Moving to SF bay area

[stusser]

I will be moving to the SF bay area in the next 4-8 weeks. The office is in san jose, fairly close to the airport. Any suggestions on where to live? I'm a single heterosexual professional dude. Looking for somewhere young and active but probably not san francisco proper; I live in the west village of manhattan now and need a break from tiny apartments and unending traffic outside my window. I was thinking palo alto. Craigslist says I can find a nice 2BR for around $1500-2000/month, far less than I pay now. I'm not looking to buy in the first year.

[Case]

I will be moving to the SF bay area in the next 4-8 weeks. The office is in san jose, fairly close to the airport. Any suggestions on where to live? I'm a single heterosexual professional dude. Looking for somewhere young and active but probably not san francisco proper; I live in the west village of manhattan now and need a break from tiny apartments and unending traffic outside my window. I was thinking palo alto. Craigslist says I can find a nice 2BR for around $1500-2000/month, far less than I pay now. I'm not looking to buy in the first year.

Palo Alto is very nice, the commute is generally a reverse commute (assuming you're driving to San Jose). Just steer clear of East Palo Alto.

[Marcus]

I wouldnt live in San Jose but thats just me.

[Leah C]

You may want to check out sites other than craigslist. The prices there are a bit higher than other listings, in my experience. www.metrorent.com has a lot of listings.

There are plenty of neighborhood-y places in the city with decent sized apartments and no street noise. I live on a cul-de-sac and have a yard, and the only noise I hear is the dog barking outback. Personally, I would live in the city or in East Bay and deal with the commute. You just have to find the right neighborhood. If you go to South Bay or the Peninsula, you're paying SF prices and getting none of the advantages.

[stusser]

I'm not looking to live in san jose proper. I have friends in mountainview, that's why I figured palo alto would be the place to go. Not really interested in east bay/oakland. What neighborhoods should I look at in SF? I hear the marina is nice.

The rental market in SF and the south bay appears, well.... pretty much like heaven. Not just the prices, it's the stress. I've lived in NYC for the past 12 years, which is an entirely different experience.

[Marcus]

Wait you are going to be working in San Jose and Living in SF? Thats like the hardest of the hardcore shit right there.

Thats also known as crazy talk.

Also who are you going to work for?

[Union Carbide]

SF to SJ is no laughing matter (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=san+francisco,+ca&daddr=san+jose,+ca).

[Leah C]

Wait you are going to be working in San Jose and Living in SF? Thats like the hardest of the hardcore shit right there.

Thats also known as crazy talk.

Also who are you going to work for?

It's not THAT crazy. I have quite a few friends that have been doing that for years. The commute is far less painful than living in SJ.

As for neighborhoods in SF...Marina's nice, as are Pacific Heights and Noe Valley. You'll find shops, restaurants, bars, and grocery stores easily in those neighborhoods. I like the more tucked away neighborhoods though, like Glen Park. Glen Park's near both the Muni and BART systems and has great freeway access. It's also quiet and you don't really feel like you live in a big city. Inner Sunset and Inner Richmond are nice, less pretentious than the Marina and Pac Heights and have easy access to the rest of the city. Inner Sunset has some cozy bars, tons of good restaurants, and it's walking distance to Golden Gate Park. Outer Sunset and Outer Richmond are safe, out of the way, have good sized apartments, and decent street parking but they're foggy and there isn't much within walking distance.

[Sparky]

Towns in order of distance from SJ: Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Los Altos, Palo Alto. Sunnyvale's close, but ehh. Mountain View is just suburbia, fine, nothing special. Palo Alto's a nice college town (west of the freeway). Los Altos is very nice as well. The further west you get - and higher up into the hills - the pricier and prettier it is. But since you're coming from NYC, our wacky real estate prices will be nothing to you, so you don't have to worry about that.

SF proper and commute to SJ? It's about an hour to SJ with no traffic, considerably longer with traffic. And 101 sucks. I didn't like living in SF all that much (moved a smidge south on the coast), but I'm not a "city person"...if you are, it might be worth it for you.

[XPav]

My brother lives in Redwood City, commutes to Palo Alto AND Santa Clara. Nice place.

[Case]

Towns in order of distance from SJ: Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Los Altos, Palo Alto. Sunnyvale's close, but ehh. Mountain View is just suburbia, fine, nothing special. Palo Alto's a nice college town (west of the freeway). Los Altos is very nice as well. The further west you get - and higher up into the hills - the pricier and prettier it is. But since you're coming from NYC, our wacky real estate prices will be nothing to you, so you don't have to worry about that.

Santa Clara is between San Jose and Sunnyvale.


SF proper and commute to SJ? It's about an hour to SJ with no traffic, considerably longer with traffic. And 101 sucks. I didn't like living in SF all that much (moved a smidge south on the coast), but I'm not a "city person"...if you are, it might be worth it for you.

And on top of that, it's worse during commute times. Traffic coming out of San Francisco in the morning is very heavy. I commute into San Francisco from Sunnyvale twice a week, and that commute is much easier than the reverse (at least along 280).

That's the other tidbit. Generally, 280 is faster, but longer, while 101 is shorter, but more subject to traffic jams.

[Alan Dunkin]

So what's it like living north of San Francisco? Past the Golden Gate Bridge... like Sausalito, Mill Valley, etc.?

Not being from there, I have no idea what the traffic is like on 280 or 101, the distance looks like a good 40 or so miles to San Fran from San Jose. Which is not a bad drive with no traffic, I used to do something similar, but if there's two hours worth each way that's nuts.

--- Alan

[Case]

So what's it like living north of San Francisco? Past the Golden Gate Bridge... like Sausalito, Mill Valley, etc.?

Not being from there, I have no idea what the traffic is like on 280 or 101, the distance looks like a good 40 or so miles to San Fran from San Jose. Which is not a bad drive with no traffic, I used to do something similar, but if there's two hours worth each way that's nuts.

--- Alan

Commuting from San Rafael and points north, into San Francisco, is one of the worst commutes in the SF bay area. It's probably even worse than the commute from the Pleasanton area down 680 into San Jose.

There seem to be traffic accidents every morning along 101. In some places, it's only two lanes in either direction. And the bridge toll is something like $5. In general, avoid any commute where you have to cross a bridge, but the Golden Gate is the worst.

[MattKeil]

Okay, if you're going to work in San Jose, do not live in San Francisco. Period. Palo Alto is about the southern limit of sanity as far as commuting from the city. Anything more than that and you're asking to spend 4+ hours per day on the road.

I grew up in San Carlos/Redwood City, and they're perfectly nice places, but pretty boring for the over-21 set. Redwood City also has a terminally failing downtown which is more depressing than anything else. Palo Alto is probably your best bet. It's young(ish), has a huge singles/bar scene, is safe (as long as you stay out of East Palo Alto, which is actually pretty okay now...in the early '90s it was the per capita murder capital of the country), and has beautiful weather year-round. Of particular note are Rudy's (a bar on the Stanford end of University Avenue...two of my old, old friends from high school bartend there); Borders (formerly the Varsity Theatre, which used to be the local Rocky Horror Picture Show place but shut down in 1994 so Borders could take the place over) further east on University, which is a great bookstore and a nice coffee/reading/writing/flirting hangout; and the Rose & Crown on Emerson, a classic British pub with occasional amateur comedy nights that are hilariously terrible.

Also treat yourself to one of the best milkshakes on the West Coast at the Peninsula Creamery on Emerson, and some killer dan-dan mein at Jing-Jing's just across the street from the Aquarius theatre down the road from the PC. Actually, just about all the food in Palo Alto is good, and there's even a Spago's if you feel like going nuts once in a while.

Basically just have fun and be comfortable. I lived in that area for two decades before college and work took me elsewhere, but I still love visiting. I'll probably go back eventually.

[stusser]

We're opening an office in SJ and I asked to move. I'm definitely not committing to an hour+ commute. So it's agreed, then, that palo alto is the place to go?

I'm not too concerned about real estate costs. Even downtown SF is roughly as expensive as brooklyn. And I don't live in brooklyn.

[fire]

When's the move-in party? I'll bring the Odwalla juice and tofu patties.

Also: ditto on the Peninsula Creamery on Emerson. You must go there.

[Case]

We're opening an office in SJ and I asked to move. I'm definitely not committing to an hour+ commute. So it's agreed, then, that palo alto is the place to go?

I'm not too concerned about real estate costs. Even downtown SF is roughly as expensive as brooklyn. And I don't live in brooklyn.

When you get here, you'll have to drop by for one of our weekly Friday night LAN parties. I'm in Sunnyvale.

[graller]

Potentially dumb question but doesn't BART run from SF to SJ as well as to Oakland?

[Case]

Potentially dumb question but doesn't BART run from SF to SJ as well as to Oakland?

No.

BART's southernmost approach is in the east bay, in Fremont. On the western side of the bay, it goes no further south than SF Airport (San Bruno).

Caltrain offers train service on the 1/2 hour from San Jose up the peninsula to San Francisco, though. But it actually takes longer than driving, though it's less stressful. On the other hand, it probably takes about the same time as driving going from San Francisco to San Jose in the morning.

[graller]

Thanks. SF is the one place in the country I would move to and I like to keep an eye on it and stuff like this helps.

[stusser]

When you get here, you'll have to drop by for one of our weekly Friday night LAN parties. I'm in Sunnyvale.
Once I get settled in, I'll give you a shout. Thanks for the invite!

[MattKeil]

Potentially dumb question but doesn't BART run from SF to SJ as well as to Oakland?

It was supposed to be a ring around the whole Bay Area, going from SF down to SJ and back up the other side of the bay through Fremont, Hayward, Berkeley, Oakland, and back to SF, but various communities blocked it due to concerns about how easy it would be for scary minority people to get to their neighborhoods via BART. It's one of the primary reasons traffic in the Bay Area sucks now, because if BART ran in a full ring, it would be just about perfect.

[Athryn]

A good place to get a general idea of traffic flows, etc is Sigalert (http://www.sigalert.com/map.asp?Region=Bay+Area). They use the Caltrans sensors in the road to gauge speeds, so it's pretty accurate (althought at the moment, looks like the speed sensors are offline in the Bay Area.)

Marin County and parts north are nice (I grew up in West Marin) but the thing that always frustrated me (besides the snooty rich people) was the lack of decent public transportation. Living in any other part of the Bay Area, you have access to BART, or Cal Train, and many others. Only thing you get in the North Bay are buses. Plus it costs like $8 or something silly to cross the Golden Gate Bridge now.

[gdunbar]

Okay, if you're going to work in San Jose, do not live in San Francisco. Period. Palo Alto is about the southern limit of sanity as far as commuting from the city. Anything more than that and you're asking to spend 4+ hours per day on the road.

I grew up in San Carlos/Redwood City, and they're perfectly nice places, but pretty boring for the over-21 set. Redwood City also has a terminally failing downtown which is more depressing than anything else. Palo Alto is probably your best bet. It's young(ish), has a huge singles/bar scene, is safe (as long as you stay out of East Palo Alto, which is actually pretty okay now...in the early '90s it was the per capita murder capital of the country), and has beautiful weather year-round. Of particular note are Rudy's (a bar on the Stanford end of University Avenue...two of my old, old friends from high school bartend there); Borders (formerly the Varsity Theatre, which used to be the local Rocky Horror Picture Show place but shut down in 1994 so Borders could take the place over) further east on University, which is a great bookstore and a nice coffee/reading/writing/flirting hangout; and the Rose & Crown on Emerson, a classic British pub with occasional amateur comedy nights that are hilariously terrible.

Also treat yourself to one of the best milkshakes on the West Coast at the Peninsula Creamery on Emerson, and some killer dan-dan mein at Jing-Jing's just across the street from the Aquarius theatre down the road from the PC. Actually, just about all the food in Palo Alto is good, and there's even a Spago's if you feel like going nuts once in a while.

Basically just have fun and be comfortable. I lived in that area for two decades before college and work took me elsewhere, but I still love visiting. I'll probably go back eventually.

God damn it you've given me my three-or-four-times-yearly dose of Palo Alto nostalgia. My wife and I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment just off University for about a year (in the pre-kids era), and it was the most fun place we've lived. Maybe I'll end up back there someday too.

Oh, and Bay Area traffic sucks. Live as close to where you work as you can reasonably afford/stand.

Geoff