Review
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to San Francisco, known by natives and long time residents as "The City." Many visitors have lost their hearts to this cosmopolitan collection of stunning urban and ocean vistas and returned to make it home. Perhaps you are one of them. Regardless of where you're leaving, chances are you're going to love it here.
San Francisco is relatively small when compared to places like New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago, only 48 square miles in fact. But what it has to offer, in terms of culture, fair weather, job opportunities, higher education and recreational options, far exceeds what might be expected from such a compact community.
Nowhere else in America can you ride a moving national landmark, San Francisco's cable cars, taking in some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere. Among the sites you'll be able to drink in at your leisure, the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park and the city skyline itself. You'll have little difficulty seeing those sights, as national air quality statistics show, San Francisco has some of the cleanest big-city air in the country. That's largely due to the proximity of the mighty Pacific Ocean and steady winds that swiftly move the smog away, leaving shimmering blue skies behind. Many would say Bay Area meteorologists have one of the easiest jobs around, as the weather forecast is consistently "low clouds and fog overnight, clearing by mid-morning, giving way to afternoon sunshine." The temperature rarely dips below 40 degrees fahrenheit or above 80, except during the Indian Summer months of late August and September, when it can get into the 90's. That's about as compl icated as it gets, except when it rains, which throws just about everybody for a loop.
Long a hotbed of alternative lifestyles, from its rowdy Barbary Coast days in the 19th century, to the 1950's Beat Generation of North Beach and the "make love not war" hippie/drug culture of Haight Ashbury in the 1960's, that tradition lives on in many areas. The city is home to a large, politically-active gay and lesbian population residing largely in the Castro and Mission districts. At the other end of the spectrum are the towering temples of capitalism and Western economic power that make up the compact downtown Financial District. Home to some of the country's largest banks, San Francisco is also the site of the Pacific Stock Exchange, despite talk over the past few years of moving it elsewhere.
The nine county San Francisco Bay Area is also high-tech heaven to all manner of inventor, computer programmer, software and hardware designer, internet guru, communications technologist, and entrepreneur. Home of the internationally known Silicon Valley, where the personal computer culture was born at Apple, and continues to be fashioned at numerous other companies, people here work in everything from t-shirts, shorts and sandals to European suits and silk ties. The Bay Area has been in the forefront of the movement to "dress down" the American workplace in an effort to make everyone more comfortable (it's the home of Levi Strauss and The Gap clothing giants). Jeans and sport-shirts can now be seen in high-rise office buildings everyday of the week . . . they're not just for Fridays anymore.
More than six million people make their homes in the Bay Area, but only about three-quarters of a million in the city proper. That population almost doubles during weekdays, as hundreds of thousands of motorists take to the local freeways and bridges in order to get to work. Some of the nation's worst morning and evening commutes are here, despite the existence of the sleek, clean and usually-efficient Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, system. Where the BART trains don't go, more than two dozen other transit systems do. They include buses, trolleys, cable cars, commuter trains, shuttles and ferry boats.
San Francisco also has more restaurants per person than any other U.S. city, according to local tourism officials, offering every cuisine imaginable. That translates into some very stiff competition between the eateries, many of which fail every year. Don't worry if your favorite shuts down, though, because chances are something at least equally good will take over the space.
San Francisco runs the gamut when it comes to housing options. Small studios are available in many parts of the city, including the area immediately around the Financial District. There are high rise apartment complexes on Russian and Nob hills with bay views to die for, immaculately maintained Victorian flats and single-family homes in Noe Valley, the Castro, the Haight and Cole Valley, penthouse condominiums and lofts South of Market, Mediterranean-style apartments and houses in the singles-Mecca of the Marina, row upon row of pleasant, relatively affordable residences in the Sunset and Richmond districts, and the mansions of Sea Cliff, Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights. Many consider San Francisco to be a singles town, but you'll soon discover that there are many areas that welcome families with open arms.
Keep in mind that this city is consistently listed at or very near the top of the least affordable places to live in the United States, and that applies to mortgages as well as rents. Recent surveys put the median price for a Bay Area home at $250,000 -$275,000. Rents are also on the rise. One recent survey found that rents in San Francisco in 1995 were up by more than 11% from the previous year.
This book is intended to be a launching pad for your adventure into the wild, concrete canyons of San Francisco's downtown, all the way out to the fog-shrouded serenity of "the Avenues" and everything in between. We'll also look at the surrounding areas, if living in the city is not for you. We'll glance at Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Marin County and more, all along hoping to make your transition into life as a Bay Area resident as painless as possible.
