don’t mind visiting but I don’t want to live in one.
Catherine
michelle, i grew up in the burbs in a small town so definitely see the benefits of that as well!
Charlotte
I really loved San Fran. I tend to like west coast cities more than those on the east coast. I do dream of coming back soon; and definitely would love to move out there eventually. Fingers crossed we can make it happen sometime.
Catherine
yes, charlotte, you need to come back! jobs aplenty over here. it’s craziness. of course there is sticker shock, but then you will negotiate your compensation so that it is commensurate with your needs.
Jeannie
Hi,
I grew up in NYC; but moved to Florida. I’m happiest in mild weather and place that values education. Not to mention exceptional hospitals. Now, I’m moving to SF for the sake of my kids to grow exposed to culture the same as I was as a child. I just don’t need to give weather! Lol. I was wondering best place to live for children. My husband will be an school administrator in Oakland, and I don’t want to be to far from his job but can’t afford to go overboard with rent! I’m a stay at home mother! SF is a dream come true, just nervous to leave family behind