I grew up in the Bay Area (and currently live on the East Coast) and I was not sure whether "The City" would refer to SF or NY. I guess it goes to show how myopic TechCrunch is that they didn't recognize that as being ambiguous for a national audience.
For an international audience, "The City" means London's financial district. This is the only use of the term sufficiently common to be mentioned on Wikipedia's article.
Wikipedia aside, I respectfully disagree. Even for an international audience, context is important for interpreting "the city." NYT article: "the city" is New York. Economist article: "the city" is the City of London. TechCrunch: "the city" is San Francisco.
There was a TV show called Sex and the City, and that referred to New York.
I'd say either NY or London is fine for an international audience.
SF, not so much - and I hate, hate, hate how that reference shows the promise of the internet as a world without locality has been lost and turned into California, with the rest of the world as an afterthought.
Anyone interested in history or the bizarre would love the history of the City Of London Corporation. Business can vote, and their vote strength relates to employee numbers - that alone blew my mind when I learnt of it. Its well worth going down the rabbit hole if you have a spare bit of time. A good starting place for me was http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
I grew up, live in, and currently study in the Bay Area. If I am talking to someone, or if someone is talking to me, most references to "the city" will be clearly understood to mean San Francisco. Ex: I'm going up to the city. How was the city? I don't make it into the city that often. There's a concert in the city.
And the fact remains that the majority of the tech ecosystem is centered around the Bay Area, and hence the majority of TechCrunch's target audience.
I find it's best just to call it "San Fran" to disambiguate.
And for the entertainment value of indignant inhabitants of the area gasping like goldfish out of water as they prepare to tell you that no no no, it's not 'San Fran' and only someone completely ignorant of the most revered status of their fair (or foggy) city would make such a horrible faux pas :-)
Not a problem, no one cares what you call SF any more. We'll just know that you're not from around here. And that's ok; we like meeting new people with strange and interesting ways of saying things.
Yeah, I think the first clause was retroactively added to the title, because I did click through to read it before I posted--although I could have missed it and be embarrassingly wrong...
In any case, I'm surprised my criticism got so much discussion. It's hardly novel to call TechCrunch myopic, and not very insightful in retrospect. It was kind of just a knee-jerk reaction to a confusing (for me) original title. It just goes to show how important geography is to people, I suppose.
Yep, I'm even a startup founder (see my profile for more) and I live in Philly.
I went to college on the East Coast, and found that I just generally liked being on the East Coast more. I like the cities on the East Coast much more than SF. While I do miss some of the outdoor opportunities nearby, that's not really what I'm optimizing for at this point in my life. Mostly, I love being able to live in a hip, walkable and affordable neighborhood and not breaking the bank.
I also don't put that much credence in the theory that you have to be in the Bay Area (or anywhere in particular) to build a successful startup.
You can be pretentious about your local metro region and still be original. Consider Boston, "The hub of the universe", or "The Hub" for short. It exhibits all the hubris of having your own "The City" without all the confusion.
San Francisco needs their own Oliver Wendall Holmes to come up with something as catchy... or the rest of us can just agree to just start calling it "Frisco", which solves the confusion problem while trolling the city's inhabitants at the same time (a win-win)!
Where in the Bay did you grow up? I've been here most of the last 25 years, and it seems to me that throughout the Bay Area and for Bay Area writers/publications like TC, "The City" (often but not always capitalized) unambiguously means San Francisco.
I believe it was a specific affectation of Herb Caen, longtime SFChronicle columnist, to refer to SF as "The City" (capitalized).
Also, the phrasing and emphasis in hometown band Journey's regionally-popular song 'Lights' may help cement the phrase "the city" to mean SF, among locals. ("When the lights go down in The City... and the sun shines on the bay...") It's not just the generic/nearest 'city', but "The City".
Incidentally, if this article were accurate, it would have been short and boring. We opened an office in SF because a lot of the people who work for YC live there.
People in SF (and really all around the bay) refuse to let San Francisco's obvious shortcomings and relatively insignificant size stop them from considering it the center of the entire universe. It's one of the most frustrating things about living in San Francisco, especially if you're moving from somewhere bigger or more interesting. However, NYC transplants to SF are rare; instead, you'll find hundreds of people from small towns across the country and world who must assume all "big" cities (something SF barely qualifies as) are flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system which barely runs and a terrible male-to-female ratio that reinforces the awkward social climate.
San Francisco's male to female ratio 1.008 [1]. It must be rough finding someone when for every 251 males there are only 249 females. But, in fact, even that's an understatement.
If you factor in that there are more gay men than lesbians in San Francisco [2][3], the tables turn. The straight men to straight women ratio is more like 0.96 [4][5].
So, far from the stereotype you've pulled out here, in reality for every 24 straight guys there are 25 straight girls.
>flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system
urine: no worse than London, where I moved form.
mentally-ill: more than London, and it doesnt bother me
transportation: bad enough that (as in London) I ride a bike everywhere
weather: better
start-up friendliness: much better (than when i left in '06)
Not liking SF is fine. Besmuding the judgement of its residents to fit your own tastes: not so fine :p
Not so rare that I don't meet one every few weeks. They pretty much all say the same thing: there's nothing like NYC but SF is more livable.
On the other hand, people who move here just for the tech boom tend to polarize hard into either the most earnest people you've ever met but who have little interest in the city, or complete a-holes who hate everyone/thing. That's my scientific determination at least.
On a side note: Ive found San Francisco to be quite nice, just about as nice as most other cities ive been in. NYC was nice (though a bit less friendly than most), DC was nice (except for the politicians), San Francisco was nice (though surprisingly cold), Seattle was nice (and just as rainy as expected), and Portland was nice (very beautiful each time I've been there).
American cities are on the whole all at least pretty nice.
I wonder if what you're describing is that broad, or perhaps a slightly different phenomenon:
A huge amount of the growth of SF's (the city proper) tech scene seems to be driven by companies staffed primarily by very young (straight out of college, <30yrs) people. Similarly, much of the migration to the city seems to be driven by young folks (under 30/without family).
Back in the old days (when I was growing up on the peninsula), one of the big reasons people wanted to live in Palo Alto/Mountain View/Cupertino was that they were family-friendly towns with good schools and communities. Companies sprung up on the peninsula for many reasons, but people at or near child-rearing ages (~30+) had their priorities set.
I'm unconvinced that this rationale has changed in the intervening years. Gentrification and high demand have made living in the 'ideal' parts of the peninsula more difficult, but people still choose Palo Alto to start a family. Similarly, tech companies that tend to have slightly older workforces still prize their peninsula locations.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think studying the demographics of SF growth may tell us more. That said, I don't think that the suburbs[1] are being marginalized at all.
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[1] While cities on the peninsula might be suburban in a way, they are quite different from suburbs in the rest of the country. It's a bit strange calling Mountain View a suburb when it is so different from a city like Needham (suburb of Boston) or the various suburbs of Seattle or Houston for example.
Historically this isn't true. There's a much less flashy reason for why so many startups are flocking to SF -- there isn't much space available at reasonable prices in Palo Alto or Mountain View that that's suitable for startups. If office space in Palo Alto or Mountain View was not desirable, the prices would crash.
This isn't new either: there were plenty of SF startups during the old dot-com boom as well. I'd also predict that if there is a further growth of tech startups we'll see startups spread to other areas now considered "less desirable" -- in dot-com days there were plenty of companies in Santa Clara, Milpitas, Downtown San Jose, Fremont, and even exurbs like Pleasanton. When the boom ended, CA-237 was locally called the "dot com graveyard".
While you're right about office space becoming wildly expensive in Palo Alto and Mountain View, I'm unconvinced the data supports the idea that cheap office space is the driver of growth to the city.
As you mention there is plenty of cheap and large offices as you go south along the peninsula, but startups seem to consistently choose more expensive SOMA offices over these. Only startups that need a warehouse or other specialized facilities start their search in the south bay.
I think the reality is that its a combination of factors driving people to SF, from 'cool factor'/perception to quality of life issues (employee proximity) to 'cheaper-than-palo-alto' benchmarking.
By the way, if you're reading this thread and looking for office space, the south bay is a perfectly good place to look. Yes, it's not as glamorous, but it's both functional, frugal, and actually quite nice. The graveyard doesn't consist of dumpy factories, but pleasantly maintained offices with good facilities. You can even live nearby, as long as calm neighborhood is an acceptable condition for you.
I wouldn't call places south of Mountain View and Palo Alto 'Peninsula'. San Mateo is an often overlooked option (not as cheap as SOMA, afaik) but in a way it means a commute both for folks coming from Cupertino/Sunnyvale/Palo Alto/Mountain View and for folks coming from the city.
I would say significant amount of startups would still prefer Mountain View to SOMA, but they'd probably prefer SOMA to Santa Clara or San Jose.
There are many positives you've described to places further South, but there are also issues: fewer other startups, less third places in walking distances, being rather far from any kind of public transportation. In terms of employees it's somewhat of a balancing act: there are older employees with family in South Bay, more infrastructure folks (ex-Google and VMW folks, as well as various infra startups), and there are also younger employees, front-end developers, designers, and people with finance/consulting who live in SF. It would be more far more difficult for SF set to commute to, e.g., an office park in Santa Clara than for folks in South Bay to commute to SOMA (fairly easy trip by either car or Caltrain).
That said, Peninsula is exactly what its name implies, and SF is at very end (with hills in between). There will be greater pressure for startups to go further South again, as well as East (if Berkeley/Oakland adopt more startup friendly laws), elsewhere in SF (already happening), and so on.
That, and cities have a higher standard-deviation than suburbs on pretty much any variable you choose to measure: house price, income, race, price of gas, education level, price of a haircut... In my experience cites have the best and worse of all that life offers. Suburbs are mediocre.
Potentially, but I've found the 'suburbs' of San Francisco/the Bay Area are very different from suburbs in other parts of the country. Suburbs are known for being somewhat isolated, uniform, and idle; the textbook definitions of suburbs describe them as a dissociation of residential life from industrial zones.
This is often not true around SF. Up and down the peninsula, you'll find continuous cities with strong tech and other industries. Would we consider Redwood City a stereotypical suburb, for example? It becomes more murky, and many of the stereotypes fall apart.
That said, your perception is held by many people and is accurate for many parts of the US. As a result, people moving to the Bay Area choose where to live with a similar bias.
I think this is true for a non-trivial amount of the younger generation. I know a decent number of (relatively affluent) people in their early 20s who simply do not have and do not plan on getting a driver's license.
Not really the case when you consider the huge rural population of the past and that the 20th century saw huge amounts of urbanization in the US (where 'urbanization' = developed areas and includes suburbs). The lower-density suburbs are still growing at a decent pace 1990-2013 and on especially in the South/West, but what defines a suburb is no longer the 1950s version and and incorporating urban/city-like elements now
Because cities are where success is. People who are already rich like living in the countryside. People who would like to become rich need to live in cities.
Also:
Cities aggregate enough people that you won't be the only person like you.
As a sub-point to the above, if you're looking to meet any other people, for whatever reason, you'd want to be located in a city.
Things that are for sale, are generally for sale in cities. Want to buy something? Your best bet is a city.
Because cities are where success is. People who are already rich like living in the countryside. People who would like to become rich need to live in cities.
Huh? In the US, median rural income was $40,135, compared to $51,522 in metropolitan counties. [1]
Things that are for sale, are generally for sale in cities. Want to buy something? Your best bet is a city.
Please tell me how long the drive from SF to the nearest Walmart is.
Cities aggregate enough people that you won't be the only person like you.
This is a very good point. Lots of interest-based communities form in cities. In suburbs, there would not be a sufficient "critical mass" for this kind of community to exist. It drives business too - there are, for example, restaurants in cities serving niche foods. They would never have a large enough customer based outside of a highly-concentrated urban area.
The basic business model of Walmart--the premise of the company existing in the first place--is to provide affordable retail to rural communities underserved by other retailers. And they're so successful that in much of rural America, they have an effective monopoly. The real question is: do you have better options than Walmart? Because the bargain-basement shit they have for sale isn't worth buying if you can afford the alternatives.
Judging by google maps, there are several Walmarts within a 12-14 mile radius of the Sutter-Stockton garage. (All on the east side of the bay, as you might have expected.) The traffic estimates are roughly 30 minutes.
For comparison, my family lives in a "suburb" 20 minutes or more away from everything (and 25 miles / 40 minutes from the nearest Walmart). I wouldn't have thought much of driving 30 minutes to Walmart, except that SF doesn't exactly encourage, or even tolerate, car ownership.
Then again, I could walk 10-15 minutes to Macy's, Nordstrom, or Target.
By most Americans' definition of suburb, Mountain View doesn't exactly qualify. My apartment was within 15 minute bike ride of Walmart, 10 minute bike ride of downtown (including commuter rail), walking distance of YCombinator, and it on the easternmost edge of Mountain View (the grocery store I walked to was technically in Sunnyvale). My commute to work was 5 minutes.
Now I live in Saratoga where I've a 20 minute commute to Palo Alto -- and again, am in walking distance of grocery stores, coffee shops, and biking distance of downtown.
I think I need to elaborate / clarify my earlier words:
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For comparison, my family lives in a "suburb" 20 minutes or more away from everything (and 25 miles / 40 minutes from the nearest Walmart). When I was in San Francisco, I wouldn't have thought much of driving 30 minutes to Walmart (because of my background), except that SF doesn't exactly encourage, or even tolerate, car ownership.
Then again, I could (when I was in San Francisco) walk 10-15 minutes to Macy's, Nordstrom, or Target.
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I'm not sure why you bring up Mountain View, as I didn't mention it and in fact was not referring to it in any capacity. My family lives in a "beach community" with one store, of which I do not know the name. Besides the store, there's a church, a school of some primary-or-kindergarten level, an outpost of the public library, and a fire department. I have also heard the location described as a "suburb". Going anywhere at all is a hassle; there is nothing nearby. It is possible, given the right wind, to smell the fertilizer that the local farms apply to their fields.
My girlfriend and I recently had to decide between living in the suburbs (Peninsula) and SF city. The premium for living in a comparable 1br apartment was close to $2k/mo. The suburbs offered a door-to-door 40 minute via public transit (from Millbrae). Driving would be 20-25 minutes during off-peak hours. But obviously some people decide to live in the city. Can you tell me what I'm missing?
Some people just want to be in the middle of the action. They just walk around SF and decide that they have to live there.
I worked for three years at Stanford. Once, after I'd been living in Menlo Park for about a year, I flew back into SFO from a business trip, and took the train away from all the skyscrapers and nightlife and excitement -- for me, this was the wrong direction.
I found an apartment the city, started taking the train down, and didn't look back.
The "My girlfriend and I" part -- SF is great if you're living willing to live with ~2-3 rommates, which makes things very awkward for couples who want to cohabit. It's also great if you work in the city, spend most of your time outside of your house at various "third places". In many neighbourhoods it's easy to just step out of your place and have plenty of options within your reach.
Peninsula/South Bay isn't a cultural desert -- there are amazing ethnic restaurants, used book stores, concert venues, etc... -- but they generally aren't all within walking distance, nor is it likely that a great selection of such places will be equidistant from both you and your friends. On the other hand, if (like me!) you prefer to read/code/etc... most evenings and are more deliberate in regards to outings, it isn't really a problem.
Cities also allow you to save money by foregoing having a car, but it's less true for SF: public transport in Bay Area -- even SF proper -- is quite horrid compared to NYC, Berlin, etc...
Not everyone lives in SF by choice: while SOMA is easily accessible from Peninsula by multiple modes of travel, other areas (FiDi, mid-market) are fairly far from Caltrain, expensive as far as parking goes. BART is great when it's not having a strike, but the only locations in Peninsula with BART stops are Millbrae, Dalty City, and Colma.
What most people raving about "end of suburbia" are missing is that high density (SF, NYC) living is rather expensive and this isn't likely to change (SF is a Peninsula, Manhattan is an Island).
What's also missing is that cities vs. suburbia is a false dilemma: many neighbourhoods in Portland and Seattle, parts of Peninsula (e.g., Burlingame/San Mateo area), East Bay (e.g., Berkeley), and even Downtown Mountain View/Palo Alto are far cry from the usual suburban cliches (there is abudance of independently owned restaurants and stores, relative dearth of strip malls, rail transportation, etc...) while still having lots of green areas, being amenable to driving, good school systems all available to middle class (St. Francis Wood in SF might have all of this features, but the middle class is priced out of it.)
I agree with everything you said, except that there is one thing missing from Peninsula/South Bay that SF has: lots of choice of bars and nightclubs. That appeals to the single twentysomething demographic that startups are trying to hire from. Hence the demand.
If you want to stay out late drinking and whatnot, public transportation isn't really an option because it doesn't run very late or very frequent. And if you're drinking, you shouldn't be driving so... you live in SF.
To answer the grandfather post, if bars/clubs aren't your thing, no, you're not missing anything.
Indeed -- there's some very good craft brewers or other speciality places, but in terms of bars and cocktail lounges, SF is hard to beat even compared to other cities (except perhaps Portland and NYC!)
That said Bay Area in general is hard to beat when it comes to food and drink.
Will be a lot easier for tech workers to get to, though this might be less of a good thing if it brings more distractions to the entrepreneurs and engineers there.
On the other hand, it's more convenient for hosting e.g. hackathons.
