I've lived here for nearly a decade. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at these prices. It's not that one SF dollar is worth ten Manhattan dollars, but rather that people are paying Lamborghini prices for a Mini Cooper and congratulating themselves on the purchase.
The bay area is definitely a world leader in smugness and self-satisfaction. The restaurant selection in SF is perhaps on par with the east village, but more expensive and provincial. It sure is "endlessly great" not to be able to get decent food after 10pm!
I've lived here for a decade, and am yet to tire of the food. There are more places to try than time and energy, new ones opening all the time, and plenty of great food from nearly every culinary tradition. Ukranian? Burmese? French? You name it, you can get something pretty decent or better in the Bay. Yes, just like NYC.
Whether or not it's valuable to live here depends on a lot of factors. The general advice tends to be of little value- like telling people where to go to college.
There's a lot of smugness here, sure. And SF has no monopoly. In Manhattan, I've met plenty of people that think they're at the center of the universe and the peak of civilization. Some that grew up there and never left and don't understand why anybody should see what else there is.
If you know where to look, you can find decent food after 10PM. Yes stuff closes early, it's true, and it'd be great if you could buy alcohol until 4am like Manhattan.
> There's a lot of smugness here, sure. And SF has no monopoly. In Manhattan, I've met plenty of people that think they're at the center of the universe and the peak of civilization. Some that grew up there and never left and don't understand why anybody should see what else there is.
When I lived in London I feel like a I regularly ran into New Yorkers who would roll their eyes at the mere mention of an American city that wasn't New York. Certainly SF has the lock on tech douchebags but NYC is unrivaled in civic arrogance.
It's justified. People draw comparisons between SF and NYC, but it only serves to underscore the fact that they know absolutely nothing about what they're comparing.
One is a world-class city on par with London, Paris or Tokyo. The other is a mid-sized American city with nice weather and small-town infrastructure, and a notoriety that accidentally exceeded its potential in the 1960s. The main reason it's the epicenter of the tech world today is because it's the closest thing to culture that silicon valley gets. And I say that as someone who loves (or used to love) this city. It's simply not worth paying New York prices to live in Nerdistan sur Mer.
> The bay area is definitely a world leader in smugness and self-satisfaction.
If anything is neck and neck with it, I would say it's NYC. To some of the people I knew who came from NYC, that fact almost formed the entirety of their identity.
The bay area is definitely a world leader in smugness and self-satisfaction. The restaurant selection in SF is perhaps on par with the east village, but more expensive and provincial. It sure is "endlessly great" not to be able to get decent food after 10pm!
Also, you're wrong about salaries.