Do people actually like SF? I try to avoid going there as much as possible. It's not even really a city, but more just a place where exurbanites congregate from 9 to 5 to conduct commerce. I've never encountered a more soulless, hollow, and overall depressing place in my entire life.
As an outsider from a small village in New Hampshire who loves visiting cities, its quite shocking to me just how bad it was. San Francisco I fear may be the most overrated city on earth. Astonishingly lifeless to walk around for two days compared to Boston, Paris, Lisbon, Montreal. A network of disjointed suburbs, blocks of nothingness vaguely stitched together, even the places with alleged "culture". Food and weather were the only redeemers. (note I have been to SF only twice now, in 2010 and for longer in 2018).
Maybe I spent hours and hours sauntering through all the wrong parts. I could have totally missed the worthwhile bits of the city, just as I can imagine a visitor to Paris doing. But I'm starting to think that the people who live in San Francisco are, in some sense, kidding themselves. Or at least they don't travel much.
(For Europeans, I'd compare the lack of interesting-ness to Geneva, maybe.)
I've been in SF most of my life. The city has been heavily impacted by tech ever since the dot com era, but it's built on some robust cultural foundations: Waves of arts and landscaping projects dating back to Adolph Sutro, the nearby academic influence of Berkeley and Stanford in addition to smaller local institutions(for example, the Exploratorium - a great place for kids, and still fun for adults), a variety of social movements that have swept through the city from the Gold Rush era onwards, multiple ethnic immigrant cultures, and access to nature.
These are things you appreciate and can grow from by living here in the long term, but are easy to miss if all you do is walk around and see low-rise buildings and homeless people. There are far more exciting cities in terms of bustle and grandeur, and more livable, well-maintained, inexpensive cities for everyday activity.
I've been in SF for 6 months and it's the best city I've ever lived in. Walking is one of my favorite activities and I can get everywhere by foot. A bus line on every street or $5 Lyft if I need to move quicker. The weather is amazing. There's a tech-first culture with hundreds of free events everyday.
I doubt you've had a chance to explore the city district-by-district if you think it's soulless.
There are many homeless people but they don't bother anyone and they're a product of the city's open culture.
Out of curiosity, what other cities have you lived in?
I've lived in few (San Diego, Boston, Phoenix, Los Angeles), visited many more in the US and abroad for work, I'd rank San Francisco near the bottom of the pack.
This might not be the case for you, but many people I've met who really love SF moved here in their 20s. Any city is going to be amazing at that age -- you're young and independent and thriving on the new experiences a city provides. Naturally, you're going to form an attachment.
Most people who move to SF later in their life seem less tolerant of its many problems.
Getting kind of off topic, just curious (as someone who has visited all the cities on your list as well as SF and lived in another five cities): what is the soul of Phoenix? My impression (from an admittedly short trip) was that of a souless wasteland where people moved from ACed building to ACed building by ACed car. It was like the outdoors was a minefield or something.
Not saying my impression was right. Maybe there are limits on what can be gleaned from a trip, as suggested by the parent.
I lived in San Francisco for a few years after living in San Diego, LA, DC, Cincinnati and southern Florida, and I now live in NYC. I liked San Francisco the least. Only thing I really miss is living a couple blocks from Good Mong Kok. That and the coffee.
It is a city, by literally all definitions. Nearly 900,000 people live here, making it the second densest city in the United States. So there's a lot here to be found if you bother to look for it, or just generally know how to navigate a city.
Perhaps if you are coming here to conduct commerce and nothing else it will just feel like... a place to conduct commerce! But that's something you can say about every financial district in the world. The places that have "soul" are almost never the places dominated by office towers.
Don't get me wrong, SF has many, many serious problems. Not being a city is not among them.
> It's not even really a city, but more just a place where exurbanites congregate from 9 to 5 to conduct commerce.
Definitely not the case. Lots of people live in the city of San Francisco, though it's also true a lot of people commute in from the South and East Bays.
There are good things about the city, but the homeless problem (and really, that's what I think this is about) is a very serious issue that makes the place much, much less desirable.
> a place where exurbanites congregate from 9 to 5 to conduct commerce
That describes many cities so much better than it describes SF.
To answer your question. I like it alright. Not enough to live there. But filled with 9-5ers? When I think of SF I think of the incredibly packed dolores park on a sunny saturday, the small 2 story homes running towards the ocean in outer sunset, or the huge amount of music venues.
I lived near 24th and mission spent most of my non-work time in that area (mission / noe valley). I took BART to work and back. I picked up groceries at local grocery stores, fishmonger, and butcher. There was a butcher, fishmonger, and grocery stores nearby, with both south-east asian and hispanic ingredients.
Mission street has various grocery stores, hispanic restaurants, and Sun Fat Seafood. Valencia had some quirky stores, good restaurants, and coffee shops. If you head east on 24th, it's similar to mission, plus dynamo donunts and humphrey slocombe ice cream. West on 24th is Noe Valley, which is a little more upscale and full of people with either strollers or dogs. Lots of single-family and small multi-unit housing in the area.
It had pretty much everything I needed in walking distance.
The financial district does fit your description (it's a ghost town on weekends), but I presume that's typical of financial districts.
It's difficult to like if you don't live there. If you come from outside you first start by paying the obnoxious entry fee (toll) just to cross into it. Then there is zero free parking, and I've seen it as high as $50-$60 for one day to park in the marina. If you do try to park on a street late at night (going to a club) you are really rolling the dice on whether your car gets broken into. Also, it smells like weed and/or feces everywhere.
But if you lived in say, the Mission, and didn't own a car, those things would be mitigated. (You'd get used to the smell).
I've lived here for 5 years and love it. So many neighborhoods with their own charm, food, culture, etc. So much to do, people are open-minded, weather is great. I just don't go to Market St unless I'm going to work, and I avoid the bro-culture by hanging out in different neighborhoods. I would definitely not describe this place as "soul-less".
I love San Francisco. It sounds like when you say SF what you mean is SOMA and FiDi (which even then SOMA has lots going on further down market). There is still so much going on in SF even though the crushing expense of its rent is horrible.
I personally loved little Italy. The espresso was amazing and so were the little restaurants, but I couldn't live there. It's too expensive and the place was a little rough but I still liked my visit.
