PSA

[gwillen]

I will be in the San Francisco Bay area from July 12 to July 19. I'll be staying in the Mountain View area, and looking for housing around there, for August (ideally) or September (less ideally) move-in. If you want to hang out with me while I'm around, or if you have housing tips, or know someone who needs a housemate, reply here. :-)

Comments

[dr4b]

Doh. If I do decide to move to SF later this year, it'd definitely be the city, not the south bay, I think...

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

Aww, *nods*. A lot of people (a majority even) seem to prefer the city. I'm not 100% sure, but I do not think I would like living there... I grew up in a suburb of LA, and have lived in Pittsburgh since I started college -- I've never lived anywhere as dense as SF proper.

[dr4b]

Well, I'd be working in the city, and otherwise commuting would suck. What I hated about the Bay Area when I was there several years ago was the whole "california carpool" phenomenon which involved so much driving and so many cars to get anywhere. I haven't had to drive at all in the last 2 months of working in SF -- it's been great!

One of the guys in my group commutes from Palo Alto via caltrain. It doesn't sound like much fun.

[platypuslord.livejournal.com]

I subletted alanv's apartment when he went to Thailand for a month.
My impression was that living in SF is pretty nice in that you can just leave your house and wander around parks and museums and beaches and things.
However it didn't do anything for me socially, in fact the social effect was somewhat negative because I was losing 2.5 hours to commute each weekday.
(And this was with the Google Bus transportation; I would have lost another 1-2 hours for caltrain.)
Access to food also felt a little worse compared to biking-around-Mountain-View, but it's possible I would have found more food sources with time.

For myself, if I somehow had a job in a nice part of SF, I would move there and feel it was a reasonable trade.
But I would not consider living in SF and doing a daily commute.