Places
Life brings you to unexpected places. It has this incredible power of shaping the person you are today, and it’s a unique experience that makes you grow one step at a time.
A couple days ago, Peter Shih wrote an article titled “10 things I hate about you” that shook San Francisco. The content of the article itself pointed out familiar issues: San Francisco has problems with expensive rent, omnipresence of the tech industry, and accelerating poverty.
The reactions to Peter’s post surprised me even more than the article itself: a lot of writers, bloggers and commenters tried to justify why San Francisco is the best city the world. It ended up creating a situation where you step back and ask yourself what does it mean to live in “the best city”.
Your answer to this question may vary depending on how many places you’ve lived in, how many places you’ve travelled to, and how many people you’ve eventually met. So is there even really a best city? I would risk it to say “no”. You acclimate yourself to the city you live in and you learn how to make you way around the system to live a life up to your own standards.
My personal experience with San Francisco has two parts: as a visitor and as a resident.
I visited the city for the first time in 2007. Back then, my English was limited, but I still got around fairly easily — helped by a friend who is fluent in French. The bridges were phenomenal, the city was resplendent and the Painted Ladies were very welcoming.
My heart broke when I left, and I secretly hoped to one day be back. And I returned.
Moving from Paris to San Francisco challenges everything you know on a daily basis. From breakfast habits to coworker interactions, you have a few similarities but many aspects of life remain different. To learn more and immerse yourself in this new environment, stepping out of your zone of comfort is required.
So I explored and walked a lot during that time to discover the city more. It’s a personal moment between you and the place you live in, and you have time to observe and learn the geography. You get lost and appreciate the randomness of each place. San Francisco has gorgeous hills overlooking the city, nice parks, interesting museums and historical buildings.
To continue to step out of that comfort zone, you force yourself to meet a lot of people during social activities, like over coffee and dinner. Everybody you meet shows you the city from their own angle. And as your learn more and more about the place you live in, you develop habits. Based on your tastes, you create a list of the best coffee places, restaurants, and venues. Then you slowly enter a daily routine.
3 years later, concluding that San Francisco is the best city world would not be accurate. The city offers impressive landscapes, fantastic bridges, cute houses, good food, and great companies to work for. However, in this environment, I miss many things that San Francisco will never be able to offer. Like the 4 seasons.
Peter’s article is very much standing on a similar ground. In his opinion, the city doesn’t offer what he expects. Does it mean we have to put signs in the street to tell him to go back to New York? Instead, why not learn from his feedback to make San Francisco a better place to live in? A good dose of criticism never hurt anyone, or anywhere.
Let’s take one by one some of his interesting arguments about the city.
Transportation
This one is personal because this is related to my family, more precisely my dad. I’m proud of my him. He’s a hard worker, a bus driver, in a tiny town in Normandy. His bus is rarely late, even when it rains or snows. During my childhood, we were all living off his income. It was short but we learned how to cut corners.
If you compare my dad’s income to the people who are working for MUNI, there’s a massive gap. My dad is today most likely making only 15% of their salary. However it doesn’t mean MUNI works well everyday. There are frequent delays, and sometimes the bus just never arrives. But we all agree: it’s convenient to have a public transportation.
If you visit any big city (New York, Paris, London) or even a small town in France, the quality of the public transportation is much better. I’ve heard Japan and China have incredible transportation as well. We live in super high-tech San Francisco, and in that sense it’s very surprising that our buses aren’t flying yet.
The cab situation used to be bad but on demand transportation has greatly improved over recent months, thanks to services like Lyft and Uber.
Peter is right. How can we make San Francisco better for transportation in general? If the transportation issue cannot be solved, then we will have more and more problems with parking. They are very correlated.
Rising Crime
I live in SOMA, which is not the Tenderloin, but not the safest part of the city either.
From a hostage situation on Caltrain to a double homicide that happened on the same block as my company, to female coworkers being constantly harassed on the street at night, avoidable crimes are happening every day in my neighborhood.
Over the last 3 years crime has increased, from random muggings to bike theft, which could be due to the increasing gap between the middle class and the lower class.
San Francisco may be safer than other places in the US, but for a city of only 750,000, I would expect better.
Short Nightlife
Most of Europe has a very different nightlife culture, as many bars remain open until everyone has left. You can socialize for an entire night and never run out of places to go to.
San Francisco has some of the fanciest bars and most interesting speak-easies I’ve ever seen. As mentioned by Anisse, there’s a strong drinking culture in the city: you can find a variety of beer, cocktail and wine places. There are drinks for every taste, and every price.
So, Peter, you’re right: bars are closing at 2am because it’s illegal to serve alcohol after that time. And yes, I’ve also experienced the difficulty of getting home at this time since once all the bars are closed, everyone is trying to do the exact same thing. I’ve walked many times back to my apartment, making my way through the Tenderloin on occasion, which has been sketchy and unpleasant at best and frightening at worst.
Key points to take away from this: it would be nice to have more flexible laws around times a venue can operate and a system that allows you go to get home safely after a night out.
Cost of living
San Francisco is expensive.
You spend about $200 weekly for two people in food shopping (Trader Joe’s) and more than $2,500 monthly for a single bedroom that increases every year by at least 15%.
In comparison, it costs only 1,000 euros to have a one bedroom in Paris, and you spend around 50 euros per week in food shopping for two people.
The cost of living also includes the amenities and entertainment offered by the city. Sadly, none of those are free. San Francisco doesn’t have a free outdoor festival like Fête de la Musique. Instead we have OutsideLands ($100 minimum for early birds, $200 regular price).
Even in my little town in Normandy, every summer, we have good free outdoor concerts by the beach where you can enjoy local and international artists. And there are free activities for children across the city.
The basic cost of living has a real impact on how you can enjoy your daily life.
So let’s be honest: some arguments raised by Peter are valid. And they prove that San Francisco is a good city, it’s just not the best city in the world.
You may adore San Francisco, but in this love you need also to see how you can improve an environment we all live in. And it starts by acknowledging all the things we could do better.
Looking for UI designers, copywriters, photographers? Check out CreativeList, a platform fully dedicated to help you find the creative talent you need. Are you a creative yourself? Join us. Have a job for creatives? List it.
We’re also publishing on Medium. Follow Us.
