A lot more subjective discussion, but here is a section focusing on the bay area and acclimatizing to the US soil.
First up is a small list of neighborhoods / towns that I feel you can comfortably live without a car. Or rather, 2 cars (assuming one of you needs to commute to the office). There are a lot more areas we also like, but they are 2 car towns and after 5 years, we have still not got around to this way of living and like to walk to places for dinner etc...
Bay Area Housing
- San Francisco
Very little to be said about this, yet not all areas are equal.
- Lake Merrit (Oakland)
Popular area for people that work in the east bay or commute on the BART to San
Francisco. Gentrified a lot in the last few years and is now a restaurant destination
spot over there.
- Berkeley
Home of University of California Berkeley, the majority of this hood is well developed,
its on the Bart and close to a huge amount of natural beauty that we love to trek
through at the weekends
- Rockridge
Apparently a hotspot of hipster activity in Oakland that we know several people have
moved to this area recently
- Palo Alto
Stanford University and a great town centre for eating out in the warm summer
evenings make this a go to place even though we don’t live there
- Mountain View
Heart of silicon valley, home to Google and generally a very well kept town
- Los Altos
The suburban side of Palo Alto
- Los Gatos
At the mountain foothills, this has a great quality of life by being slightly off the beaten
path.
For east bay living, I would highly recommend being close to a Bart for easy access to San Francisco for work / drinks as well as being able to commute around the rest of the peninsula without a car. Saying that, lots of people seem to be leaving the city:
http://www.theatlanticcities.
Where to live in San Francisco:
For San Francisco itself, a lot has been written about the various micro-hoods in the city - a map that stylizes the area for easy reading as well as a slightly more accurate street / block map below:
In terms of places I think are worth pointing out, here is a quick write up:
- SOMA (South or Market Area) / South Beach
This is where we originally moved to after relocating to the US. It was super close to the CalTrain station (so I could catch the train to work) and at the time, relatively inexpensive to grab an apartment (a fully furnished sublet was $3000 for a studio, then we paid $3200 for a 2 bed apartment in a great location next to the AT&T ballpark, then finally $2800 for a 2 bed apartment block over the top of City Beer Store). The “relatively inexpensive” comment is true compared to today's rents which seem to have gone up 20-50% - its still WAY more expensive that the UK (especially Cambridge rents).
The major downsides to SOMA is that around half of it can be described as “gentrifying” (although the rental prices these days don’t reflect this transition phase) and parts of it can be dead at night. The South Beach area however is fantastic, close to the Embarcadero and almost always sunny and warm.
- The Mission
“Where the hipsters live” is a bit of a blanket statement for this neighborhood, but it reflects a lot of the culture found here. A mix of latin, counter-culture, art, intelligence and great food and drinks make it a good destination for nightlife and around the peripherals of the main area (Dolores Park for example) is also a great place to live, smack bang in the middle of things with friendly San Francisco streets on your doorstep
Downsides are that this area tends to be a little higher in crime and can get "a little wild" on occasion.
- Noe Valley
This is where we live! The area is well known for being family and pet friendly, although there really is a mix of all types here. Very safe at night, great restaurants and a very neighborly feel (people stopping on the streets to chat etc…)
Peripheral neighborhoods to Noe - Glen Park and Bernal - are also popular family ‘settling’ neighborhood that we considered when moving the last time.
- Cole Valley (Upper Haight)
Right on the edge of Golden Gate park, this is a great neighborhood for architecture as well as cosy coffee shops. It is right next to the counter-culture flash point of the Haight and tends to have a very open minded attitude.
- Hayes Valley
A lovely place to wander along, grab a drink (the German beirgarten is great on a nice day) and get food. It is close enough to downtown and market street but retains a good neighborhood feel.
- Sunset / Richmond (by the Golden Gate Park)
This is one of the most affordable areas to live in SF, its close to the ocean and has great transport links to downtown. The main downside to this is the FOG that likes to eat this area for a third of the year, although it often burns off before lunch.
- Russian Hill / Nob Hill / Hayes Valley / Fillmore / The Marina
All great places, just run out of time to write about them at the moment
Some SF links:
Crime maps of the various areas (and don’t be dissuaded by the sea of red in all areas - the city is generally safe).
and Berkeley:
Cost of living in the bay area
There is no disguising it - housing costs in the bay area are some of the highest in the entire country. Compared to the UK, you can spend up to half of your monthly wage on rent for the higher end properties. Saying this, really great affordable properties are find-able, although it might take a while to come across the right one. 1 bed apartments can go from $1800 in San Francisco up to $4000 for a ‘modern’ / large 2 bedroom apartment near one of the more desirable cross streets depending on the town. This can be almost halved in cost as you move out of the city into the east bay.
Around 75% of all rentals go through craiglist in the bay area (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/apa/). Pad mapper (http://www.padmapper.com/) is a good mashup of Google Maps / Craigslist to give an idea of relative costs by area.
The good news… We tend to pay $50 a month for gas / electric for a 3 bedroom house - this is for 3/4 of the year and it does go up a bit in the few months we actually need to turn on our heat - but then we live in a drafty Victorian. Our first year, living in a modern apartment, we turned the heating on just once. Our internet comes from Monkey Brains (http://www.monkeybrains.net/) which is a private ISP in San Francisco running over a microwave channel for 35$ a month with 20Mbits up/down. Garbage is around $90 for 3 months and water is metered and has been roughly 50-80$ a month with constant visitors (4 adults). If you live in an apartment, bills are divided by occupants, and often included in the rent which saves money - I think our previous rents listed above had all bills included (or we might have paid for electric in one place).
Fuel is ‘cheap’ compared to the UK - its rumored to be around $3.25 this Christmas (still, I have a receipt for 1.65$ a few years ago). Auto insurance can be down to 350$ for 6 months depending on your car.
Food is a bit of enigma. If you shop at a cheap store (non-organic, imported from south america) then its around 1 / 3 of the price of food in the UK for more fresher produce. If you shop at the locally sourced, seasonal markets and eat only organic food then my wife spends around 80$ a week in various places (farmers markets, Wholefoods, Trader Joe’s). There are some great independent supermarkets around as well that we really enjoy shopping at - Berkeley Bowl over the bridge in the east bay (http://www.berkeleybowl.com/) and Rainbow in San Francisco (http://www.rainbow.coop/).
Temporary housing or sublets
Craigslist does have a lot of sublets, but another popular temporary housing site is airbnb that supports by the night up to monthly rentals (these are usually negotiable over the price on the site). When I first moved over, I ended up in corporate housing near the office which was fully furnished and extendable by the month (had a gym, pool etc… on site) - worth a look at the link below for example costs for the place I was in - its “reasonable” even if it does not seem it at the start.
Social in the US
First, if your from Europe its actively hard to stop people talking to you about your accent, where you come from or their family history. I rarely get annoyed by this and often end up chatting to random people and having actual interesting conversations.
Secondly, the bay area is FULL of things to do - I challenge anyone to be bored. Driving up to wine country on a sunday afternoon (1hr over the bridge), the annual maker faire (http://makerfaire.com/) or just cycling through Golden Gate park down to the beach for coffee at the Cliff House (http://www.cliffhouse.com/). Hiking seems to be the favourite past time here and the area is full of trails, often with destinations at the end of them - one of the oldest fixed platform telescopes (http://www.ucolick.org/) or Muir Woods (http://www.nps.gov/muwo/index.htm) the site of the founding of the united nations in the middle of a redwood forest with 380ft trees.
Meetup is a heavily used resource to people to find like minded people to get together and chat about all sorts of topics (http://www.meetup.com/find/). We attended a British Meetup for a while from there (until we got too busy with other activities) and we know there is a very active German community including a great Berlin and Beyond film festival that we enjoy going to (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/saf/prj/bby/enindex.htm?wt_sc=berlinbeyond) lasting a week in Jan. If you have any interest in the crafts, ‘shops are very popular over here for wood/metal or other fabrication activities where you rent out a bench by the hour or join a class. Kirstin was into pottery for a while and met a bunch of people through attending this in the evening for example.
The restaurant scene in SF and the surrounding area is one of the best in the world, yet it remains very affordable and you can easy eat out 2 or 3 times a week and not break the bank. Yelp (www.yelp.com) is really THE place I look for restaurant reviews (or dentists, banks or car parks) and it shows the variety available from authentic bier kellar (http://www.yelp.com/biz/suppenk%C3%BCche-san-francisco-2) through to South Indian Dosa’s (http://www.yelp.com/biz/dosa-on-fillmore-san-francisco-3).
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