San Francisco

by bencevans • 13 years ago

255 255 13 years ago

wallio• 13 years ago

It is very hard to not love this guy.

Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.

jamesaguilar5• 13 years ago

You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment, and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.

aaronblohowiak• 13 years ago

Is your estimate of 65 including state (10%) and city (1.5%) taxes?

sbisker• 13 years ago

That may have been true a year ago, but a 2br apartment for 1k a person would currently put you no closer to the city than the outer richmond.

nilkn4• 13 years ago

For comparison, my roommate and I in Houston pay $1950/month for our apartment (or $975/person). 1300 sq ft, brand new hardwood floor, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, huge windows, rain showers, full-sized washer/dryer in-unit, concierge service, etc. I also walk to work; it takes me about 5 minutes.

So we're paying almost exactly half what the rent would be in SF, assuming the apartment you had in mind is of the same quality. We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though.

bherms6• 13 years ago

Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don't have much left.

jurassic2• 13 years ago

28k for food and random living expenses is a lot of money unless you are eating out for every meal; that's more that some people's entire paycheck (like grad students.) If you can't make room for savings in there, it definitely shows a lack of priorities.

acdha2• 13 years ago

$70 a day for “food and random living expenses” is far from not having much left, particularly after your $12K for “transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans” which is pretty generous. Sure, you can definitely spend that much but it's not like you need to have every single meal at a nice restaurant, go to bars every night, etc.

steveklabnik2• 13 years ago

$28k disposable... don't have much left.

For some context:

In 2010, in the United States, the poverty threshold for one person under 65 was US$11,344 (annual income);

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

and

Half of Americans live below or at the poverty line

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/30/half_of_americans_living_bel...

Now, I know that SF is one of the more expensive places to live in this country, but still.

bifrost6• 13 years ago

Yes, I've heard this from just about everyone. If you're making $50k in this city, you're basically working poor. With the average 2 bedroom condo renting for $2500+ and houses renting for more, you're dropping a ton of your income just on a place to live. Its not uncommon to see a single bedroom renting for $1600+ in the city.

bherms6• 13 years ago

Avg 1br prices are up to over $2500 now. Granted depending on area and quality, you can get down to $1600, but a majority are mid to high $2ks.

kingkilr• 13 years ago

I don't know if it's common, but it is definitely possible to save money while making 100k in SF.

jurassic2• 13 years ago

I think this is normal everywhere in the US. I expect this has little to do with SF and more to do with the fact that many people all over the country, regardless of income level, are living far beyond their means and lack the discipline to make saving a priority; the US average personal savings rate has fallen to 2.5%. But what percentage buys cable tv, smartphones with data plans, auto loans for more car than they needed, etc?

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt

lotharbot• 13 years ago

People in the US don't do well at saving. But SF is still abnormal -- you need a considerably higher salary to have the same quality of living + savings in SF as compared to many other cities.

For example: elsewhere in this thread it was stated that a one bedroom apartment runs $2500+ in SF. In my neighborhood, a decent one bedroom apartment might run $700. Sure, you might earn $90k instead of $100k, but you save twice the difference just in rent.

neilk• 13 years ago

It is very common.

But it's also the lifestyle that forces this. I was continually perplexed at how all of my colleagues seemed to be able to afford to go to all these conferences (not always on company dime), buy the most expensive coffee, upgrade their bleeding-edge laptop the moment Apple puts out a new one, and so on. I figured out later that they just weren't saving or investing any money, and often were even accumulating debt despite their high salaries.

The culture of always being at work (or at least seeming to be) is a factor too. More and more of your meals are eaten outside the home. A lot of people use cleaning services.

Some people feel they need to do all this to keep up. I'm not sure they're wrong. When I pulled out a three-year-old iPhone, people gawped at it, like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. I lived in a district which was not the Mission or SOMA and people acted like I lived off the edge of the world.

jrockway• 13 years ago

You're forgetting how much money people outside of San Francisco spend on their car. That makes expensive coffee, eating out, and computer upgrades look like pocket change.

kelnos• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if it's normal, but I can at least offer my own anecdotal experience: I'm a single guy who's been out of school for almost 10 years, living in SF for the past 3 years. I make a bit more than the $100k figure you're asking about, but if I were to adjust my income down, I'd still be saving ~35% of my take-home pay every month. And this is including eating out 8-10 times a week and going out to bars 3-4 times a week. I've since paid off my college loans, but while I was paying them I was tossing close to $1k at them per month while maintaining my savings rate. I'm not frugal, but neither am I a crazy spender either. At this point I've developed enough of a cushion that I could take 2-2.5 years off work if I wanted to.

So it's definitely doable. I think as another poster commented, it's more about priorities than ability. There's certainly enough to do here and spend money on that you could spend all your money with nothing to save, but you'd have to work at it. Especially for someone working in tech and making 6 figures, living in SF and not saving is a choice, and by no means a necessity.

bherms6• 13 years ago

Very happy he enjoyed the city! Next time he's in town, I'll be sure I'm following his twitter to remain informed. I'd love to buy him a drink.

While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot (not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.

michael_miller2• 13 years ago

What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry).

I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.

bherms6• 13 years ago

but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry)

That's why I said "not so much as 10-20 years ago". It seems like our community is actually destroying what made SF so special in years past. That being said, while a majority of people coming in are fairly well-off 20-something tech industry kids, the fact that SF prides itself as being an "anything goes, something for everyone" kind of city helps to bring out the quirkiness and eccentricities of people who otherwise would've never found that side of themselves. In addition, if you look in the right places, you will find a ton of the goofy oddballs that made SF such a special place.

bifrost6• 13 years ago

The coffee is very different than the Italian one

I've heard this many times :)

His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.

MaxGabriel• 13 years ago

"Dual Income, No Kids" (I had to look it up)

spikels4• 13 years ago

Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years.

The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing:

   Persons under 18 (2010 Census)
   US 23.7% [2]
   SF 13.5% [3]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck [NSFW: male nudity & mild violence]

[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

antirez2• 13 years ago

The census citation is pretty incredible indeed... About schools, that's something you could never tell just looking at the city that seems very civilized, and this usually correlates with quality of schools. I hope there will be efforts to fix that in the future.

kryten3• 13 years ago

Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children...

Expensive: check. Bad schools: check. Disfunctional government: check. Drugs on streets: check. Lots of crazies: check.

The thing I hate is that people wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Going to move out to the countryside I think...

As for the nutter on BART, I got urinated on whilst on the tube in London .... twice. And no I was not on fire :)

cmccabe6• 13 years ago

I agree, SF is a fun place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I also don't like how some San Franciscans like to put down other areas. You can have pride in your city without insulting other people and places. As someone who grew up in a poorer area, it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Most SF people are nice, but it's those other few people who ruin it for me.

batbomb2• 13 years ago

I think Rent Control tends to hold people hostage from having new families (as turnover in larger houses is much smaller as a result, and there's no real benefit to waiting to have a family), and that's a part of it. While I'll agree that most families don't need a huge house to live, you at least need a 2 or 3BR house (especially as the become teenagers) to raise 2 children. At current market rates, you'd need $3k at least (in a decent cheaper neighborhood like the Sunset, Richmond districts) in order to raise kids right now. I don't think that's feasible with less than 140k gross family income.

abalone4• 13 years ago

That's comparing it to the US average. To compare it to other cities, Manhattan is 17.1% and that's considered a "baby boom" (source: NYT article from a few years ago).

Anecdotally I see a lot more young families popping up in my neighborhood (Nopa / lower haight) over the past few years. Though i'm not sure if everyone can stay if the market stays this way when they need more space.

subsystem3• 13 years ago

Regarding [1], I'd be more worried that there's only one guy helping out.

Void_• 13 years ago

This (no children) is what I hated about the city when I stayed there over the summer. And the smell.

bifrost6• 13 years ago

Unfortunately we have a variety of smells, from the unabated bodily waste (homeless, drunks) to the poorly functioning sewer system.

However, we know why the sewer system isn't functioning well - low flow toilets. Yes, the lack of water to move effluent down the system causes it to get stuck and then start drying and it creates a pretty horrible smell.

The homeless situation is out of hand due to the unfortunate confluence of well meaning people and a lack of framework to deal with the chronically homeless.

davidw3• 13 years ago

One of the things that I really noticed when I moved from San Francisco to Italy was that here (Padua, Italy), there are young people, old people, rich people, and people not so well off. San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist. No kids, no old people, no people with sort of average jobs. I didn't like it, it felt too strange to me. I prefer to have a mix of people from all walks of life.

Also, some people - a minority, but "anecdotally significant" - seem to be a bit smug: like living in San Francisco makes them better somehow.

That said... I don't regret the time I spent there, and it's a city I heartily recommend to Europeans visiting the US, as it'll be a lot more familiar to them than something like Los Angeles, and it has a ton of stuff to do and see. And California in general has probably the most variety of any one US state in terms of geography, so if you get bored of the city, you can go the mountains, or the "lost coast" up north, or Death Valley, or pretty much whatever suits your fancy.

physcab2• 13 years ago

I hadn't thought about the "people from all walks of life" aspect missing from SF before. I find that true as well. I haven't been to many other big cities but I'm curious how SF relates on that aspect to cities such as Seattle, New York, and LA. I wonder if SF actually does have quite a lot of diversity if you expand your definition of SF from anything within 10 minutes of Civic Center to everything from Outer Sunset to South San Francisco.

philsnow4• 13 years ago

Take a walk around SF's Chinatown if you want one example of people who are a mix of: young / old / rich / not so well off.

The outer Sunset and Richmond have lots of families and older folks.

rdouble8• 13 years ago

There are actually a lot of kids, and people with average jobs in SF. They just aren't white so tech people don't notice them.

Regarding old people, retired people are actually the fastest growing demographic in the city.

jseliger• 13 years ago

San Francisco is this kind of weird bubble where everyone has to have money to be there, so "regular people" don't exist

I've dropped this link many times before, but it's still relevant here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... . There's not really a "weird bubble" so much as basic economics at work: SF is a desirable place to live in many respects, but it's virtually impossible to build new housing there for reasons discussed at the link. In the face of exploding demand and constant supply, prices rise.

Regular people move to the sunbelt, where development is easy and real estate prices more reasonable, and the people who have the money and/or need to be in SF stay/move there.

2pasc2• 13 years ago

I think that this argument about kids in San Francisco is totally wrong. There are tons of kids in San Francisco...just not in the neighborhood that he went! Go to the Richmond, the Sunset, the Marina, Cole Valley, or especially Noe Valley...and you will see tons of kids. But sure, in SOMA or Union Square/Financial District...not so much.

Why is that ? Because San Francisco is a very neighborhood-focused city - where kids stay in kid friendly neighborhoods, and where younger hipsters or developers live in more fun neighborhoods with typically less babies.

lakethun2• 13 years ago

Your impressions are incorrect. From a comment above:

   Persons under 18 (2010 Census)
   US 23.7% [2]
   SF 13.5% [3]

[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

cmccabe6• 13 years ago

There is a lot of truth in this. SOMA and the Financial District are very much places to work, not places to live. I remember being in SOMA a week or two ago on Saturday at 5pm and everything was closed. I was there for an event at the museum of modern art (MOMA). Even Starbucks had shut down! It's a ghost town on the weekends. In fact, some San Franciscans don't think that SOMA is a real neighborhood, for exactly these reasons. The Embarcadero area is also kind of touristy, because the docks are there. If you want to see the real SF, you're better off going to someplace like Haight-Ashbury or the Mission.

The weird thing is that the west part of the city is effectively a suburb of the east part (but "suburb" is a dirty word in SF). Yes, I am oversimplifying here-- so sue me. I guess one nice thing is that the commuters can walk to work rather than driving.

kaib• 13 years ago

The comment on schools is incorrect. The school system changed a year back and now you have a very high chance of making it to your neighborhood school. This is both from reading the system description and first hand accounts from friends with kids going to Kindergarden.

Noe Valley is pretty nice and it's hard to say if it's more expensive than say Mountain View in the south.

to3m• 13 years ago

The comment about lack of children in San Francisco reminded me of this piece: http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2007/09/rhythm-of-memory.html

austinz• 13 years ago

I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.

david927• 13 years ago

The nearby town of Taormina is awesome.

weston• 13 years ago

I can confirm both: Taormina and Catania are gorgeous, amazing cities. The whole island of Sicily is also a wonderful place to visit.... I highly recommend it!

jamesjguthrie• 13 years ago

I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.

arkem• 13 years ago

This is very specifically about the San Francisco city area. The peninsular and south bay are much more suburban and family friendly.

Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco.

Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?

michael_miller2• 13 years ago

The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great.

The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.

ryandrake• 13 years ago

Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income:

$5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary

I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the 'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer.

Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16 years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!

cmccabe6• 13 years ago

Palo Alto is about 30 miles away from San Francisco and it's a very different place. Those 30 miles will probably take you somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour depending on traffic.

Palo Alto is the traditional headquarters of the venture capital business. Sand Hill Road in particular is famous for its concentration of VC offices, and people use expressions like "the view from Sand Hill Road" to describe how VCs see the world around here. As you might expect, there are a lot of golf courses, excellent restaurants, and some really nice clubs. The Stanford campus is nice, but you'll need a bike or a car to get around (it's over 6000 acres). It is not walkable, but it is a nice place to bike.

Palo Alto has two downtown areas. There are a bunch of places catering to students which are kind of fun, like the Nut House. Palo Alto has a lot of families, at least relative to SF, and it doesn't have that many homeless. But you will probably need to be loaded to get an actual house there.

If you just want to move somewhere in the Bay Area, and you're middle class, I recommend Campbell or perhaps the Willow Glen neighborhood. There are also some nice places in the East Bay. The penninsula and SF are overpriced unless you need to be there for business reasons, or you have so much money it doesn't matter.

ladon86• 13 years ago

What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.

stefantalpalaru• 13 years ago

Sounds like a guided tour with no real exploration of the city.

antirez2• 13 years ago

Well it is, in the sense that, no exploration is really possible in three days full of meetings, but something can be captured walking on the street, talking with many people, most also not native of SF exchanging stories. I just tried to turn my feelings into a blog post without any special goal.

swang• 13 years ago

First I am glad this is not another post about how many homeless people he saw and how he cannot believe it and how people in SF should fix these problems.

Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac Heights.

jechen• 13 years ago

On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling, ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and manage to live in SF for $20k a year (http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-...). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly resourceful.

In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on which to jumpstart life here.)

tommaxwell3• 13 years ago

Haha, I stayed at StartupHouse for awhile before they got shut down by city officials.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Haha, yeah, I stayed at the StartupHouse a bit too. It was great being right in the middle of the city and being able to walk a block for groceries or tech meetups. Got a lot of coding done too! Too bad someone filed a complaint and got it shut down.

I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month, but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month, so could get way cheaper buying longer too.

baddox8• 13 years ago

I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling.

That's fair enough, and describes me when I moved to SF straight out of college. It's probably also fine (even necessary) if you're a student or bootstrapping your own startup. But I've only been here two years, and it didn't take long for me to get sick of having a home situation that's in many ways worse than when I lived in my college's dormitory and significantly worse than my last two years of college living in a one bedroom apartment. With no lack of great and lucrative career opportunities in the area, I wish I didn't have to either live like a starving college kid in a house packed full of starving college kids or spend 20 hours a week searching for an affordable studio apartment in a tolerable location. Although I've actually been hearing good things about Oakland...

tommaxwell3• 13 years ago

I stayed at StartupHouse until they got shut down and I have felt the same way. While I interned at a startup I was making $40k/year (it was a 6-month internship, so really only $20K), and I was able to live perfectly happy. I wasn't able to go out and spend money lavishly all the time, but I ate well, went out with friends on weekends, and overall had a good time.

fibbery• 13 years ago

The person in your link had a room in SF for $575 per month. She also does not have student loans, and the spreadsheet has no list item for health insurance. It's a nice story but not really an option for many/most people living here.

physcab2• 13 years ago

San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF. It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth, just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive. It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in person) who seriously dislike where they live.

agilebyte• 13 years ago

When talking about singles you mean men right?

colmvp• 13 years ago

Yeah seriously. The number of single women I meet in SF is for whatever reason vastly disproportionate to living in other cities in the United States, like New York or Los Angeles.

danmaz742• 13 years ago

"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more."

One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).

keiferski2• 13 years ago

My guess is that foreigners are used to hearing American English from TV shows and movies, and thus find it easier to understand.

danmaz742• 13 years ago

Until very recently, Italian people were only commonly exposed to spoken English through music - and there a lot of UK there. Almost everything on tv is dubbed here (and not long ago there was no almost :)

kroger• 13 years ago

This is true. As someone who speaks English as a second language living in London, I can understand both "standard" American English and "BBC" British English very well.

The problem is that in a London alone you are exposed to all kinds of accents, including Queen's English, Cockney, Scottish English, and Irish.

This video is a good example of how a Cockney accents sounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w

cmccabe6• 13 years ago

The UK was where English first evolved, and it seems like there is a lot more diversity in how it is spoken there. Fragments of older dialects that didn't win out still linger.

The US was settled relatively quickly and there wasn't that much time for regional accents to evolve. There are a few recognizable ones, like the Southern US accent, but it's not as dramatic as something like a Cockney or a Scottish accent in the UK.

wowoc• 13 years ago

I am Polish and I confirm. I thought that my English is not too bad until I went for a short trip to London.

spitx3• 13 years ago

kryten:

Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children...

Does your experience of life in London in recent years (since around late nineties) reflect that of this writer? I think this is one of the few writers (on the topic) I've found balanced and non-alarmist. That's the reason I've used her piece to moot a point that has been posited by many others in a more judgmental and accusative tone. So I ask, is this what London increasingly feels like for secular, middle-income families and individuals?

  "Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim,
  with the majority of them young families. That is
  not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims
  increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, 
  it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours 
  flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t
  see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling
  deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about
  regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they
  never look me in the face.

  I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked
  if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of 
  elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind 
  of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments.
  I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered
  as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had 
  been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a 
  place where I am a stranger.

  I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although
  I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept
  the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite
  it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays,
  though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by 
  young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are
  serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely 
  meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, 
  the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what 
  was on TV last night."

  "In the Nineties, when I arrived, this part of Acton was a
  traditional working-class area. Now there is no trace of 
  any kind of community – that word so cherished by the Left.
  Instead it has been transformed into a giant transit camp 
  and is home to no one. The scale of immigration over recent
  years has created communities throughout London that never 
  need to – or want to – interact with outsiders.

  It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of 
  Jewish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, 
  among others, have arrived in the capital, often displacing
  the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful overt 
  racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, 
  over time, I believe we settled down into a happy mix of
  incorporation and shared aspiration, with disparate 
  peoples walking the same pavements but returning to 
  very different homes – something the Americans call
  “sundown segregation”.

  But now, despite the wishful thinking of multiculturalists,
  wilful segregation by immigrants is increasingly echoed by
  the white population – the rate of white flight from our 
  cities is soaring. According to the Office for National 
  Statistics, 600,000 white Britons have left London in the
  past 10 years. The latest census data shows the breakdown
  in telling detail: some London boroughs have lost a quarter
  of their population of white, British people. The number in
  Redbridge, north London, for example, has fallen by 40,844
  (to 96,253) in this period, while the total population has
  risen by more than 40,335 to 278,970. It isn’t only London
  boroughs. The market town of Wokingham in Berkshire has 
  lost nearly 5 per cent of its white British population.
  I suspect that many white people in London and the Home 
  Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity, 
  especially if they have children. Estate agents don’t 
  advertise this self-segregation, of course. Instead there
  are polite codes for that kind of thing, such as the mention
  of “a good school”, which I believe is code for “mainly 
  white English”. Not surprising when you learn that nearly
  one million pupils do not have English as a first language. 

  I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the
  footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want 
  to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a 
  good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m
  a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with 
  safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond 
  my reach. I see London turning into a place almost 
  exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich.
  It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to
  escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if 
  I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local 
  schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a 
  conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer 
  need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant 
  racists of us all."

Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I...

Edit: Cleanup

Flying_Dwarf• 13 years ago

I'm struggling to find what this has to do with San Francisco? Are you saying SF has been taken over by hipsters and is no longer recognizable as it once were?

spitx3• 13 years ago

You needn't struggle so much to find parallels, if you were to even glance cursorily.

While the general validity and the degree to which this writer's experience is shared by others can certainly be debated (which is the reason I tabled it in the first place), the fact that there are strong parallels cannot be contested.

The agents and parties affected in the two settings, London and S.F., could indeed be different. Nonetheless, the theme remains the same.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

That's just typical Telegraph[1] hateful anti-immigration stuff. perhaps somewhere buried in there are a few grains of truthy material; did multi-culturalism cause ghettos? etc.

Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving.

How does the author know they are muslim?

I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich.

I know many white British non-rich people living in London, but the author is right that London is very expensive. There is a problem with London being the place where everything happens. Some organisations are doing stuff to prevent this (government departments going to the regions; companies moving to much cheaper towns with decent[1] transport; BBC moving to the North; etc.) Perhaps the Telegraph could move their offices to Manchester?

A recent comment I made had the throwaway line about the UK being a lousy place to live. So normally I agree when people say the UK, especially London, sucks.

It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of Jewish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, among others, have arrived in the capital, often displacing the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful overt racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, over time, I believe we settled down into a happy mix of incorporation and shared aspiration, with disparate peoples walking the same pavements but returning to very different homes – something the Americans call “sundown segregation”.

Blacks first arrived in England with the Romans. But, if we restrict ourselves to the bigger immigrations of the Windrush era (1950s) - we still had both hateful racist violence and institutional racism over 40 years later (See Stephen Lawrence murder, 1993).

If I could be arsed I'd trawl through the Telegraph archives to find the hateful screeds they've printed in the past. Faced with that level of hate it's not surprising that people prefer to avoid Telegraph writers.

objclxt2• 13 years ago

Yeah, I'd agree with you that The Telegraph isn't the most balanced of sources when it comes to immigration. It's an overtly right-wing paper.

Yhippa• 13 years ago

This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there).

What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?

codex_irl• 13 years ago

I love the bay area, nothing else to say.

ryanSrich6• 13 years ago

Eh. They can keep it.

• Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1]

• Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2]

After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent

You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me it would never work having 2k per month in student loans.

Also compare that to a place like D.C.

• Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3]

• Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4]

After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent

That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech environment none the less.

1.) http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Franc...

2.)http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_...

3.) http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washing...

4.) http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa...

lobotryas• 13 years ago

You are forgetting the weather.

DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking.

SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it.

This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.

stplsd• 13 years ago

"...every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the... hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. "Isn't great, every day, hot and sunny?" What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather. I'm a mammal, I can afford coats, scarves, cappuccino and rosy cheeked women"

Bill Hicks

philsnow4• 13 years ago

in SF, summer is often colder than winter.

I've never lived in DC, but

  - presence of good chinese food
  - weather (even though I love winter weather, DC summers would not be worth it)
  - jobs (which companies have large presences in SF vs DC-area)

all conspire to make me completely incurious as to whether DC is "$11k/year" nicer than SF.

skwirl• 13 years ago

I suppose this outlook is related to where you grew up. To someone from the north, referring to DC as cold and snowy is preposterous. They had one bad year with snowfall a few years ago, but other than that winter they rarely even crack 10" in recent years, and even that usually comes over only a couple of days during infrequent storms. Their mean temperature is above freezing every month of the year.

ryanSrich6• 13 years ago

I grew up in Syracuse NY. The snowiest city in the U.S. I don't consider D.C. to "have" winters. They have a mild falls until spring.

eli3• 13 years ago

The DC winter is pretty mild. There is perhaps one snowstorm a year. Yes, sometimes there's ice on your car, but if you live and work in the city there's a good chance you don't drive to work or necessarily own a car.

If you want to complain about DC weather, I would direct you to the heat + humidity level in the summer.

SF and DC are very different cities, but based solely on weather I would absolutely take DC + $11,000/year. No question. It's really not that bad and some people even enjoy having discrete seasons.

justanother• 13 years ago

To add something to this discussion: On my South Florida tropical island, rent is 1500-1900 per month, depending on whether you live on a canal, or waterfront (nevermind living on dry land, which is much, much more reasonable). For most of a decade, I've telecommuted and received, well, let's round it down to the San Francisco 119K per year, and yes that's W2, and paid 22.8K/year a month for rent. Snow? Ice? haven't seen them in years. Jackets? Surely you jest, I shiver at 73 degrees.

My point isn't that San Francisco is worse than this or that, but that every day I read that it is the center of the universe, and recruiters used to tell me "but you _have_ to be here, this is the place to _be_" which is terribly unconvincing for persons of my particular persuasion, nevermind that I don't care for wading through bums and traffic.

TL;DR it's a huge universe, and you don't have to put up with California to develop software in it.

Dewie2• 13 years ago

Having more money is pretty much objectively better, while more distinct seasons is personal preference, to a degree.

jusben13693• 13 years ago

SF people have to stop quoting the weather. The summer's are miserable with fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.

tlrobinson2• 13 years ago

The weather is one of the worst things (that and high cost of living) about San Francisco (the city itself, not suburbs). There are maybe 3 weeks a year of actual warm, sunny weather. But you don't get the cold/snowy or hot/humid weather either.

Now, if you live 30+ minutes outside of San Francisco, you can have great weather and slightly lower cost of living.

hoov• 13 years ago

Some people find seasons preferable. I plan on moving back to Boston for that reason alone.

The lack of seasons in SF makes me feel like it's Groundhog Day. I'd gladly take some snow in exchange for the other seasons. For me, summer feels much better after a long winter.

baddox8• 13 years ago

I grew up in the Midwest, where we had all the seasons and often fairly bad summers (old people die if their air conditioners fail) and winters (can't leave the driveway without 4WD). Still, in San Francisco, I am personally uncomfortable due to weather far more often than I ever was in the Midwest. This is due primarily to the lack of air conditioning in housing (I have bay windows constantly open and a fan directly on my desk and bed, and am still almost always hot, often to the point of having difficulty sleeping for long stretches in the late summer), the lack of air conditioning in my office (an older building in the financial district), and being improperly dressed outside due to the lack of predictability in the weather. I really dislike San Francisco's weather, not because it looks bad on paper (it obviously looks great), but because it causes me discomfort much more frequently than I was used to in the Midwest.

jcdavis• 13 years ago

The rent comparison isn't exactly fair - you are looking at the rent in the city of SF vs the entire Greater Washington area. There are certainly cheaper places than SF to live in the Bay Area. Also, almost all apartments in SF proper have rent control meaning that rent pretty much never goes up.

GeneralMayhem• 13 years ago

You can find apartments for that much in DC proper. Maybe not the average, but certainly present. And it gets better even staying on the Metro lines out into NOVA and (more so) MD.

eli3• 13 years ago

$1,400 isn't going to get you your dream apartment, but it's a reasonable budget for a one bedroom apartment that's in DC and not in a bad neighborhood.

It's also pretty common to live outside the city and commute in on Metro (DC's Metro is built more like a commuter rail than a urban subway system).

wpietri3• 13 years ago

As somebody who has lived here for 13 years, let me strongly agree. This is a terrible place and nobody should ever move here. Also, if you have friends living here, ask them to come home.

(Let's see if that helps with the average rents.)

usaphp• 13 years ago

Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry

veemjeem• 13 years ago

I think you need to look around again. Prices have increased dramatically over the last two years. I have friends who landed a cheap place in SOMA for $3600. They were the ones who used the word "cheap". If you glance at craigslist, the majority of the listings are above $3k. All the cheap apartments are outside of SF-proper.

ryanSrich6• 13 years ago

From the company who did the estimates:

"is based on averaging all of the data points from each neighborhood, not the average prices of the neighborhoods."

Here's the application they're using --> https://www.zumper.com/sf

1.) http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_...

liveinoakland3• 13 years ago

key phrase: "couple years ago"

welcome to rent increase 30% in last two years... SF is a disaster and incomes aren't rising to keep up with this. these "high" tech worker salaries assume an outdated rental market.

baddox8• 13 years ago

People would kill to pay $1500 a month in the tiniest studio apartment possible anywhere in the city.

kumarm• 13 years ago

You can rent single bedroom for $1000 around multiple Bart stations and save 2000 more/month with 30 minutes commute by public transport in SF.

potatolicious4• 13 years ago

Your math is reasonably fair, IMO. That being said, the type of work being done in DC and SF is vastly different. I attended an iOS conference in DC a few months ago (I'm based out of NYC) and was shocked at how few "tech company" people were present. Nearly everyone was working for a government agency, a government contractor, or freelancing with a primarily government client-base.

Personally I don't think I can do it. Nearly everyone I talked to came from gigantic, monstrous organizations (either private or public) with huge, massive layers of management. I might just die in that environment.

At the end of the day, the spiraling cost of living in SF is a serious problem, and one that threatens the well-being of our industry if we can't curb it. Unfortunately, in the city being pro-development is almost as bad as pushing your grandma down the stairs.

ryanSrich6• 13 years ago

This is really the only reasonable dig I've heard against D.C.

I guess I was lucky enough to land a public sector job at a software shop that runs much like the hip ones out west. They are here, just not well represented.

hack_edu4• 13 years ago

Whoa-whoa-whoa hold up. The spiraling cost of rent 'threatens the well-being of our industry?' I say this as an engineer who's worked in the local industry during both booms and as a native-born "local." Sure, perhaps but only just like it does for every other industry besides fancy restaurants and cafes. Rent is too damn high and no one wants to pay it, and we seem to be the only ones who can. But lets get some perspective here. I'm willing to posit that the relative high rent prices has give our industry to greatest boost of all in town [quick edit: for clarification if everyone is pushed out and only tech workers can move in, does that not just create room for more founders? Not at all arguing that wasted money is good].

This city is still the Gold Rush, always has been. People move here with the dream to make a ton of money and have a good time, most likely moving away after <10 years when they get serious about family. This city is fueled by alcohol and general hedonism, which is fun! San Francisco is an awesome place to live, and people want to live in it. Tech workers move in to town and push everyone out, blah, blah, blah -- but its true, for better or for worse. Top talent not only wants to work in the Bay Area, but are also so often willing to throw away everything to live in San Francisco. The Valley down south has been there for half a century, attracting the best and brightest in the world.

Its only now, with this Second Boom's influx of new businesses into the City Proper and the realization company-provided motorcoaches to bust the commute, that the tech workers are really pouring into SF. We're the only ones who can afford to live, so we stay here, working more and founding more businesses. If the price continues to go up (mark my words, no more than 30% above now), rather than be threatened, the industry will slowly spread out to the periphery. What is startup-rich Soma was urban blight during the 90's, the periphery.

I'd be the first to argue that urban development is good, especially when done effectively (not the conversion of existing rental space into high-HOA condos), and quickly (unlike commercial real estate development in Soma and South Beach). Just realize that we are the kings of this age of this city, and we are the last ones who would be at threat, especially when you can just move East or South and ride the comfy bus in to work.

tl;dr Nothing threatens tech but the drying up of capital to be invested in new business. Rent and/or supply is far, far down on the list of even those potential threats to the SF tech industry.

nilkn4• 13 years ago

Overall, SF makes me feel like the standard of living for developers is really going down, not up. For all that the startup culture has produced, it has also encouraged lots of people to basically save no money and significantly reduce their living standards all for the sake of "doing a startup." I'm always shocked to hear so many stories of people living in near poverty to work on a startup idea which is, in total honesty, far from amazing.

I don't mean to come off the wrong way or as judgmental. But when I think of a software developer in SF, I don't think of someone with a nice house with a backyard. I think of someone in a cramped apartment, probably with roommates.

hnriot• 13 years ago

Hogwash. You don't need to spend that on an apartment.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

I live in a smaller place that isn't very exciting, but I make a SF style salary and pay $1,300/mo for a 4 bedroom house in a residential neighborhood. My office isn't a table with 4 rock stars and a dog, but the company will be there in 10 years too.

A good friend moved out to SF and loves it. He's mid twenties with no family, and living in sublets for 3 months at a time is fun for him. I probably would have dug that 20 years ago, but doing that now, with the prospect of moving to some lame suburb and commuting 2 hours when I start a family isn't so appealing to me.

In other words, most people do what works for them, today.

trapped• 13 years ago

Why do you have to live in SF? You can live in SJ/MV and save more than half on rent. You can use BART/Caltrain for commuting. Life is great in Bay Area doesn't matter if you are staying in SF or in other cities in the Bay. I seriously don't the understand whats so special in living in SF. I do commute to SF on weekends whenever I want and on weekdays for work.

dcgwu• 13 years ago

Dc is primarily made up of takers, Sf is filled with doers. Don't mistake the fed govt parasite contractors for true hackers, it just ain't so.

thufry• 13 years ago

I'd gladly give up that $11K three times over to live in San Francisco instead of DC. And, looks like other people would too, hence the ridiculous rents here.

meerita• 13 years ago

I want a SF job but work remotely from Barcelona. I'm willing to travel 1 a month :). I know the pains of work and live there, it looks amazing but all my friends told me the same: it feels artificial.

I like Europe, with their pro/cons.

pfarrell4• 13 years ago

I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints). I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!

All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.

Throwadev• 13 years ago

Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.

dontAgree3• 13 years ago

No he's just being a typical transplant and talking out of his ass.

pfarrell4• 13 years ago

Oakland has about 600 police officers for a population which requires around 1,100. There have been five robberies on my street in upper rockridge, where we rent. It's an incredibly beautiful neighborhood and we pay a pretty high rent to live there. In 2010, the police announced that for a long list of crimes (including burgularies) they will not come out. We have caught people casing our neighborhood, strangers sitting in cars for hours, "solicitors" checking for who is home, etc. One woman was abducted from her home, but managed to flee before being permanently maimed (I don't know which year this was, but it was mentioned at a neighborhood watch meeting. Combine a typical neighborhood of strangers with desperate criminal elements, as well as an understaffed police and you can have a bad situation. Hoping the governor will help out (it's his hometown) because Oakland could be an incredible town.

liveinoakland3• 13 years ago

rockridge is 100x safer and nicer than many of the places where people flock to in SF, as is grand lake, as is jack london square, as is piedmont, as is temescal... oakland has some of the nicest neighborhoods and most coveted real estate in the entire bay. drive around the hills sometime. the "oakland is dangerous" meme is laughable. you are in trouble in parts of west oakland and far east in fruitvale. just like in bayview/hunter's point in SF. welcome to oakland! now I can't compare it to suburbs in the midwest, but if you take it as a city, oakland is already an incredible place and one of the last places you can get good housing on a normal person's salary in the bay.

cellis• 13 years ago

It's so bad, you could easily join the OPD or SFPD (as a presumably fit young male) and be making more than an avg. engineer in a year or two (overtime incl.)

malyk• 13 years ago

Apparently Oakland is running a handful of police academy's this year in an effort to increase the size of the force. Salary's start in the $80's I think before overtime. Might be a pretty lucrative position.

And you get to shoot people at will! (ok, not really, but my cop friend says a lot of their "what not to do" case studies come out of oakland.)

Hopefully more officers on the street will help the incidence of crime, but I'm not convinced. Time will tell.

dontAgree3• 13 years ago

Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!

You live in North Oakland. Duh. You think they're really focusing efforts on this area? Move to Piedmont if you want a dedicated police force.

pfarrell4• 13 years ago

Piedmont is definitely very nice. We have made some great friends there. Unfortunately, nothing was available when we moved. Pro tip: don't relocate around thanksgiving/Christmas ;).

rdl• 13 years ago

Piedmont, however, is really nice. If I had a particular need for decent schools or a police force, I'd probably live there. There is a decent shopping area near Piedmont in Oakland (confusingly, on Piedmont Ave), similar to Rockridge. The problem with Piedmont is lack of BART vs Rockridge or Oakland Uptown. Around 19th st BART is ok if you have no kids; it is only particularly dangerous on the other side of Telegraph.

ef4• 13 years ago

Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.

wpietri3• 13 years ago

Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability concerns.

I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.

VeejayRampay• 13 years ago

British people are really hard to understand. The way they make whole syllables disappear is nothing short of black magic.

threedaymonk• 13 years ago

American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can" and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory (cot/caught and Mary/merry/marry) is most perplexing.

(Which is another way of saying: that to which one is unaccustomed is difficult. British people understand each other perfectly well, and some of us even find American English a bit difficult to understand out of familiar contexts.)

lelandbatey• 13 years ago

I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time to write this all down!

Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68

It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.

corresation• 13 years ago

Enjoyable read, however the notes about the hotel gym were a bit strange to me. I may have a insufficient sample set, however I've never seen free weights in a hotel gym, beyond a couple of low weight dumbbells. Certainly no one doing deadlifts, and I can't imagine a hotel dealing with that.

corford• 13 years ago

Just out of curiosity... I assume the waiters, waitresses, receptionists, taxi drivers etc. of San Francisco are not all on $70K+ salaries? And if the answer to that is yes, how do they manage to make it work? Either there's a lot of #firstworlproblem esque moaning going on in this thread or taxi drivers in SanFran are the best paid cabbies in the world.

bretpiatt• 13 years ago

Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally connected.

He met up with a good crowd one night: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/1231...

San Francisco

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