Not the GP, but I moved from Reno to SF a year and a half ago (work wanted me to relocate from a fulfillment center to HQ), and at the start of this year I moved back (convinced work that me relocating back to the FC would be better aligned with my current job duties, which is true).

I'm glad I tried living in SF. I grew up in Sacramento, and always kinda knew how bad it was over there just from visiting, but my philosophy is that I'd rather try something and hate it than not try at all and regret missing out. And don't get me wrong, it was kinda "fun" at first, but it quickly grew into the "Dwarf Fortress" sort of "fun" [1] - except unlike in Dwarf Fortress, when that "fun" culminates in everything going to shit, you can't just start a new game.

My specific grievances:

- Cost of living. Rent especially, but groceries, utilities, California income tax, sales tax, and all sorts of other little paper cuts contributed to my savings almost entirely tanking. I got out just in time.

- It's way too crowded. Just... way too many people, no matter where you go. A lot of people like that, apparently. I ain't one of 'em.

- The public transit system is atrocious. BART is tolerable, but BART doesn't go everywhere, and certainly doesn't go everywhere in SF. MUNI seems to think time tables are optional; whether or not I get to work half an hour early or half an hour late seemed to depend entirely on a dice roll, and the RNG gods rarely looked down on me favorably. Not nearly enough metro rails, especially through the city (unless you want to pay a premium for the cable cars, and also be beholden to their very-much-optional timetables). But oh well, guess I'll just drive, then, right? lol nope, because...

- Traffic is atrocious. Probably is a contributing factor to public transit being atrocious. A lot of it is entirely preventable; yeah, there are some cases where congestion is legitimately an issue of too many people trying to drive cars into a single place, but more often than not it boiled down to poorly-timed stoplights (seriously, has San Francisco not heard of these nifty inventions called "sensors"? I lost count of how many times I've exclaimed to myself "why the hell is this light red at 3am if I'm literally the only living being at this intersection?") or assholes double-parking (or parking in no-parking zones, as inevitably happens when some box truck driver thinks he's special and "No Stopping Any Time" somehow doesn't apply to him).

- The homeless situation is atrocious. The air is thick with the smell of sea foam and human excrement. Piss and shit everywhere. Even worse in the Tenderloin, and even the Tenderloin is running out of space, so the homeless are forced into the surrounding "nicer" areas. To be clear, I don't blame the homeless in the slightest for their situation; there's no reason one of the richest cities in the world couldn't house and feed and clothe and heal and otherwise help every single person on the streets. And yet, San Francisco - despite "trying" to "help" the homeless - barely moves the needle at all, all because...

- ...it's a city populated by elitist NIMBYs in an increasingly-large proportion to the overall population. Let's be clear: if you can afford to live in San Francisco - and therefore actually vote on San Francisco's policies and projects as a city - then you are coming from a place of enormous privilege, whether that be the privilege of having been born and raised there (and even that ain't a guarantee, given how many locals are getting priced out of their own neighborhoods and shoved south and east) or the privilege of having an absurd amount of money. You want homeless shelters or improved public transit or just more space for people to live so that more people can actually afford to have a roof over their heads? "Fuck you I've got mine", say SF's voters, and instead you end up with townhouses as far as the eye can see. Property values matter more than even basic human needs, apparently. Never mind that all but the absolute wealthiest of these people are perpetually a couple paychecks away from being on the streets themselves. And to rub salt on that wound...

- ...those same NIMBYs then turn around and wrap themselves up in faux-progressivism. It's intellectually dishonest to claim to support the rights of ethnic or sexual minorities while simultaneously depriving them of their inalienable human right to life (by tolerating their lack of food and shelter and sanitary conditions) all because a homeless shelter would lower property values in the neighborhood. It's intellectually dishonest to claim to want to protect the environment while contributing directly to the urban sprawl (and therefore the simultaneous greenhouse gas increases - since public transit's still a dumpster fire - and destruction of habitats) that's necessary in surrounding areas specifically because building adequately-dense housing would ruin the ocean view from one's townhouse.

Now don't get me wrong, there are still lots of good people in SF - people who, while still benefiting from that high baseline level of privilege necessary to actually live in SF, were at least cognizant of the need for improvement and actually seemed to care. Unfortunately, those people are typically the ones closer to the "one paycheck away from homelessness" threshold, and/or are having to increasingly sacrifice their own standard of living to unacceptably-low levels to keep themselves above that threshold. They're fighting a losing battle, and gradually getting pushed further and further away as a result. It's likely that they'll soon be the minority, if they aren't already.

And so, I left. One less contributor to the problems. One more vacancy to be filled by the next schmuck dumb enough to try to live there. But at least I did try, and even though I ultimately failed I did make my share of good friends and make my share of great memories. That's ultimately what matters, right?

----

If you want the big city experience without getting ground to dust, might I recommend Texas? El Paso and Austin are both pretty different from the typical midwestern vibe. If you insist on California, my biased recommendation would be Sacramento (it's facing a lot of the same problems as SF nowadays, but to a more manageable degree, IMO); it's consistently neck-and-neck with the Bay Area on a lot of diversity factors, and the people are way more chill there (for the most part).

----

[1]: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png