> Sacramento doesn't get talked about in tech circles and sites like this and related articles, because it's not supposed to be the "next sexy tech town", but in reality is a lot of people have moved here since the pandemic, both tech and not.
Sacramento also has a train line that takes you to Santa Clara, which is better than driving - this has made it a better choice for a few of the folks to consider that over Dublin or Pleasanton in the most recent migration (Amtrak is close to a lot of hardware-lab specific jobs like Nvidia, Lockheed, Marvell, GlobalFoundries and Arista), though that connectivity might shift if BART finally loops around to SJC.
Also Sacramento has good schools, decent federal funding pull (over say Tracy) and an airport with a few direct flights from Seattle or NYC.
The only downside pretty much is the weather in comparison and that too not by much.
> The only downside pretty much is the weather in comparison and that too not by much.
Sports, bars, culture, muni metro, proximity to the ocean, proximity to nature (I can be alone in natural parks with less than 30 minutes of driving from my house in SF), jobs, dating, restaurants, I could go on.
I'm not even someone that plans on staying in SF (I actually don't like it that much), but there are lots of downsides if I left for Sacramento. I realize there are upsides as well, but I think it's disingenuous to say 'Sacramento is as good or better than San Francisco except for the weather'
I can't comment on other items on that list, but the amount of nature you can be in within 30 minutes of driving from anywhere in the Sacramento region is drastically more than 30 minutes from anywhere in the bay area. Our family has been able to enjoy the nature a lot more since moving out here.
Certain aspects change in priority drastically as one's life stage changes. Dating is one of those. As one goes from being single to married, dating goes from being just about the highest priority concern to the lowest. Similar for bars/night life. Once those things are out of the picture, I find Sacramento to be infinitely more enjoyable than SF.
Totally agreed but gotta say Ive never lived in a city where my wife and I have enjoyed our dates more.
There seems to be literally no end to the number of world-class coffee shops, breweries, brick oven pizza joints, sushi restaurants and parks out here.
After growing up in SF, living in the desert for a long time and desperately trying to make NY and LA work I can honestly say Sacramento is the healthiest feeling place Ive ever lived. And thats including the weather. Its a dry heat... :)
That said we moved here during COVID so still trying to figure out how to connect with tech folks out here of anyone has any thoughts?
"but the amount of nature you can be in within 30 minutes of driving from anywhere in the Sacramento region is drastically more than 30 minutes from anywhere in the bay area."
Not true at all. The sad truth is there are more hiking trails and options for "stuff" involving nature than a far majority of folks realize. Even in areas like Los Altos, Palo Alto, Cupertino, etc, are dangerously close to non-urban reserves and other spaces, but often have no idea.
Many feel fine driving from Palo Alto to go to Marin for Alamere Falls and brunch in Mill Valley, but have no idea Butano or Purisima or Skeggs and brunch in Woodside or Pescadero or Davenport and is a fraction of the distance and comparatively stunning.
Well, as someone who lives in the SF Bay Area but genuinely loves Sacramento, I think it's actually pretty easy to undersell it. Sacramento has some wonderfully walkable, vibrant neighborhoods, particularly around Midtown and downtown. Before the pandemic, it wasn't uncommon for me to have an evening there that went something like this: early drinks at the Jungle Bird, a terrific retro tiki bar; a walk a few blocks to any number of solid restaurants (ones I remember were Cantina Alley, Frank Fat's, Lucca, Camden Spit & Larder, The Press, Broderick, and Centro Cocina Mexicana), maybe off to Temple Coffee afterward, and if we didn't get dessert at the restaurant, a stop at Rick's Dessert Diner or Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates. I've worked in both downtown San Francisco and downtown San Jose, and honestly prefer downtown Sacramento to both (although see the qualifier below).
As for nature, well: obviously Sacramento ain't near the ocean. But it has two rivers running through it, a lot of parks (Sacramento has more trees per capita than any other major city in the United States -- seriously!), and you don't have to drive very far to get into the Sierra foothills. You'd be surprised at what you can find around there.
The qualifier below: obviously San Francisco is, for all of its warts, a "world class" city in ways that few other cities in the United States are. I like Midtown Sacramento more than any neighborhood I spent time in around SF, with the possible exception of Hayes Valley, but many neighborhoods in have great attractions and you can get to all of them via public transit. But unless "a half-dozen world class bars and four three Michelin-starred restaurants" is a make-or-break requirement, Sacramento is...honestly pretty nice. I really wish I'd been able to get things together to move there in 2019, because real estate prices started shooting up during the pandemic.
Good searching! I've heard the claim about Sacramento before and think I found it somewhere fairly reliable, but it's admittedly been a few years. It would have been safer to say "Sacramento has a lot more trees than you might think it does." :)
Sacto is underrated (although I think I'd rather be in sleepier Davis and just train up) and downtown SJ has been overly maligned, often without any direct experience (or any real attempt to look).
I live in the latter now, literally in SoFA (South First Arts district) and certainly before COVID it was a small but damn vibrant area.
It used to be half of the Bay Area, but because of the growth in and around Sac, and because its a college town with a pretty well regarded college and mellow attitude (think Berkeley if it was not trying so hard to be so extra; like the show Northern Exposure. but warm).
And Haberdasher is my hood, as is its neighbor Petiscos (I painted the wall mural in there) and Cafe Stritch...great area.
Proximity to nature? Sacramento is near the Tahoe area as well as the rest of the Sierra Nevada range. Proximity to nature is one area where Sacramento resoundingly beats the Bay area. However I agree with the rest of your examples.
The backlash against homeless people is coming.[1] There's a GoFundMe for a scheme for national homeless concentration camps.[2]
"The plan calls for the construction of 6 Homeless Help Campuses. These would be built on Federal Land by the Army Corps of Engineers and would be funded by the Federal Government through grants to the hosting states. Targeted states are California, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and Georgia. Each campus will hold up to 50,000 residents. The campuses will include all services required by the residents including K-12 education, a trade tech college, physical and mental health care programs and will even include a local community based policing agency."
You have a substantive point and this is an interesting comment but please don't toss in flamebait like "concentration camps" - it will just create a flamewar and with Godwin-colored flames at that. Thoughtful critique is fine of course.
The historical origin of the term is one thing, the historical associations of it are another, and it's not possible for people to argue about it on the internet without flamewar.
The HN approach is to observe that we don't need to go there, and then not to go there.
I understand that you don't want to use the term "concentration camp" because it's associated with Nazi extermination camps. What term would you prefer instead, "internment camp"? There really needs to be a term which people can use to describe sweeping up classes of people and confining them to an area.
Yes, that is a more neutral term, for the reason you mention—but only if it is used where strictly accurate, and not as an exaggeration to score rhetorical points. When I looked yesterday, it wasn't clear to me what's actually being proposed at the site the GP was linking to. If it really is a proposal for involuntary confinement, then the word internment seems justified, otherwise surely not.
Incredible timing on their part! They just need to build it as part of SF proper and not Corps of Engineers land and get it done for 2024 and they’ll be right on the mark: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District
I would disagree with your framing here on two points:
(1) The "backlash" is not "coming," it's always been here. NIMBYs are not a new phenomenon and there will always be cranky people who respond to the plight of the homeless with "won't someone think of the property values." So it goes.
(1) More significantly: that is not remotely a serious organization. It's a few NIMBYs from LA who got sticks up their asses about a city council member proposing a homeless encampment near where they live. Come on, take a look around that web site: the "board of directors" have no bios or information, the "case studies" are nothing of the sort, there's no indication they've done any of the filings necessary to be a real non-profit. The site is, as near as I can tell, built using GoDaddy's free site builder (which is why it has the "Powered by GoDaddy" link in the footer: they're too cheap to pay a few bucks to turn it off), and it still has placeholder text like "Add a footnote if this applies to your business."
I mean, sure, even obvious cranks can get people to take them seriously -- but this is at best a group to keep an eye on. "The plan" you quoted is their pipe dream, not an actual plan any government agency has committed funds for.
Many people also find the hedonistic, materialist, and vapid culture of SF repulsive. I can understand why many people would want to be arms length to it, using it for the occasional good restaurant or art exhibit and then heading home to a place more fulfilling and community oriented. To not be immersed in it and all of its adjacent dysfunction.
SF is a whore you visit here and there but not often and certainly not one you make a meaningful part of your life - so-to-speak. Get the money and get out when you grow up some and want to take life more seriously than 40 year-olds hopelessly clinging to youth on the muni kickball field.
There are a number of factors that make the school system so outstanding:
1: The best schools are the public schools. There are some perfectly fine private schools, but the public schools (at least in SJUSD) are even better.
2: There are excellent magnet programs at the elementary, middle, and high school level. These programs do not exist in some other areas, including in Silicon Valley (this has come as an unwelcome surprise to my family). The schools in Sacramento regularly send their kids to national rounds of science competitions, and when I was a student (20 years ago) they regularly placed in the top 5 nationally.
3: Students from throughout the region can 'open-enroll' into magnet programs, regardless of geography. In my high school, we had students who came from 45 minutes away.
So the upshot is there are great schools that are free and that are available to any student (especially the advanced programs).
Sacramento also has a train line that takes you to Santa Clara, which is better than driving - this has made it a better choice for a few of the folks to consider that over Dublin or Pleasanton in the most recent migration (Amtrak is close to a lot of hardware-lab specific jobs like Nvidia, Lockheed, Marvell, GlobalFoundries and Arista), though that connectivity might shift if BART finally loops around to SJC.
Also Sacramento has good schools, decent federal funding pull (over say Tracy) and an airport with a few direct flights from Seattle or NYC.
The only downside pretty much is the weather in comparison and that too not by much.