Living in Bay Area (OT)

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Majid_S

Mountain climber
Karkoekstan
Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 5, 2015 - 04:04pm PT
I think Google , Facebook and Apple f*#ked this place up

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101471208
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 5, 2015 - 04:11pm PT
Pretty setting, pretty city (SF), pretty bad traffic, pretty damned expensive.....pretty glad I don't live there.
KabalaArch

Trad climber
Starlite, California
Mar 5, 2015 - 04:52pm PT
“When selecting a site for your house, there is always the question of how close to the city you should be and that depends on what kind of slave you are. The best thing to do is to go out as far as you can get. Avoid the suburbs – dormitory towns – by all means. Go way out into the country – what you regard as 'too far' - and when others follow, as they will (if procreation keeps up), move on.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House, Horizon Press 1954

...in 1974, I had a bachelor pad way up near Twin Peaks on Upper Market. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling plate glass, overlooking the Financial District (and pretty much everything else).

$235 per month.

When our daughter was working for HOK, downtown, a room near Castro Valley ran $1k. That was like 10 years ago.

At the dawn of the Eighties, my wife and I sensed a looming urban fragmentation, and we acted on it. So here we are, trying to explore a margin where Art, regional economics, and sustainable design principles coalesce. Needless to say, we've certainly encountered our share of rough sledding. But better here than there...
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Mar 5, 2015 - 04:56pm PT
You gotta go back a few more years.


Fairchild Semiconductor:

And in the bigger picture, it goes back further than that. Technology permits the aggregation of wealth at a faster rate. Maybe we need to go back to the bronze age, or when humans learned to control fire or create a wheel. Or used a sharp stick.

Either keep up with technology, learn to harness it to subjugate others, or wait to be subjugated.
Clint Cummins

Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
Mar 5, 2015 - 06:06pm PT
It's been way expensive for at least 20 years now.
Part of the reason is Prop 13 - people pay property tax based on something close to the original price of their home, rather than the current value.
So there is not much incentive to leave.
Flip Flop

Trad climber
Truckee, CA
Mar 5, 2015 - 06:27pm PT
Cell phoning on bridges. Cubicle pukes.
crankster

Trad climber
Mar 5, 2015 - 06:42pm PT
Yeah, I wanna live in some redneck town.
ms55401

Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
Mar 5, 2015 - 07:07pm PT
kind of an inward-looking, self-important place, but pretty, and with generally good weather/scenery. cost of living kinda high
zBrown

Ice climber
Brujò de la Playa
Mar 5, 2015 - 07:09pm PT
Aren't these the job creators we've been hearing so much about?







SC seagoat

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, or In What Time Zone Am I?
Mar 5, 2015 - 08:00pm PT
Over the hill and through the dale ..... Santa Cruz is far enough away and close enough to the greater Bay Area for me!


Susan
Chaz

Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Mar 5, 2015 - 08:56pm PT
"Frankly those gleaming white buses with their tinted windows are a slap in the face to the rest of us who are waiting for the public bus or riding our bicycles down the bike lanes competing with these mammoth vehicles."

 Sara Shortt, Activist for Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco



Jesus! Talk about a First World problem. A bunch of people with jobs, education, and CASH are moving to town and making everything nice.



Maybe you all would be happier here in The 909 ( AKA The I.E., Felony Flats, Fontucky, etc. )


Instead of shiny busses, maybe you'd enjoy an ACID PIT??? Here's one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringfellow_Acid_Pits

( this particular one's close to Riverside Quarry )




How about a good dose of perchlorate in your drinking water?

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/26/local/la-me-rialto-perchlorate-20130327



Go upstream a ways, to get away from the perchlorate, and you'll find yourself in Trichloroethylene Country.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/07/lockheed-tells-us-to-finance-rocket-test-cleanup/?page=all



Instead of worrying about the shiny busses, I suggest counting your goddamn blessings.



justthemaid

climber
Jim Henson's Basement
Mar 6, 2015 - 07:21am PT
I'm with ya Chaz... and Randisi for that matter. The regular public transportation buses are way more of a headache to navigate around than the white buses in my experience. LA traffic is cake compared to the Bay Area. I would never live anywhere near San Francisco.

Same story...different city different era. Every year I spend a month in the Mission so I'm in the thick of it. A modicum of gentrification did the Mission good IMO. It's still a hell hole, but at least half the buildings aren't falling to pieces any longer and I'm less worried about getting mugged. Hipsters are extremely annoying so I get the animosity there.

Prop 13 evens the field a bit for long time residents. They aren't getting forced out of their homes over property taxes. My buddy I stay with was lucky to inherit... an artist who can afford to stay in her home that is now valued over $1million. She could never afford to move.

There's no real solution. Time is the equalizer I guess.
KabalaArch

Trad climber
Starlite, California
Mar 6, 2015 - 07:51am PT
Yeah, I wanna live in some redneck town.

Since comments posted up so far are overwhelmingly supportive of the traditional urban | suburban lifestyle, I feel obligated to defend the “New Urbanism” movement which has been embraced by quite a few (U)'Topians here, by reposting the view from my own front yard.


I would also offer many thanks to some of the new and emergent alternative lifestyle possibilities which Silicon Valley is, and has been, enabling.

For example, my son in-law is a VP for a bio-tech firm, which is headquartered near the DC area; this firm just recently sold off one of its startup divisions to Japanese interests in a deal worth 100's of M.

He and my daughter live right next door (in a Design | Build residence I delivered in the early 90's , for the original client, to whom I'd sold the raw land – but that's another story).

He telecommutes.

Sooner then later, such technologies, from one of our greatest post-industrial centers, will enable the type of alternative lifestyles we have pioneered.

Until you are ready for that day, we welcome your tourism dollars. It is the mainstay of our economy.

While I didn't take the reaction to what was an intentionally provocative post personally, I'll mention that prior to migrating here after Berkeley (+SF, and affluent Peninsula 'burbs), I grew up in Chicago; NYC; Atlanta; Miami...

The SFR I'd posted up on the Art thread: $4.3m construction + $1m for the ski-in sk-out 1/2 acre on MMSA. Green acres alright, made bank from that commission.

Actually, I don't believe I'd posted an exterior shot:

Gregory Crouch

Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
Mar 6, 2015 - 08:43am PT
Been here more than a dozen years and have been surprised by how much I like it.

In a more interesting line of Bay Area inquiry, I need a regular Thursday partner for day-strikes to the Sierra crags, Shut-Eye to Donner. I could easily be motivated into action every other weekend, too. Be nice to have a Bay Area person with whom to share the driving. I'm recovering from surgery, and am looking at a season of moderates, 5.7-5.9, to get me back in the game. The longer the better in my book, although long-ish approaches are going to be hard for me this year. I've got all the gear needed to make this happen and am comfortable and competent (I think) to do all the leading if needed, just need an interesting and motivated partner with shoes and a harness who is consistently available on Thursdays. If you don't have much "trad" climbing experience (vomit, I hate that term; climbing is climbing), I'm happy to help crack open that door for you.

PM me if interested and we'll set something up.

Craigslist for climbers... oh, wait, wasn't that invented in the Bay Area, too?
Sierra Ledge Rat

Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
Mar 6, 2015 - 08:52am PT
The guy in the article has an hour's communte to work in the Bay Area.

That means he lives 1/4 mile away from work.
Capt.

climber
some eastside hovel
Mar 6, 2015 - 08:53am PT
I've got my place in Bishop,girlfriend has her house in Napa. The Bay works just fine for me. :-D
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Mar 6, 2015 - 09:17am PT
It is a perfect microcosm of the changing world, the aggregation of wealth, and widening gap between the haves and have-nots. The disparities between children's experiences living quite near each other is pretty harsh:
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25617529/hunger-silicon-valley-its-real-and-its-learning
Majid_S

Mountain climber
Karkoekstan
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 6, 2015 - 12:28pm PT
Me and friends back in 80s use to drive at night and park along the local fruit farms and pick things up for free and now,Cisco farm and all these tech sh*t taken over and the as*hole drivers who want to cut corners to be one car ahead with that stupid App that offers plan B on how to beat traffic through the city streets.



Bruce Morris

Social climber
Belmont, California
Mar 6, 2015 - 12:36pm PT
I love it when a non-native has to pay $12,000 per annum taxes. Then, they're the ones who sell their McMansion and get out of my hood in the burbs. What this place needs is another big recession, so I can buy up their toys when the yuppies go belly up.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Mar 6, 2015 - 01:17pm PT
The guy in the article has an hour's communte to work in the Bay Area.

That means he lives 1/4 mile away from work.

If he's sutpid enough to try drive :-)

I work right downtown. Have a commute that's a bit more than 2 miles, and am at work in 12 minutes by bicycle.

MUNI takes at least 40 minutes, and I already stated my opinion on driving, especially short distances in the City.
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