<story><title>What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco</title><url>http://jasonevanish.com/2013/01/17/25-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-moving-to-san-francisco/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starpilot</author><text>Everyone forgets Chicago. In the US, it&apos;s the most important financial center outside of Manhattan and is the third place city in number of Michelin starred restaurants (fewer than SF; Seattle has none). Boeing moved their corporate HQ there from Seattle because of its financial prominence. It has a world class university in U. Chicago and excellent bus/rail transit across the metro area. But the Chicago area is seriously undervalued as &quot;flyover country&quot; for most people from the coasts.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>Agreed. I just moved here from Tucson, and there&apos;s virtually no way I&apos;d be here if not for the fact that I&apos;m living with a medical resident in an apartment subsidized by her hospital.&lt;p&gt;Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I&apos;d choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost.&lt;p&gt;BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the removal of building height limitations and setbacks. The real problem in such cities is with supply, as Matt Yglesias writes in &lt;i&gt;The Rent is Too Damn High&lt;/i&gt; and Ryan Avent writes in &lt;i&gt;The Gated City&lt;/i&gt;. SF and NYC aren&apos;t expensive because of some natural law; they&apos;re expensive because of man-made laws, which can be changed. Don&apos;t yield to torpor!</text></item><item><author>bluekite2000</author><text>The same goes w/ NYC. I have been here for a while now and have met so many young girls following Sex in the City dream, which invariably turned out badly.</text></item><item><author>sakopov</author><text>In my opinion the high cost of living kills everything else on that list. I&apos;d much rather have a comfortable living, travel the world and be optimistic that i will have no problems buying a nice house for me and my spouse/family if i need to/should i want to. I don&apos;t really see this possible based on what i hear from a couple of friends living and working there. Both consumed by their tech jobs, some cool things to do every once in a while when they&apos;re not slaving away for a startup. I guess people have different priorities. All this stuff is great until you&apos;re in mid 50s and you realize your less-than-comfortable living is leaving you with a less-than-comfortable retirement.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostromo</author><text>Michelin only provides &quot;red guides&quot; for 3 US cities: New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michelintravel.com/guides-cat/north-america-red-guides/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.michelintravel.com/guides-cat/north-america-red-g...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s not possible for any other city in the US to get a starred restaurant, no matter the quality of the food.</text></comment>
<story><title>What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco</title><url>http://jasonevanish.com/2013/01/17/25-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-moving-to-san-francisco/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starpilot</author><text>Everyone forgets Chicago. In the US, it&apos;s the most important financial center outside of Manhattan and is the third place city in number of Michelin starred restaurants (fewer than SF; Seattle has none). Boeing moved their corporate HQ there from Seattle because of its financial prominence. It has a world class university in U. Chicago and excellent bus/rail transit across the metro area. But the Chicago area is seriously undervalued as &quot;flyover country&quot; for most people from the coasts.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>Agreed. I just moved here from Tucson, and there&apos;s virtually no way I&apos;d be here if not for the fact that I&apos;m living with a medical resident in an apartment subsidized by her hospital.&lt;p&gt;Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I&apos;d choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost.&lt;p&gt;BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the removal of building height limitations and setbacks. The real problem in such cities is with supply, as Matt Yglesias writes in &lt;i&gt;The Rent is Too Damn High&lt;/i&gt; and Ryan Avent writes in &lt;i&gt;The Gated City&lt;/i&gt;. SF and NYC aren&apos;t expensive because of some natural law; they&apos;re expensive because of man-made laws, which can be changed. Don&apos;t yield to torpor!</text></item><item><author>bluekite2000</author><text>The same goes w/ NYC. I have been here for a while now and have met so many young girls following Sex in the City dream, which invariably turned out badly.</text></item><item><author>sakopov</author><text>In my opinion the high cost of living kills everything else on that list. I&apos;d much rather have a comfortable living, travel the world and be optimistic that i will have no problems buying a nice house for me and my spouse/family if i need to/should i want to. I don&apos;t really see this possible based on what i hear from a couple of friends living and working there. Both consumed by their tech jobs, some cool things to do every once in a while when they&apos;re not slaving away for a startup. I guess people have different priorities. All this stuff is great until you&apos;re in mid 50s and you realize your less-than-comfortable living is leaving you with a less-than-comfortable retirement.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jseliger</author><text>What&apos;s Chicago known for these days? When I think of Seattle, I think of music (grunge was big, and today there&apos;s still a lot of it), Amazon, Microsoft, tech stuff, and arts. When I think of SF I think of free-spirits, the 60s, and startups. When I think of New York I think of movies, finance, artists (especially writers), publishing, and fashion.&lt;p&gt;When I think of Chicago, I think of. . . corruption? Commodities markets?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not saying this to be snarky or a coastal asshole or whatever. I&apos;m saying it because I genuinely don&apos;t have much of an impression of Chicago from the popular culture, or from books, or from sites like HN.</text></comment>