The writer had some expectations and was used to things being a certain way in his native Poland, but was disheartened to find that they were different in CA. Ultimately, he could not / did not adjust, and decided to move to NY. Main complaints:<p>- Weather: The Bay Area has none. The changing seasons and large variations in weather they brought was something the writer missed.<p>- Culture (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. The main leisure activities in the Bay Area are centered around enjoying nature and food . There is no music, or art scene of any sort.<p>- Public Transport (or lack thereof): The Bay Area has none. This means that many weekend hours are spent getting to a particular place where the leisure activity (which is already not to the taste of the writer) will occur, and this also entails advance planning!<p>- Variety (or lack thereof): There is a lack of variety, whether it be in the type of people encountered, the conversations, the cities/suburbs, or the scenery.<p>- Affordability (or lack thereof): Flimsy, modest houses cost north of a million bucks minimum. Everything that requires human labor is stratospherically expensive.<p>- Politics: Even though the writer is ostensibly of a similar persuasion as most Bay Area residents (left-leaning liberal), the actual policies and attitudes of Bay Area residents are heavily arrogant, technocratic, plutocratic and short-sighted.<p>All of the observations ring true. But the overall impression I got was that the author really did not or could not change himself, and expected something the Bay Area never offered in reality.
Lots of negative comments here but the author's personal experience resonates with my own.<p>I would add that I found it personally stifling to be in an environment where there's a lot of pressure to be constantly upbeat and positive.<p>It feels related to the culture of competition, but not feeling free to express anything negative made me feel socially suffocated when I was in California. Maybe it's in part because I grew up in an environment where sardonic humor was a go-to coping mechanism, but pretending that bad things aren't there makes me feel worse about them.<p>I think there's a balance to be had: I'm grateful that the experience forced me to think more about when I use negative humor (or just complaining/saying negative things that aren't funny), how it can affect people in different ways based on their personal backgrounds and personality. But I don't think California is for me.
> South Bay terrible<p>> Unfortunately, suburbs typically mean zero walkability<p>I grew up in the Bay Area so I think I know how to do it: An electric bike makes most of the pain go away. I've been exploring South Bay since moving here and finding all kinds of cool things on my bike that are invisible by car (walking is not an option, author is right about that.) Just the other day I rode to the San Jose Diridon train station, threw my bike on Caltrans and spent the day riding my bike around San Francisco. Electric bike is the only way to explore SF in my opinion. I'm going to buy a second battery for my bike soon, then put my bike on Bart and go to Berkeley where I went to University. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. You don't need a car to avoid being stuck in the suburbs.<p>tldl; Get an electric bike and learn the public transport system
I don't understand the author's focus on himself and his personal happiness, even though he is obviously entitled to it. This really illustrates the entire Millennial focus on "do what makes you happy" to me.<p>People don't live in the suburbs because they want access to museums and night clubs for themselves. They give up their own happiness for the sake of their children. They buy a more expensive home to put their children into a higher-achieving school. They live in a remote cul-de-sac so their children can safely ride bicycles and shoot hoops in the driveway. Their idea of "going out" is a drab, desiccated local park in the foothills because it is safe and healthy, not because it's fun or diverse. They put pressure on their kids to succeed so they can afford to live in this area when they grow up and repeat the cycle to become well-paid professionals and suburban parents. People pursue this stressful and family-focused lifestyle away from big, busy cities precisely because they want the same for their children, or better.<p>When the author says that there is no clubbing or spontaneity in Silicon Valley, he demonstrates just how out of touch he is with our local communities, and how little he understood the motivations of the people living here. It makes all the sense in the world for him to move away and find a better fit for his personality! I hope he likes New York better! People live here because they are executing a very precise and demanding life plan for the sake of the next generation, not because they want to be spontaneous and fun. We don't need that here.
This feels accurate to me. I recently moved back to Portland from Silicon Valley, and the extreme cost of living, the lack of culture, lack of good food, and workaholic culture were a big part of it. If you live in Cupertino, Campbell, Sunnyvale, I struggle to even think of things like a decent bar.
I empathize with most of what he writes, but an irritatingly common pattern I notice when people criticize SV is pointing at destitute people next to wealthy people - as if proximity is the same as causality. California has more than its share of destitution, but fifty years of NIMBYs and catastrophically bad housing policy are a better candidate for blame. If you make housing expensive you shouldn't be surprised when people go unhoused and when everything becomes expensive because labor (which has to be housed) is expensive.
Thank you for writing this. It resonated deeply with me, I spent 2 years in the SFBA and left in the end because I had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right but could not verbalise as clearly as you have. Your blog post has given me some sort of catharsis.<p>Much like there are some people in this society/world that we will have personality clashes with regardless I believe there are cities in this world that we will have the same personality clashes with. It grates, it wears you down and after a while you have to leave. I often feel affinity or antipathy within minutes of leaving the airport of a particular city. The SFBA was a 'wtf have I done by moving here, ok I'll give it a couple of years to warm to it' and although there was lots to love I never connected on a deep level. It's a subjective personal thing for which there is no wherefore.
I loved living in NYC for city stuff, but came to miss Mexican and South Indian food, hikes, surf, Fry’s (RIP), talking with other techies rather than being a curio for finbros. Flavor in the Bay, well, Oakland/Berkeley.
A lot of pro-urban discussions come from the perspective of single people and young couples. Exciting, spontaneous, etc.<p>I would appreciate more perspectives from parents and families. Do you use strollers (and take them on the bus) or just carry babies everywhere? If you need to buy things at the market, do you take your two-year-old or leave them at home? Do you buy furniture or only rent furnished places? If you have a big family how do you find a big enough place? Do kids practice their musical instruments at home, or does that bother the neighbors?
It is quite funny how remarkably similar some of the seasons have been the last few years. One of the cooler summer days feels no different than the warmer days in winter. Contrast that to other areas and you know immediately what season it is... Here, it can be hard to tell and sometimes does make things blur together a bit. Sometimes I feel like seasons leads to novelty and leads to a better sense of time and memory. Maybe that's why some of the last years seem to be a bit of a blur and why some novelty has been lost.
The suburbs are a vampire that sucks the life and fun out of everything.<p>Most americans that tolerate them
have never lived in a walkable city before, so they don't know that there is a better way.
The chorus almost always goes:<p>Silicon Valley in particular has been known for boring suburbs (with the rare except being SF with its $5000 rents), massive wealth disparities, and general lack of livability and inability to get around easily.<p>These are well documented issues of living in the bay. What's with the surprise? Do people not do research before uprooting?
> Also, I think I haven’t really met in person even a single person (openly) into this stuff, so maybe it’s an exaggerated myth, or maybe simply much more common in just VC/startup/big money circles?<p>Or maybe you caught them on a macrodose day
I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bay Area, and I too hate that it’s not like Europe. Europe is so much better (except that we are stuck in our low paying shit jobs of course). /s :)
> <i>walking from one suburb town – Mountain View – to an adjacent one, Palo Alto, would take 1.5 uninspiring hours to walk with many intersections on busy highway streets. Even a drive would be ~half an hour!</i><p>In bad traffic, this might be true if you're measuring from downtown PA to downtown MV. But that's because downtown PA is at the northern tip of PA (there's Cal Ave and Midtown further south, and much closer to MV) and downtown MV is toward the southern end of MV.<p>If you were to cherry-pick an alternative stat, you'd point out that downtown Palo Alto is just a 5 minute drive from downtown Menlo Park. There's also Caltrain, that takes 10 mins to get from MV to PA or PA to MP.
Kinda surprised Jeremy Askenas (Backbone/CoffeeScript creator) shared what is yet another "cali sux, i'm leaving" goodbye note.<p>Feeling the SF Bay burnout, too?