San Francisco vs. New York
puzzlebox
Telltale Alumni
Hey to everyone across the pond! My company is offering a new assignment, so I'm contemplating a move to the land of the free. New York and San Francisco are possible options. Any opinions on which is the better city? Livability, fun and recreation, local attitude, climate, transport, general awesomeness?
I'd take NY in a heartbeat, but am kind of wary of its reputation for being image-obesessed.
Would especially love to hear from anyone who has experienced both places! And if anyone thinks that it would be mad to leave London for the U.S., I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts too.
I'd take NY in a heartbeat, but am kind of wary of its reputation for being image-obesessed.
Would especially love to hear from anyone who has experienced both places! And if anyone thinks that it would be mad to leave London for the U.S., I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts too.
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Also, the weather here is better.
Mind you, this is all from an outsider's perspective looking in. I'm sure New York residents would probably say otherwise.
Also, not too crowded, which is really nice.
I'll let Pete explain it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQgfgB-vgT0
Yeah... uh, thanks. That helped a lot.
If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere.
Seriously, I'm a born and bred New Yorker. This may or may not be a reason in and of itself to avoid the place, I understand. I live in the South now, and I've lived here for a few years, so perhaps a bit of an idealized version of the city has built up in my mind. But I love the place.
Some of what Will says is true to an extent, but a New Yorker will view it with a different perspective.
NYC is dense, but that allows it an opportunity to fill the city with...damn near everything. Much like its cousins Tokyo and London(which I've visited), the city has a culture and a personality of its own. The people aren't so much "unfriendly" as they are relatively solitary. You live with that many neighbors, you can't really afford to stop and say howdy-doo to every passerby. To me, this makes the United States South kind of..annoying. I was raised to mind my own business, and talk with those who I had a reason to speak with...here I'm still startled and annoyed when someone approaches and talks to me in a bookstore or on the street. It's just not something I'm accustomed to. I suppose that would make me unfriendly to some, but...wow, my case is getting worse.
I like dreary weather. I'm not a dreary person, or identify myself with a gothic or "emo", I just like cool air(and in the South, you'll only get that with heavy cloud cover). My admittedly low experience in California is "Too hot". I also think the people there seem to be pretty self-righteous, this view that they're morally superior than everybody else in the nation. Also, they make really, really crap pizza. I mean, no pizza matches NYC pizza, but Californians take ruining pizza to a whole new level. It's like a higher art form to them, it seems.
...okay, that's cruel, but I can't stand their idea of pizza. I'm a New York Pizza zealot, though. The one place I go for some pizza in this place is a little shop that miraculously exists in this small town, run by a couple of previous New Yorkers. It is a godsend and one of the things keeping me sane in the world of grits, sweet potatoes, and fried chicken.
Speaking of food, you can find anything in the city. And they probably do it best. Hot dogs, pizza, and for all that is wonderful bagels are not delicious anywhere else, at least not unless they are made in that wonderful New York tradition. I have yet to find a Chinese food restaurant outside of the city that is as good as the one I was in when I was there.
Will is right, the population is pretty NYC-centric. The reason is, the city itself has SO MUCH. You can find anything there, and you can find some things there that won't ever exist anywhere else. It's NYC-centric because NYC is a place to love. It's the best place in the world as far as I'm concerned. Tokyo and London are also up there, but goddamn.
Do you love London? I don't think anyone can take a step down from a metropolis like London to a city like San Fran without at least something feeling jarring. There are some benefits to Atlanta, surely, but it's not the same as being in one of the truly great metropolises of the world.
Since I've left, the city has been cleaned up a good deal. The subways are now not as great as those of Tokyo, but they're certainly nice now. Crime has dropped a great deal.
NYC is less a melting pot of diversity than it is more a layer cake of diversity. Different people do have their sections and cultures, and you'd think this would generally be bad. But I think it has its strengths as well. Every set of people retains a level of cultural identity, and they all interact at the edge. Rather than being homogenized into a singular people, you get the distinct flavors of a few distinct cultures.
I dunno. I love snow, I love the really big cities, being in a small town leaves me ill at ease. I'm not sure if I've strengthened or weakened the case for NY, because I mostly just ranted in a flow-of-consciousness fashion. Ah well. Hope this helped, in any case.
The old fruitcake man has opened my eyes - I shall forever hence think of cities as starchy tubers. Thanks for the sage advice.
I never would have guessed from your gentle writing style and mild attitude towards everything, Dashing.
Naples. Go there. Eat pizza.
I'm from rural Australia originally, so pretty much any city is a step up if you look at it solely in terms of population density. But you did hit on something interesting: the "great metropolis" thing is one of the reasons I don't want to go back to Sydney (yet), despite how wonderful that place can be and how many people I miss there.
I am absolutely in love with London, but in some ways fear getting so attached to the place that it becomes impossible to move on - it's an enormous world and there is surely much awesomeness to experience.
It did, very very much so, and thank you.
...I'm kidding, please don't make one.
That damn bridge should have been destroyed so many times by now, by alien attack or otherwise. At the very least when Roger Moore blew up an airship on it.
Hell, it looks like you have to great choices to choose from and should enjoy it at either of them. Lucky (though probably just very hard working and talented at what line of work you're in) sod.
I'd go for the less natural disaster prone city (New York?), but I'm paranoid about things like that.
London = New York
Cardiff = San Francisco
Okay, so that's a tad simplified, but the basic idea is New York is a big city that stays up late and keeps its trees in cages, and San Francisco is smaller but at least you don't feel utterly cut off from Nature.
I'll admit though, I've never been to New York; I've only ever spent three days in Manhattan so I don't know much about the area at all. From what I hear, it's like Paris, a lot of it is overpriced and kind of crappy, but if you get away from the "tourist" hot spots it's pretty decent. And no way in hell is the Chinese food in New York better than San Francisco. Just ... no.
Also, as someone who grew up in the Middle East, I have to say it cracks me up when I read about how "diverse" New York or Tokyo or London is. Yeah, those cities now have minority populations from all over the world, but how integrated into the "main" society are they? Go to a town in East Africa, and even though it is not New York, they'll have films from Hollywood and Bollywood; Arab, Turkish and Indian food besides the local cuisine, and everyone you ask will have a relative working in some far off country like the US or the UK or Japan. I will admit their public transportation system won't be as good though, so there is that.
...Ok, forget that last part. What I'm trying to say is that while NYC may be larger than SF, you couldn't possibly do everything in EITHER town, so it's a bit of a moot point.
Why, the city is so nice, it was commemorated in an aptly titled song by Live: "Shit Towne".
I'm really asking, I don't know.
We have an Ikea.
That's a big deal.
And Ikea is in Emeryville
It's funny how San Francisco may or may not have an earthquake every few years (and most earthquakes are extremely minor and unscary), yet New York has freezing cold temperatures for 3-4 months EVERY YEAR -- yet San Francisco is somehow considered the more traumatic of the two.
I would weigh the cost of living with your decision. Both cities are very expensive compared to other parts of the country, but San Francisco is the less expensive of the two. Go online to look at rents, restaurant prices, the cost of transportation... you can probably find a cost of living calculator that goes into more detail.
When I first moved here I was paying $1200 for a studio apartment -- which seemed crazy considering I'd previously been paying $1000 for a four bedroom place in Rhode Island -- but my friends who moved to Manhattan after college were paying $1500 each to *split* a one bedroom apartment (so the rent for the 1-bedroom was actually $3000, and this place wasn't any larger or more glamorous than mine). I'm not one who likes living with roommates, and for that reason alone I think New York would have driven me crazy. Granted, that was ten years ago, but I don't think times have changed so much that this isn't still the case.
There are areas where the housing situation is better -- Brooklyn, Roosevelt Island -- but then you're not in the heart of the city. Since San Francisco is a lot smaller, you can find a place in the non-downtown neighborhoods without being as far away from the center of things as you would be in New York. And even if San Francisco is smaller, it's also more homey. I'd personally rather know my city inside and out than feel like there are parts of it that I still don't and never will know. (And after 10 years here, I'm still discovering new restaurants and cafes, etc. that surprise me -- it's not as if the city being only 7 miles across means you'll see all there is to see in the first month.)
Also if you want to have a car (which isn't necessary in either city, but definitely helps in terms of exploring the outlying areas around the city -- which are gorgeous in the SF bay area and shouldn't be missed!), it's much easier to do that in SF than in New York.
I bet that if you went to Time Square or some other commercialised area of NY at 11:00pm on a Saturday, you'd be able to find somewhere open to eat. I couldn't last time I was around Tower Hill/the City/Fenchurch Street area... London apparently doesn't stay up as long as it used to.