[gfxgirl]

If I came from maybe Flagstaff Arizona I'd think SF has "museums, bars, restaurants, proximity to nature" but having lived in plenty of other places with more museums, bars, restaurants and proximity to nature SF was a let down.

[fragmede]

San Francisco is a very small city, but it is a city nonetheless which puts it on the list of places in the US where you can live (and I mean truly live) without a car, even before the age of Uber/Lyft. (Unsurprisingly, the other places on that list are also cities.)

Due to tech money and location, it occupies a weird place in the various lists of world's cities. It is just tiny a small city compared to other cities in the world, and geography and politics aren't about to let that change any time soon.

[fulafel]

SF is a big city, #16 in list of most populous cities. There are eg 317 cities over 100k population in the US, and 466 50k-100k cities.

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/best-small-cities-in... lots of cities on that list are <10k and almost all are <100k

[ghaff]

>where you can live (and I mean truly live) without a car

Maybe. I do know a couple who live in SF who don't own a car but they sure use a lot of Ubers and do rentals.

More generally, and I'm probably just showing personal bias, but for me living in SF without the ability to just hop in a car and go to mountains etc. seems like it would be cutting myself off from much of what makes SF more interesting than comparably-sized cities.

[fragmede]

I should have been more specific and said owning a car. It's more convenient to use a car in many situations and modern car rental places (Zipcar/Turo/Getaround), along with the traditional car rental companies, mean its easy to rent one for a few hours or a weekend. Depending on where in the city you live and how often to you go the mountains, the cost of car payment + parking + insurance may or may not be worth it compared to renting as needed.

It's not a personal bias when most Americans share the same bias. I've found Americans are only slightly weirder about their attachment to owning guns than owning a car, but far more Americans have this religious attachment to having a car.

The pandemic has even driven car sales, so it's entirely normal. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Car-sales-surge...

[ghaff]

That's certainly an option. Depends on your requirements and how much you use the vehicle. Renting does have some friction associated with it but, if you're only going to use a car a couple weekends a month, don't have dedicated parking, and don't need/want anything special, it may well make more sense to rent.

[lcc]

I agree. I live in SF and hate driving in the city. 95% of my in-city transportation is walking and biking.

But my quality of life went way up once I bit the bullet and got a car. Skiing, surfing, and hiking all became way easier. I was already occasionally renting cars to do those things, but the friction of picking up/returning the cars and the marginal cost of each trip were big drags. Now I don't think twice about a 1-2 week long backpacking trip, where previously I would have been dissuaded by that expensive rental car sitting unused in the parking lot.

[hpkuarg]

I'm curious, where else have you lived with such a great balance of everything?

[josephmosby]

#1 suggestion: Washington, DC. Museums (the Smithsonian museums), bars, restaurants (one of the Michelin cities), proximity to nature (there's a national park that cuts through the middle of the city, there's the National Arboretum, and you're about an hour drive from numerous state parks in Virginia and Maryland)

#2 suggestion: Chicago, IL. Museums (check), bars (check), restaurants (also a Michelin city), nature (Lake Michigan).

#3 suggestion: Boston

I will 100% grant that the weather in the Bay Area is generally better than all three of those places - but if you don't highly rank outdoor activities, does that matter as much?

[hpkuarg]

> a national park that cuts through the middle of the city

Come now, you aren't suggesting that the National Mall counts as "proximity to nature" ;-)

I've spent some time in all three cities and live in one; none of them really offer the same ease of access to nature as does San Francisco, if you count nature as necessarily including some level of remoteness from the built-up environment.

[sershe]

By that criteria Denver/Boulder, Seattle, Portland, etc. are way superior. Any kind of nature activity (hiking, backpacking, skiing, paragliding, cycling) is better and closer, except surfing perhaps.

With density that I until recently used to consider as an unquestionable positive becoming at least temporarily moot with covid (and frankly becoming permanently soured by the out of control protests - I realized I prefer my density Singapore style, with CCTVs and harsh sentencing), I can see why people would move out. I'd probably be out of Seattle, at the very least to the burbs nearby with the same access to everything and few of the downsides, if it was just me making the decision. Same applies to SF (I've lived in SF and Mountain View before, I'd say it's even more acute in SF, quality of life is just terrible even for someone who loves dense cities - might was well move to peninsula or east bay for better access to nature in essentially the same place).

[cafard]

I take it that he is referring to Rock Creek Park. And the C&O Canal Towpath doesn't cut through the middle of the city, but it is a fine place to go

[mattcaldwell]

LOL they're referring to Rock Creek Park, not the National Mall. RCP is probably the single best "urban" park system outside of Forest Park in Portland. I can walk out my door and be in nature in just a few minutes... you can walk or run all day and never leave the forest, yet still be in the middle of the city.

[kyuudou]

There's plenty of walkable greenspace in the DC area, but unless you live near a Metro stop or work remote, you will need a car and you will probably hate the traffic.

[jasondelta]

I think they're referring to Rock Creek Park, which runs down the middle of DC in the north and is run by the National Park Service.

[evanb]

Rock Creek Park is a National Park.

https://www.nps.gov/rocr/index.htm

[hpkuarg]

Likely only by virtue of it sitting on Federal land (the District of Columbia). That is, if by the National Park designation you mean to imply a level of grandeur and majesty that the likes of Zion or Glacier National Parks bring.

To be fair, I've never been to Rock Creek Park, but photos of it make it look like any number of state- and municipal-level parks near me. :-)

[evanb]

I mean National Park in exactly the same way that everybody means National Park: Rock Creek Park was the third National Park, made so by an Act of Congress, just like any other big-N National big-P Park.

https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/51st-congress...

If you're willing to travel as much as it takes you to get to Big Sur from San Francisco, you can easily visit Shenandoah or the Blue Ridge, both bona-fide up-to-snuff pre-approved Real™ Beautiful™ National Parks from DC. There's also the Chesapeake, tons of magnificent beaches and state parks in the surrounding area---many beautiful sites on the east coast had already been state parks far before the notion of a national park was invented. That doesn't make them less beautiful or grandiose, however.

[hpkuarg]

That's fair! I do acknowledge conceit in my comment, but you can attribute that to my jealously (as an eastern seaboarder) of the landscapes of the American West.

[ghaff]

Access to nature from SF does require that you actually take advantage of it. There are probably a lot of young tech folk (among others) in SF who don't own a car and tend to mostly do urban stuff. In practice, if you need to rent transportation or depend on friends every time you want to go more than a few miles, you're probably not going to do it.

And at that point, you lose a lot of what makes SF appealing versus other cities.

As for weather, some people do value not having snow or typical summer heat/humidity (or both). But SF isn't the only place with a nice climate (and, for many, SF is gray and foggy relative to even other nearby California options).

[fragmede]

For the purposes of the weather, I say that SF isn't in California. For better or worse. (During this current heatwave, I think better. Today's high is forecast to be 76/24.)

What are other options for similar mild weather? LA/San Diego gets too hot, Atlanta gets humid as well, Boston and NYC get too hot and humid in the summer, and are snowy in winter (though I don't mind that so much). Seattle's got too much rain.

[ghaff]

I don't really disagree. Although a fair number of people are fine with the Southwest deserts, especially high desert.

But coastal California (which, as you say, is mostly somewhat different from SF specifically) is the only real Mediterranean climate in the US.

This particularly unpleasant spell of weather we had until a couple of days ago notwithstanding, New England generally isn't bad in the summer especially once you get out of the cities. You're rarely going to be too uncomfortable on the Maine coast in the summer even without AC. But, yes, it's cold and snowy in the winter.

[enra]

Living in San Diego now and by the coast I don’t think it gets too hot (if you can the ocean, it’s likely not too hot). There is usually ocean breeze and most of the year it’s warm, not hot.

[aledalgrande]

I do remember driving up the highway from Mountain View or San Jose many times and seeing this "cap" above SF. Literally going from short sleeves to jacket.