"Here’s a novel idea. If you’re moving 3,000 (or even 300) miles to live in San Francisco; live in San Francisco. And by I don’t simply mean that you should not live in the East Bay or the Peninsula or Marin. I mean live in a part of the city that your great-grandparents would recognize as being San Francisco. Somewhere that was entirely residential, and all of the homes in your neighborhood existed, prior to 1915. If you’ve only lived in SoMa, you haven’t lived in San Francisco. I know a lot of people who’ve moved here from somewhere else only to settle in SoMa (which, when I first moved here, was sort of like NoPa in that it was really only starting to gain traction as a term for a neighborhood) or South Park or China Basin or some other reclaimed part of San Francisco’s industrial past. Big mistake. If you haven’t lived in one of San Francisco’s traditional neighborhoods, you’ve missed out. You haven’t ever gotten to experience one of its primary joys. Sure, you may be close to your job; you may have a lot of space and nicer weather, but by that logic you should find a job in a Phoenix exurb. This is a city of small communities, each with its own character. Get to know one, with its small shops and locally owned businesses, and you’ll find it infinitely rewarding. If instead you choose to live in some light industrial zone, however, you may as well be in Seattle, or Atlanta, or Portland, or any other moderately-sized city. Except you’ll pay five times the rent."
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Also, wanted to say that the neighborhood Mat lives in (and where I lived from 2006-late 2008) is one of the best and really embodies a lot of what he is talking about.
