Moving to the San Francisco Bay Area

If you’re looking for a vibrant, exciting lifestyle, you’ll find it in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s got a sensibility and style that’s worlds apart from the sleek, superficial style of Los Angeles and Southern California. San Francisco is known for being cool and foggy, whereas Los Angeles is known for being dry and smoggy. The Bay Area is both hipper and geekier (you can thank the Silicon Valley guys for part of that). It’s a fascinating place to be, assuming you can afford it.

Finding a place to live

There’s no way around this: the cost of living in the Bay Area borders on obscene. There’s an enormous homeless population in the area, in large part because there’s just not enough affordable housing. There’s so much gentrification (you can blame the tech boom for a lot of that) and so many luxury housing complexes. Housing for the lower and middle-classes isn’t as much of a priority. San Francisco’s location on a peninsula makes expansion even trickier.

In response to the housing costs, many people are heading east to Oakland, San Francisco’s hardscrabble neighbor. Oakland is roughly half the size of San Francisco, but it has a reputation as a crime-ridden city. That’s not entirely fair, though it’s something to be aware of. You can still find plenty of safe places to live in Oakland. And if you literally can’t afford to live in San Francisco, Oakland instantly becomes a more attractive option. Sure, there’s also San Jose to the south, but that’s a way longer commute. Oakland has all the amenities of a city in a major metro area. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for plumbers in Oakland or tax accountants in Oakland; you should be able to find just about anything you need on the east side of the Bay.

Getting around

Like pretty much every major metropolitan area, San Francisco and Oakland have traffic problems. If you’re looking to dodge the traffic jams, you can ride Bay Area Rapid Transit, which is better known as BART. You can buy tickets at BART stations; don’t try to board without one. There are also bus, streetcar, and cable-car lines. If you’re on a cable car, be prepared to share space with tourists. If you want to get really creative, you could even look for boats for sale!

If you move to the Bay Area, don’t be surprised if relatives want to come visit you and go on a vacation at the same time. You’re not obligated to house them (especially if you have a small studio apartment), but it would be nice to show them around a bit. Sure, tourist attractions like Fisherman’s Wharf can be a bit cheesy, but the view from the Golden Gate Bridge never gets old. Don’t forget all the hairpin turns on Lombard Street, either. The Bay Area is a unique part of the country. If you’re lucky enough to live there, it can’t hurt to share a bit of your luck with out-of-towners occasionally.