896,047
Population
Sunny Days: 160
85100 Affordability
89100 Schools
100100 Diversity
65100 Safety
San Francisco, California
Karl The Fog
San Francisco Bay From Pac Heights
Pacific Heights Mansions
Chinatown, San Francisco, Credit: Derick Daily
Golden Gate Park
LookyLOO Review of San Francisco
The Random Beauty is Unsurpassed
It is the most irrationally designed city in the country with some grid-like blocks surrounded by fabulous Dr. Seussian roads and neighborhoods. This randomness results in wonderful moments where you’ll end up on a street you’ve never been on before, that winds through a neighborhood you never knew existed and yields a view of a part of the city or bay or ocean, that will continuously amaze you even decades after you first move here.
San Francisco is dominated by small neighborhoods with single family and multi-unit homes, a smattering of low-profile apartment buildings, and a batch of boutique coffee shops, restaurants and absurdly expensive mixed with amazingly cheap second-hand fashion retail. Depending on your age and preferences chances are you’ll live in one of these little hamlets. Younger, tech go-getters are flocking more to the newer high-rises in the Market Street, South-of-Market areas that are driven by: proximity to work, gyms, organic food, and massive quantities of coffee and THC distribution centers.
While the great majority of the city is bereft of the unhoused there is no question that the homeless are surrounded by stratospheric wealth. This can signal both the hypocrisy of tech culture and the difficulty in tackling wealth inequity, housing shortages, and a mental health crisis.
Lifestyle
Work Hard, Play Hard (outside)
San Francisco exists for many residents as a jumping off point for everything that surrounds it. Set on, and surrounded by, what is possibly the most beautiful land in the country, San Francisco residents in many cases work to get out and play in the outdoors when not plugging away on their computers. This “play” can include everything from hiking in the hills of Marin to hitting the beaches of Santa Cruz to hanging in Golden Gate or Dolores Park and enjoying the fresh but often foggy air. One of the great things about these playtime activities is they are all free. Which means if you can afford to live here you do get the benefit of much of your recreation time not costing a penny.
While people do drink in SF it isn’t a raging city in the way east coast or midwestern cities can be. The degree to which people are grinding to try to strike gold here probably contributes to some of that more mellow night-time vibe. Expect music events, performing arts, hanging out with friends at brunch or drinks after work to dominate the non-outdoor playtime.
A typical weekend day/night might include: waking up for a workout, getting a cup of joe at your neighborhood boutique coffee shop, meeting friends at the park or the Headlands for an afternoon of chill hanging/hiking, and then grabbing a Burrito in the mission and a beer(or two) at a local bar before calling it a night.
One oddity of San Francisco: it has the lowest per capita for people under 18 for a major city in the country. An old running joke. Question: “what do you get a kid in San Francisco for his 5th birthday?”. Answer: “a house in Marin”. While that is a privileged answer (Marin is really expensive), the truth remains that it is hard to raise kids in SF due to cost of living and either quality of public schools or cost of private schools. So, a lot of people hit the eject button when their kids reach school age. Given a lot of people sell their homes when they are older, and use the $$ for retirement, SF can feel a bit like a college, or maybe a grad school. The population runs hard to older Gen Z’s, Millennials and some Gen X’ers who bought early in the housing market or struck it big in the tech scene.
If you're interested in good ways to meet people in SF check out this handy guide from Timeout.com.
Worklife
The Grind
San Francisco is an amazing city for landing a job. It has the largest concentration of tech jobs in the world, a big banking and finance industry, massive healthcare and BioTech companies, and plenty of jobs via the largest category of employers in the city: tourism.
What’s nice about the majority of these businesses is that they follow the lead of the leaders and offer amazing perqs and extremely employee-friendly policies. What’s also nice about many of these companies is they are aggressively shifting to wfh policies so do you need to move to San Francisco to work “in” San Francisco? The idea of being able to hang at home and enjoy the perks of the city without having to wrestle with commuting or public transport seems kind of dreamy. Again, provided you can afford the housing costs.
https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/cities-local-communities/institute-san-francisco-economy
Schools
The San Francisco Unified School District scores well on the standardized rankings system, receiving an "A" on niche.com. As with most big cities, the district has a reputation for having some great schools and many underperforming schools. Also in common with many city districts, the issues seem to arise at the middle and high school levels.
The district has largely operated on a lottery system, with some geographical weighting factoring in but not in the way it does in most other school districts. This is great if you live in a neighborhood/zone that has poor-performing schools and you crave winning the lottery into a better school, and creates risk if you live in a district with a great school but don't win the lottery for that school.
Ultimately, most families who live in the city and send their kids to public schools will fight to get into the better schools and they make it work. There are also amazing private and parochial/religious options whose price tags vary from insanely expensive to reasonable, for independent schools.
Some of the great public options include:
- Lowell High School: a famous public magnet that has fought some battles to maintain its highly test/qualification-based system for entry. It receives an "A+" on niche.com.
- Lincoln High School: after Lowell, Lincoln High is typically one of the two publics most sought after by parents/kids to attend. It receives an "A" on niche.com and is considered an excellent education for a public school option.
- Washington High School is the other coveted public option. It also receives an "A" on niche.com and is a much loved for being a more "well-rounded" experience than some equate with the pressure-cooker experience at Lowell.
Reviews of San Francisco from Locals
**In the words of Gary Kamiya, who said it far better than we have:"
At any moment, as you move across this city’s convoluted terrain, behind a storefront or a neon sign, a strange hill or piece of unfamiliar water will suddenly rise up in the distance, as mysterious and enticing and otherworldly as one of those unknown landscapes in the background of a Renaissance painting,” he writes. “At every step, San Francisco offers you the universe, for free."
For more reviews of what living in San Francisco is like from locals check out: The Reviews
Why You Should Move Here Now?
Everyone Moved To Denver (or Austin or Boise)
Although this might sound a little like a “Yogi-ism”, San Francisco is most compelling to move to when people are leaving. The most innovative, affordable, and interesting times to be here are right after the busts. Cost of living gets better, people get more creative, and the city seems more kind and less $$$ motivated. The recent AI boom is pulling techies back into the city into neighborhoods like Hayes Valley (now affectionately known as "Cerebral Valley) so that short-lived exodus may be ending.
Living in San Francisco
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Neighborhoods in San Francisco
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The Bay Area
The Bay Area includes everything from the northern wine country cities of Napa and Sonoma, the city of San Francisco, San Jose and the peninsula region to the south of SF, and Oakland across the Bay. The three big cities in the area include San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. San Francisco is perched on the end of a peninsula and surrounded by the Pacific to the west and the San Francisco Bay to the north and east.
The closest areas to the city include Marin north across the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland to the east across the Bay Bridge, and the peninsula south down either the 101 freeway or the 280 freeway. There are commuter trains running around the city, into the east bay and south a bit. That’s supplemented by Caltrain which runs from SF down to San Jose. San Francisco has the largest ridership of buses in the country which help with getting around the extremely hilly city. If you live here you’ll get to know these methods of getting around.
People head north into Marin for hiking and outdoor recreation, some of the best in the world, or farther north to do some wine tasting in Napa or Sonoma, also some of the best in the world. They go east to Oakland or Berkeley for culture and different, less tech-heavy social scenes. Or they go south to the peninsula, mostly for work.