Anyone lived , spent time in San Francisco , what did you think?

I like San Francisco and I think we can live there but as some have pointed out, the medical insurance is very expensive.

 

Funny, read so many posts where PC folks wanting to move to countries where living expenses are much cheaper than Australia so they perhaps have an option to retire earlier, SF wont do this.

I am with you, Australia is a great country, I am biased.

For me US has some brilliant holiday destinations, but its a different culture, interesting mix of officious and lazy, did you notice this, or is it just me??

MTR

 

I don't like their gun culture either, same as I don't like the Australian drinking culture/violence.
Feel very safe in Atlanta, am living in an upmarket area/gated community

Its very cheap to live in Atlanta, I am quite amazed, food, clothing, cars, housing. I reckon I could cut my costs by 50%

However, the draw back for me is the climate, very humid in summer and of course I want to live near family and friends.



MTR

 

Outside of larger and more in demand Cities, I found the living expenses quite reasonable. Santa Rosa was relatively cheap - it was like a large Country town; about the size of Ballarat.

Places like L.A (I lived there for 2 years), Chicago, N.Y, etc; pretty much like how Sydney is now for cost of living....the food was pretty cheap though.

I found the gun issue to be non-existent....the folks we met never talked about them, or showed us them if they had them....they were no doubt definitely there, but the areas where they were most widely used; you wouldn't visit or live anyway.

 

What I am also seeing as well no one talks about it.
Though Chicago is a major issue, 4000 killed in Chicago this year, guns.

Its all gang warfare, in black gang dominated areas, fighting for drug territory.

 

We had to urgently get petrol on the way back to Santa Rosa from Oakland airport (had been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona), so I took the first available exit off-ramp into a place called Richmond...pulled up at the nearest petrol station, and started to take in the surroundings more closely while I was standing there filling up....OMG!...felt like I was in a scene from "COPS".

Richmond, CA crime - Google Search

Couldn't wait to get out of there - felt very unsafe and exposed.

 

When we were there the skating rink was in a kind of time warp - looked like original decor from decades ago..quite strange.

Yeah; I loved it there; quieter and a lot like here....you could get in the car and be in the middle of nowhere in 10 or 15 mins too, which was great.

Santa Rosa was cold in winter; you could see snow on the near-by hills for part of the time...summer was lovely and pretty hot.

You could be in S.R with a temp of 95 degrees, and then drive from there to Bodega Bay approx 20 mins away, and there would be a fog blanket over the beach like there was an invisible wall in the sky stopping it spreading further inland...the air temp in the fog on the beach would be about 65 degrees and you'd need a jumper on, but the sand was red hot under your feet!!...very strange.

Bodega Bay was where they filmed "The Birds".

Bodega Bay - Google Search

 

Yes, my husband and I lived there for a while during the dot.com boom. It is a lovely city, but with a few caveats. It is very expensive to live there, rents were high when we were there, and after the dot.com crash they went even higher as everyone piled their money into real estate instead driving an already high real estate market higher.
Health insurance was only available through work, though this may have changed.
Food - all the food was full of sugar - even the bread. Organic/unadulterated food was available, but costly. We lived in Berkeley which is considered 'progressive', but it was still very 'white' and wealthy compared to the next suburb Oakland. Our neighbour had been shot in the head at the ATM. Luckily it went though his cheek and out through his neck without any real damage and he survived unscathed.
Work culture is very ME focussed, and not very team focussed. My husband did not enjoy it. Having said all that, we found all the locals to be lovely kind and generous people.

 

it entirely depends on the socio economic makeup your friend is going.
If your friend is:
Rich or Upper middle with professional job etc- yes, absolutely go.
Opportunities, market strength, etc... better than even sydney.
Middle class- Probably not- stick to australian cities except sydney. I found that Australian cities offer a nivcer environment to middle class than the american cities ( ie a middle class in australia would be able to live in a good/decent area, send their kids to a decent school etc...will be more of a struggle to do that in the US on a middle income). There is also much more 'flatness' of both wages and living conditions differentials in australia- it is not as extreme as the US. You can think of it as australia being much more socialist than the US- less of a divergence in wealth and living conditions (and therefore generally less serious crime, social unrest etc) than the US, but it comes at a cost ( namely sky high taxes compared to the US)
Low income- Heeeelllll no, as the americans would say...the US struggle streets make their australian equivalents look like paradise. Seriously, some of the 'hood' in SF make the Druie and Co look like the Intercontinental on Circular Quay.

 

Was there a couple of years ago.

Great city - especially when the weather is good.

Not cheap though. And it's also confronting to see so many homeless folks.

 

If your friend is into camping and hiking at least she won't have to worry about bears in Oz. I'll never forget our friends taking us to a national park and spending the night listening to a black bear or two roaming the camp and everyone banging pots and pans and yelling to scare them off. Nothing but a thin layer of ripstop nylon between us and them.
You put all your food and toiletries into padlocked steel boxes, they'll rip open a car to get at stuff.
Beautiful scenery though.

 

I interpreted the original post to be talking about coming from San Francisco to Oz.... not Oz to San Francisco...

 

The OP wanted to know about San Fran/USA:

 

Yes but it reads to me that @JDP1 is talking about Aussies moving to San Francisco, rather than the reverse. (Particularly for the lower SE classes)

 

Yes, just re- read the op...I think it's from us to Australia.
Anyway, probably still stands. Just apply it in reverse.

 

SF is a great city, but I suspect relative to cities here you would need more money to have a comfortable life there. I remember years ago, a bloke I had been mates with since we were little kids said to me that 'Sydney is the best city in the world to be unemployed in.' And he had been unemployed in a few countries.
I have a lot of US visitors stay in our Airbnb. One comment several of them have made was interesting. They said that they were amazed at how little antisocial behaviour they saw and how safe they felt wandering around.

 

We spent three days in SF in October 2009. I loved it as a visitor but I cant say how I would go living there longer. On the other hand I'm certain I could live in Vancouver or Victoria indefinitely. I'll give it a go pretty much anywhere they speak English.

What I found confronting was, as Steven mentioned, the Homeless. We stayed in a nice, safe but modest hotel on Union Square. You had to step around all the homeless folk who cluttered the footpath outside. I managed to step in human faeces - creeped me out. When we arrived home I was informed that the hacking cough noises from outside was probably the swine flu epidemic rampant at the time and in places we were travelling through.

My hotel had the Dr Seuss shop on the ground floor. I wish we had another week or two to hire a car and drive along the coast and through the forests.