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by Fluxx 4624 days ago
There does seem to be a "center of gravity" in SF that is incredibly bizarre to me. For a lot of people, if you live west of Divis or south of 24th st, you might as well be, for all intents and purposes, in Oakland. Seems like a lot of the complacent crowd of SF lives in the Mission/SOMA/Pacific Height/Marina/Russian Hill bubble and never gets out of it.

Yet there is a whole 3/4 of the city that isn't encompassed by that part that is really, really awesome. It may not be "trendy" or anything, but they're full of great neighborhood places and "real" people. I think it's easy for everyone analyzing this situation to forget those places exist.
1 comments
malyk 4624 days ago
This comes back to transportation a bit. Living in the outer sunset or outer richmond and commuting to soma or the financial district is either a really long bus ride on packed buses or an N/T/etc fraught with delays getting onto and down market street. It takes me 35 minutes to get from my house in north oakland to work off the embarcadero station. When my wife and I lived in the inner richmond (6th and fulton) it took her 55 minutes to get to her office near 16th and bryant.

I think transit here generally gets a bad rap (my wife and I used the muni basically without issue for 5 years living in the city and loved it), but when considering where to live the commute from (and the colder weather of) the western neighborhoods is a big deal.

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Fluxx 4624 days ago
Yeah that's totally fair. I live at Geary and Stanyan, and made liberal use of the 38L and 38[A,B]X busses, which cut that time down a lot. I used to go to the gym every morning before work and could be door to door on the 38BX in about 25 minutes most days. If you can get a seat on the busses, I kinda enjoyed the time on my phone or with a book, but that's not always possible too.

I commute by bike now, which is certainly the fastest way to get around the city - perhaps just not the safest or least-sweaty way.

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tommaxwell 4624 days ago
Yup, public transit in areas like Outer Sunset is pretty bad. I've never lived there, but I did stay in a hacker house there once while searching for an apt, and it takes a good 40 minutes on a crowded bus to get to Market St. Also I rarely ever find an Uber or Lyft nearby.
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