San Francisco Niketalkers, is this really how you guys are living?

silkboi said:

Pittsburgh is typical of most old blue-collar industrial/manufacturing cities. Think Detroit and Cleveland. Old factories you could get a job at right out of high school were enough for families to get by on. That industry wasn't really competing with anything else so home prices sit at what they could afford. There has been a growing tech presence recently with Google being there and they still have a large talent pool with all the universities and medical facilities.

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silkboi said:

Pittsburgh is typical of most old blue-collar industrial/manufacturing cities. Think Detroit and Cleveland. Old factories you could get a job at right out of high school were enough for families to get by on. That industry wasn't really competing with anything else so home prices sit at what they could afford. There has been a growing tech presence recently with Google being there and they still have a large talent pool with all the universities and medical facilities.

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SFC415 said:

DMan14 said:

it's funny seeing ppl jogging thru these areas
they need to be aware that there are still sketchy parts in the city

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Yup. These Craigslist ads with the more affordable looking spots prey on out of towners, saying their apartments are in "Lower Nob Hill" or "Up and Coming part of SOMA" while they're actually deep in the tenderloin or on 6th and Mission

If you see a brand new condo in one of those neighborhoods going for $2100, stay the @#$@ away! There's too many horror stories of newcomers to the area getting tricked into them and hating their lives for the entirety of their leases.

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SFC415 said:

I'm trying to remember which parts of SF were actually nice when I was younger and before I moved to San Jose for high school. As far as I remember, it was like 80s-early 90s NYC in the sense that pretty much every part of the city minus the Sunset was a dump, and everyone that was well off lived in the suburbs

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SFC415 said:

I'm trying to remember which parts of SF were actually nice when I was younger and before I moved to San Jose for high school. As far as I remember, it was like 80s-early 90s NYC in the sense that almost every part of the city was a dump, and everyone that was well off lived in the suburbs

I mean think about the most popular areas that people are moving to now in the 90s. Would anyone well off willingly move to these parts back then?

SOMA? no
Mission? HELL NO (I grew up there )
Embarcadero pre ATT park? no (most of that didn't even exist back then)

Maybe the Marina and other neighborhoods closer to the Golden Gate Bridge , but other than that, I can't remember much

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BeezyGotSole said:

Pittsburgh will benefit from Google, Uber , and FB being there, no doubt in my mind. More tech companies will come and it will be a different city in 10-15 years.

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Mr Fongstarr said:

My girl was born and raised in the Sunset. She is the youngest of 5 kids and she went to Lowell and the rest went to other neighboring schools outside of the Sunset. She is the only one that got a good education where as the rest struggled with their education due to the schools and their parents lack of direction. Her older brother went to Galileo in the 70s and he fought so many guys back then since there was such a harsh racial divide. So it showed how much schools made the difference within certain generations but now that SF is a lottery system, you don't even know where your kids will go to school. I know the school systems out here are better than a lot of neighboring cities like Oakland but at least with specific cities like Millbrae, Walnut Creek, etc, you know you will go to your sanctioned school district because you are essentially paying to live there. You can pay over a million dollars in a house in SF and your kid could still go to a bad high school.

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Mr Fongstarr said:

My girl was born and raised in the Sunset. She is the youngest of 5 kids and she went to Lowell and the rest went to other neighboring schools outside of the Sunset. She is the only one that got a good education where as the rest struggled with their education due to the schools and their parents lack of direction. Her older brother went to Galileo in the 70s and he fought so many guys back then since there was such a harsh racial divide. So it showed how much schools made the difference within certain generations but now that SF is a lottery system, you don't even know where your kids will go to school. I know the school systems out here are better than a lot of neighboring cities like Oakland but at least with specific cities like Millbrae, Walnut Creek, etc, you know you will go to your sanctioned school district because you are essentially paying to live there. You can pay over a million dollars in a house in SF and your kid could still go to a bad high school.

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Mr Fongstarr said:

My girl was born and raised in the Sunset. She is the youngest of 5 kids and she went to Lowell and the rest went to other neighboring schools outside of the Sunset. She is the only one that got a good education where as the rest struggled with their education due to the schools and their parents lack of direction. Her older brother went to Galileo in the 70s and he fought so many guys back then since there was such a harsh racial divide. So it showed how much schools made the difference within certain generations but now that SF is a lottery system, you don't even know where your kids will go to school. I know the school systems out here are better than a lot of neighboring cities like Oakland but at least with specific cities like Millbrae, Walnut Creek, etc, you know you will go to your sanctioned school district because you are essentially paying to live there. You can pay over a million dollars in a house in SF and your kid could still go to a bad high school.

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Dathbgboy said:

So long as the leadership allows for it. Peduto wants the city to move forward and grow but he still has a lot of opposition for whatever reason
How does that work w/ busing the children to school? A kid from one neighborhood can literally be placed in a school that is clear across the city? if so that's crazy but I actually like it.

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http://www.alternet.org/labor/hacke...rogrammers-2-rooms-and-one-21st-century-dream

Labor
I Came to San Francisco to Change My Life: I Found a Tribe of Depressed Workaholics Living on Top of One Another
Hacker House Blues: my life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream.
By David Garczynski / Salon
September 18, 2016

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Photo Credit: Sonny Abesamis, Flickr

I might have been trespassing up there, but I would often go to the 19th-floor business lounge to work and study. Located on the top floor of the a luxury high-rise in the SOMA district of San Francisco, the lounge was only accessible to residents of the building. Yet for a while I found myself there almost every day.

Seventeen floors below, I lived in an illegal Airbnb with 12 roommates split between two rooms. There were six people packed into my bedroom alone — seven, if you included the guy who lived in the closet. Three bunk beds adorned the walls, and I was fortunate enough to score a bottom bunk. Unfortunately, though, it was not the one by the window, which, with the exception of one dim lamp, was the only source of light in the room. Even at midday, the room never lit up much more than a shadowed cave. At most hours of the day, you could find someone sleeping in there. Getting in and out of bed was a precarious dance in the darkness to avoid stepping into the suitcases on the floor, out of which most of us lived.

In the shared kitchen, the sink more often than not held a giant pile of dishes, and the fridge, packed with everyone’s groceries and leftovers, emanated a slightly moldy aroma. Mixed in there were the half-eaten meals and unfinished condiment jars of tenants who had long since moved out — all left to rot, but often too far buried in the mass of food to be located.

Let’s just say the room was not as advertised.

The Airbnb posting did boast of access to a 24-hour gym, roof deck and bocce courts. The building has an indoor basketball court, an outdoor hot tub and even a rock climbing wall. The 19th-floor business lounge alone comes with a pool table, a porch, several flat-screen TVs and an enviable view of much of San Francisco. For $1,200 a month, it all seemed worth it. The post did say it was a four-person apartment, not 13, and included a picture of a sunny room with a pair of bunk beds, but I figured for a short sub-lease while I attended coding school, it wouldn’t be so bad. The reviews, after all, were pretty positive, too: mostly 5-stars. However, none of them mentioned the fact that I wouldn’t even be given a front door key.

I’d have to sneak into the building every night. The only way I entered the building was by waiting until someone exited or entered, and then I’d slip through the door before it closed. From there I’d walk straight past the front desk guard and head to the bank of elevators. Despite my nerves, that part was surprisingly easy. The building caters to the young tech elite, so a backwards hat and a collegiate T-shirt practically made me invisible. When I got to my floor, I’d make sure none of the neighbors were watching, and if no one was around, I’d stand on my tiptoes and grab the communal key hidden atop the exit sign. Once the door was unlocked, I’d return the key to its perch for the next tenant to use.

I had moved to San Francisco to break into the tech world after being accepted into one of those ubiquitous 12-week coding boot camps. I had dreams of becoming a programmer, hoping one day I could land a remote contracting gig — a job where I could work from wherever and make a good living. My life would be part ski bum and part professional.

In my mid-20s uncertainty, the coding route seemed to have the most promise — high paychecks in companies that prized work-life balance, or so it seemed from afar. I knew the road wouldn’t be easy, but any time I’d mention my ambitions to family and friends, they responded with resounding positivity, affirming my belief that it was a well-worn path to an obtainable goal.

All of the people in that Airbnb were programmers. Some were trying to break into the industry through boot camps, but most were already full-time professional coders. They headed out early in the morning to their jobs at start-ups in the neighborhood. A lot of them hailed from some of the top schools in the country: Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth. If I was going to get through my program, I needed to rely on them, academically and emotionally. Once the program started up, I would find myself coding 15 hours a day during the week, with that number mercifully dropping to 10-12 hours on the weekends. Late at night, when my stressed-out thoughts would form an ever-intensifying feedback loop of questioning despair — What am I doing? Is this really worth it? — I would need to be able to look to the people around me as living reminders of the possibility of my goals.

Every night, the people whose jobs I coveted would come home from 10- to 12-hour shifts in front of a computer and proceed to the couch, where they’d open up their laptops and spend the remaining hours of the night in silence, sifting through more and more lines of code. Beyond preternatural math abilities and a penchant for problem solving, it seemed most didn’t have much in the way of life skills. They weren’t who I thought they would be — a community of intelligent and inspiring men and women bouncing ideas back and forth. Rather they were boys and girls, coddled by day in the security of companies that fed them, entertained them and nursed them. At home, they could barely take care of themselves.

Take for example the programmer who lived in my closet: Every night he’d come home around 9 p.m. He’d sit on the couch, pour himself a bowl of cereal and eat in silence. Then he would grab his laptop and head directly into the closet — a so-called “private room” listed on Airbnb for $1,400 a month. It was the only time I’d ever see him. The only way I could tell he was home was by the glow of his laptop seeping out from under the closet door. Hours later, deep into the night, the light would go out, and I would know he had to gone to sleep. By the time I arrived, he had been living there for 16 months, in a windowless closet with a thin mattress placed right on the floor. During the day he codes for Pinterest. Yeah . . . that Pinterest.

Maybe there were people working in this city who were living out the tech dreams of everyone else, but I’ve realized the number of people who dream about it far outnumber of people who obtain it. Everyone I spoke to in this town seemed doe-eyed about the future, even while they were living in illegal Airbnbs and working at failing startups across the city.

The odds weren’t in my favor. Most likely I’d find myself in the 92 percent of start-ups that go under in three years, trapped like some of my friends — much smarter and better programmers than I’ll ever be — bouncing from failing company to failing company.

Or maybe not. Maybe I would make it, only to become like my friends who earn six-figure paychecks and still lament that they’ll never be able to buy a home here. What illusions could I continue to maintain then?

There was a good chance I’d find myself in a situation like another roommate’s. During salary negotiations for a job at a start-up, he was encouraged to accept the pay tier with a lower salary but higher equity stake. Now he works 12-hour days just to try to keep the company (and his potential payout) afloat on a paycheck not much higher than some entry-level, non-programming jobs.

The most likely scenario, however, was that I’d become like the mid-30s man who slept in the bunk above me. The reality of his situation slowly slipped him into a depressive state, until he was sleeping most hours of the day. The rest of his waking hours were spent walking around slumped and gloomy.

Programming for me was never supposed to be more than a means to an end, but that end started to feel farther and farther away. The longer I lived in that Airbnb, the longer I realized my dreams would never be met. In all likelihood I would be swept up in an economy here that traded on hopes and dreams of the people clamoring to break in. The illegal Airbnbs that dot the city can afford to charge their amounts because there is no shortage of people wanting to break in. There is another smart kid around the corner who believes that despite the working and living conditions this is just the first step to striking it big. Never tell them the odds.

I had hinged my happiness on an illusion and naively fought to get into a community that wouldn’t help me advance in the direction of my dreams. Maybe in the end I would get everything I needed or at least a nice paycheck, but I’d lose all of myself in the process. I’d be churned and beaten by the underbelly of the tech world here long before I could ever make it out.

If you are interested, it’s not that hard to sneak up to the 19th-floor lounge. I still do sometimes, despite having long since moved out and given up programming. From up there the view of San Francisco takes on the artificial quality of a miniature model. To the north, you’ll see a sea of tech start-ups, their signs and symbols a wild mash of colors. From this distance, it can all look so peaceful. Just know that somewhere in that view is another “hacker house” with bright kids living in almost migrant-worker conditions. Somewhere out there is a coding boot camp with slightly inflated numbers, selling a dream. Their fluorescent halls and cramped bedrooms are filled with the perennially hopeful looking to take the place of those who have already realized this dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It is a beautiful view, though. Just one I no longer want for myself.

David Garczynski has lived in the Bay Area for one year now. In that time, he's lived in an illegal Airbnb, on his cousin's couch, in two short-term subleases, and has been evicted once. He just signed an official (and legal) lease last week.

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SFC415 said:

Do the people who write those articles expect readers to feel bad or to laugh at the subject? I don't feel bad for these idiots at all. I can pull up plenty of apartments all over the Bay Area, including SF, where you can find your own room for $1000 or even less. There's zero excuse to be paying that much to live in dorm conditions. No one is forcing these clowns to live in a luxury apartment in SOMA or Embarcadero, but this is the typical American mentality to try to fit in with the people who've made it before actually working and getting to that level. Bragging to their friends "I live in the city now! Look at me!" while living in poverty

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Mr Fongstarr said:

I keep questioning if I should do the move to tech but I'd have to go back to school and essentially learn something I am not going to be great at and work crazy hours. Still, tech seems more up my alley than corporate but me being 35 sort of puts in me in odd position where I am old in that industry but still very young in my current one. It's an odd thing to swallow.

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Mr Fongstarr said:

Dathbgboy said:

So long as the leadership allows for it. Peduto wants the city to move forward and grow but he still has a lot of opposition for whatever reason
How does that work w/ busing the children to school? A kid from one neighborhood can literally be placed in a school that is clear across the city? if so that's crazy but I actually like it.

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I think SF is trying to balance out the school systems which is a good and bad thing. Good cause bad schools get better and bad cause good schools get worse. They essentially are sort of gentrifying the schools. Like a certain percentage of kids have to be from like lower income or something of that nature which essentially forces kids in that area to have to go to other schools that are out of their district. And yeah.....what about the commute you say? Well that is going to just be the parents problem. They essentially will have to commute within SF just to get their kids to school before they can even go to work.

Again.....that was supposed to be the perks in living in SF, which is why most young families are all moving out of SF to Oakland, El Cerrito, etc. I go to open houses all the time and it's like looking at carbon copies with all the couples being on the younger side. The difference is most are willing to pay absurd prices now where as I am having a hard time trying to think Oakland houses are worth $700K.

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DatZNasty said:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/roo/5837635211.html <$500

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