Mark's Musings

San Francisco Bay Area

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San Francisco is one of the few, truly unique cities in the USA (along with NYC, Washington DC, and New Orleans) with world class resources and services. There are great restaurants (more Michelin starred restaurants than NYC). interesting sites to visit, and events to attend. Within a few hours drive in a car are wondrous destinations: the Sierra including Lake Tahoe and Yosemite, rugged ocean coastline and beaches, wine country and gold country. The weather is generally very mild (nearly perfect in the mid-peninsula).

The greater San Francisco Bay Area three largest cities include San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland. Besides these cities the area is almost completely filled by suburbs which include residential, strip malls and low rise business / offices. The area is a vibrant and multi-cultural , filled with interesting people who have come from all parts of the world (nearly 40% of adults are foreign born).

Food

I love food, and we have a lot of good food around the Bay Area. Thanks to the proximity to the ocean, the Central Valley, wine country, and several coastal areas we have access to fresh produce both in our markets and restaurants which focus on farm to table. The only places I have found that equal (or surpass) the Bay Area in terms of quality and diversity of food is Portland, LA, and Tokyo.

Recommendations from professional foodies

When I have time I will update this page with in my recommendations. Some suggestions from my great meals and MLN page.

Weather

The Bay Area has a number of micro climates. I think the weather between Redwood City and Sunnyvale is the best. It’s normally sunny with comfortable temperatures.  I joke that we don’t have weather, we have climate.  Every few years it will get below freezing for 1-2 nights.  The temperature crosses 90F a few times a year.  It rains periodically between Nov-Apr… but the sun will often come out on the same day. Most of the year you can plan outdoor activities without concern that the weather is going to spoil your plans.

On a summer day in Mountain View when it’s in the mid-70s you can go over the hill to the coast between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco and find rain or fog with the temperatures 10-15 degrees F cooler. Likewise you can head down to San Jose/Morgan Hill or over the east bay and experience temperatures than are warmed by 10-20 degress F. If those aren’t what you are looking for, you can go a bit further and bake in the Central Valley, or cool off in the high sierras.

Outdoors

There is a plethora of great outdoor opportunities. Take advantage of them.

Zoos & Animals

Gardens

Parks

Henry Cowell State Park (redwood and path by San Lorenzo River), Muir Woods (great redwoods), Sam MacDonald County Park, Memorial Grove County Park (closest redwoods – off Alpine, near Sam MacDonald), and Natural Bridges State Beach for the butterflies. tidal pools, and the interesting geology.  Of course there many other state parks & beaches which are fun to visit. Alcatraz is always interesting.

A quick note about beaches. The water is cold! Sensible people wade not swim, or swim / surf with a wet suit. Santa Cruz has some great spots to learn to surf. There are some crazy waves in the winter near Half Moon Bay (where Maverick’s is hosted).

Hikes, Runs, Camping

Our favorite hike is in Wunderlich County Park. It’s close by, mostly shaded hiking with food stop at Alice’s Restaurant if you walk around .5 a mile out of the park. There are a lot of good hiking. These days most people use AllTrails, but before AllTrails there was  Bay Area Hiker and Kevin’s Hiking Page. Now there is also Gurmeet.net Hiking.

There are a number of excellent Meetup.com groups and local Sierra Club chapters that sponsor group hikes. Some other resources can be found at Bay Area Backcountry, Ridgetrail, and Midpeninsula Open Space. Check out doing miles if you are looking for longer day hikes.

It can be fun to mix geocaching. into some hikes.

Trail runners should check out the site trailstompers.

The book Camping and Backpacking the San Francisco Bay Area by Matt Heid provides complete list of places you can camp in the Bay Area

See my hiking/packing destinations page for more ideas

Activities

Any given day the question is not if there is an interesting event, but do I have time for one or two.

There are a number of sites which track all sorts of events

Museums

Housing

Housing has been insanely expensive for years. When I moved to the area in 1992 a house 1/2 the size of my home in Columbus Ohio was almost 10x the cost! I almost didn’t purchase but a good friend told me “Buy now if you can. It’s just going up”. So far this has been the case. Even when real estate took big hits (like 2008-9) the Bay Area property mostly retained their values and recovered quickly. In better neighborhoods, real estate has kept pace with the overall stock market in terms of appreciation. Can this continue? I didn’t think so in the 1990s… I was wrong. Now? I won’t want to guess.

For families, one of the biggest considerations is the quality of the public schools. Places with a particularly good reputation:

  • Palo Alto
  • Cupertino (especially the magnet schools)
  • Mission District in Fremont
  • Mountain View and Los Altos metrics aren’t as good at Palo Alto High School, but the kids are a lot less stressed. I think they hit an ideal balance of encouraging kids to excel without weighing them down with too much

See the California School Dashboard for school performance numbers… but remember that these numbers are more an indication of the social-economic status of the kids than the raw quality of the education. The more investment parents make, the better the kids experience. Girl’s Middle School, located in Palo Alto, is an excellent private school.

Transportation

I try to use mass transit when possible, so when I head up to SF I use Caltrain.  I don’t have daily exposure to commute traffic since I walk or bike to work, but I understand traffic is pretty awful these days, especially 85 north in the morning, and 85 south in the afternoon. Google Maps is likely the best way to see how traffic is moving.  The San Jose Airport (SJC) is more convenient than SFO when I can get flights there.  SJC – AirportMonitor lets you watch flights in real-time.  When we fly out of San Francisco Airport (SFO), we often use SkyPark Airport Parking.  Sometimes fares out of Oakland Airport are cheaper than SJC or SFO.  If you mostly use mass transit but need a car periodically check out Zipcars, Getaround, and Turo.

Churches & Service

My recommendations on good churches page. See Volunteer Info Center for links to most of the organizations which operate in the bay area.

Higher Education

There are many higher education institutes in the Bay Area including community colleges, public universities, and private schools. NCES has a list of all post-secondary schools in the area (over 100). A sampling of the schools I have some experience with:

There are also a number of schools which have extended campuses in the Bay Area including CMU, North Eastern, and Wharton (UPenn).

Government

Bay Area Governments has links to city & county governments and other useful info.

Live in The Bay Area?

As I noted above, the Bay area is a vibrant and multi-cultural , filled with interesting people who have come from all parts of the world (nearly 40% of adults are foreign born). The population is highly educated and “successful”. My wife observation is that the area is filled with exceptional people. There is nowhere else on the planet that can match the area for high tech opportunities: a combination of world class universities, a critical mass of high tech companies, an innovative culture, and 70% of the world’s VC money. The areas was formed through effective cooperation between government, academic and industry, but that unfortunately is much less common as business has become more winner take all.

There is a dark side as well. Work culture has become increasingly characterized by ambition and greed, which encourages people to be transactional. Many folks struggle to find authentic community because people are too busy, not vulnerable, and are typically looking for ways to get ahead rather than to connect. There is a growing gap between the “haves” and “have nots” which is creating social tensions and is driving long term (non-tech) residents out of the area (or into homelessness).

The cost of living in the SFbay is very high… mostly driven of the high cost of housing. Some people have raised an  alarm over price of homes, suggesting that housing is a bubble which is about to pop. Right now monthly rents are less than 1/2 what would be a monthly mortgage payments would be for similar housing assuming a minimal down payment.

My personal belief is that unless someone already owns a home in an expensive market, purchasing a house in the bay area does not make good financial sense at this time… but I could easily be wrong since it’s possible for prices to continue to climb.

Pay in the bay area is a bit higher than other areas, see salary.com, payscale.com salaryscout.com, or indeed.com for real data, but this doesn’t typically cover the added cost of housing.

People from small cities or towns complain that buildings are packed to close together, there are too many people, and that house lots are measured in feet, not acres.  People from large cities complain that the area is too spread out without adequate mass transit.

The Bay area is very secularized, with less than 5% of the populate attending religious services each week.  We are hopefully done with rolling blackout and liquification during earthquakes for awhile.

For another take, a survey of people about best things about the bay area.

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