as someone who's lived in SF for years this is all very true.
Food is expensive and a lot of it's designed to be instagrammed. There are definitely some great spots but not that many and really not that diverse (lacks middle eastern, greek, british, American bbq, spanish)
Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am, hardly any live music, gender imbalance, and not much density so it often just feels "dead" in a lot of places
the weather is ok. there's usually a few hours per day where it's pristine but quickly gets too cold/windy. And it's too uncomfortable to eat outside for dinner.
Public transit is unpleasant and slow, so most people who can afford it resort to 100% rideshare. And having your own car here is also a pretty bad experience (though some people would say this is a feature not a bug)
Petty crime is high. My friends regularly have to deal with car break-ins. (yes the same person would have multiple break ins in a single year, and no they don't keep anything in their car)
It's hard for me to speak to the culture, most of my network is in tech, and most people I know intend to leave at some point. Living in a city that people don't plan on living in for very long does not create a very good community or culture.
I live here because this is where my job is and where my friends are, but I want to leave pretty badly. I just don't really have anywhere else to go, if not my home country
> Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am, hardly any live music, gender imbalance, and not much density so it often just feels "dead" in a lot of places
As a southern Californian, I can attest to this. It's pathetic that our bars have last call at 2am (effectively many close at 1:30a).
There's been push after push to get last-call to 4am like it is in NY but they never go anywhere in the state legislature.
Bars are loud. People smoking outside of bars late at night tend to be very loud and sometimes get in fights. If you're trying to go to sleep, it's annoying to have a crowd of drunk young men screaming at each other outside your window.
Politicians don't want to go against MADD, and business owners might not want to expand payroll to staff those hours where people are far more likely to get either violent or violently ill.
Because the best way to reduce drunk driving risk is to force everyone out of bars at more or less the same time. Back in my teens and twenties I found myself intervening, with varied levels of success, to prevent drunken trips to the store because "beer-o'clock" was nigh and it was the last chance to obtain more alcohol.
It's always seemed crazy to create a sudden spike in the number of impaired drivers.
What I'd like to see is a comparison of statistics from areas with early last call laws and other jurisdictions with later last call or no restrictions. It would be great to move past what feels good and use some actual data to make a our policies.
In the UK they pushed for pubs to close much earlier. The effect was that people would start drinking earlier and more (at home), and binging because stuff closes earlier. TL;DR it backfired.
I'm not sure what you're comparing it to, SF is known to have a world-class food scene. There are multiple examples all of the things you listed(except maybe british but who wants that?), as well as things that you don't find in may other cities: burmese, cambodian, laotian, peruvian.
Exactly. It is known to have a scene. It is a great place for people who like to go to restaurants. For people who like good food, not so much. I remember going to a tea tasting in SF's chinatown while at a conference there. My friend (a local) asked if we had such good tea in Vancouver. The shop owner who was serving us interrupted: "They do. My brother has a shop there. He sent me this tea."
Really not sure what your point is here. Name cities in North America that have 10+ legitimate Burmese restaurants. If you want to try good Burmese food, it really helps to have local Burmese restaurants. The last time I was at a Burmese restaurant in San Francisco, the waitress told me a lot of the staff was in Burma for the month finding new flavors and ideas for recipes. In most cities there is no chance that the wait staff at your local ethnic restaurant is actively going back to Burma every year to get new recipes and ingredients.
Since you mentioned Vancouver, I searched for Burmese food on Yelp. Only 7 restaurants total come back total.
2 are "Burmese / Thai / Malaysian" Asian fusion places Three of 3 are a generic Asian chain called Noodlebox that has one item called "Burmese naan"
1 is a Thai restaurant with one "Burmese curry" dish
1 is a Vietnamese restaurant that mentions its near one of the Burmese / Thai / Malaysian fusion restaurants
So Yelp has 7 total Burmese restaurants in Vancouver, not one of them is actually Burmese, and almost all of them don't even have Burmese dishes (where is the tea leaf salad? Burmese naan doesn't count)
So you can act like San Francisco is just known for having a food scene, but when you don't even have access to many of the same world cuisines in other cities it is hard for me to take you seriously when you say its not a place for people who like "good food."
You know the majority of American produce is grown in California? Do the vegetables get better when they're shipped for a few days to the east coast?
SF does have some very nice restaurants, but the vast majority are nothing special and quite over-priced for what you get IMO. And the very nice restaurants are so expensive they're not the thing you go to more than once a month unless you're very wealthy.
British people? I'd kill for a local place that regularly served Sunday roast with a Yorkshire pudding. There was one in my city for a while but sadly it was at the edge and they didn't sell enough to keep it up, as such roasts need to be prepared a long way in advance, so you had to pre-order.
Always love to grab myself one when I'm in the UK though.
Discovered the other day a restaurant that sells afternoon cream teas - perfect!
I would very much like an English style pub that serves full English in the mornings. In the UK the price point is also very attractive; a meal that lasts you for most of the day for often less than 5 pounds.
heh. food scene. i don't want a 'food scene.' i just want good food. i don't care if it's on 3 plates with sauce designs, i don't care if it looks like a beef-flower, or if it photographs well for my 'stream.'
btw the british school of cuisine is one of the most famous in the world. not scene-wise though, but good food is for eating, not instagram.
sf is definitely not known for tasty food. it's known for showing off food. good for bored tourists. not good to live there. and no, sf doesn't habe good greek food or middle-eastern food. i've been to greece and the middle east quite a bit, and they have better food at has stations.
sf is all show and hype. that's not what locals want.
It's mostly orthogonal to the trendy food scene, and if you follow the latter hoping to find the former you’ll likely be disappointed, but SF is known for excellent examples of both a wide variety of authentic ethnic cuisines and a wide variety of excellent unique creative/fusion offerings apart from the trendy scene.
the south is known for great bbq. chicago is the meat capitol, with deep dish and greektown. maryland for crab and maine for lobster, nyc has authentic jew-food that rivals what i ate in israel and jordan.
what is the food sf is known for? because if i literally ask anyone i know, the answer will be 'fusion.' or 'pizza' with ranch and lettuce in it.
you're known for california rolls. the big mac of sushi.
known doesn't mean known just to you.
you may have some good restaurants here and there that people can uber to. the rest is fusion of hipster and lsd microdoses.
in a city i want to live in, i walk outside and pick from 5 good places. you take an uber across town to those. people are leaving now that work doesn't require them there. to a cities with better food.
Yes, lots of places in California, especially Northern California, are inspired by,or share inspiration with, SF.
Can't think of any place I've known so many people (and not just of any one national background) who live well outside the immediate area go to regularly specifically because of the quality of some particular cuisine (often, people of non-US origin going for their own national cuisine) that is there, though.
And SF has a large populace of vegans like me, who have a choice of dozens of innovative restaurants with mind boggling vegan food, from Michelin quality and expensive to cheap and homely and everything in between, that I literally can’t find in any other city. It’s cool if you don’t like this kind of food but you did ask what kind of fare SF is known for, so it’s not clear what your point is.
I'm not exactly disagreeing, but just thought you might be interested - the last time I was in Warsaw, Poland, there was quite a variety of vegan places.
Guessing based on a huge pile of assumptions, from relatively few observations, I think it's more health motivated than animal welfare given the apparent demographics of the patrons, but I could very easily be wrong.
Where the hell did you get this "ranch and lettuce on a pizza" thing that you keep spouting off. THAT is definitely not what SF is known for. I've been here a decade and I'm not even sure if that's a real thing or if you just made that up, but it's definitely not indicative of anything except for your lack of qualifications to talk about San Francisco or food.
> Where the hell did you get this "ranch and lettuce on a pizza" thing that you keep spouting off.
Well, ranch perhaps not in the same context, but arugula on pizza is definitely a thing that fits SF quite well, and the unk pledges let seem to refer to arugula as (expensive, hipster-favored) “lettuce”, despite the fact that it's not at all lettuce.
> mais j'ai une question. si tu ne parle rien le francais, why do you use french words where there is an english one already
Oh come on, French / German / English use loan words from each other all the time for various reasons. Often in German the English word just sounds better. Also you have no idea if the OP speaks French or not you just made the assumption, the rest of your comment and all your comments in this thread just read like shitposts.
Everyone also has Chicago-style deep dish pizza and Southern barbecue. You asked what food SF is known for, and the Mission burrito is probably its most famous export, with the Bay Area having the most restaurants competing to make the best one.
>Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am
Serious question. Are there many night clubs and any day clubs? I was last out so late/early quite a few years ago but in most (possibly all?) Australian cities there are night clubs that were open through the night until 6am. I can recall one place in Melbourne that opened at, I think, midnight and didn't kick people out until 10am.
There were also a few day clubs in Sydney and Melbourne, which are like a night club but not opening until night clubs are just closing.
Personally, I've not been to San Francisco. I'm just staggered that given the cities fame the night life is so constrained.
Food is expensive and a lot of it's designed to be instagrammed. There are definitely some great spots but not that many and really not that diverse (lacks middle eastern, greek, british, American bbq, spanish)
Nightlife is horrible, bars pretty much close at 1am, hardly any live music, gender imbalance, and not much density so it often just feels "dead" in a lot of places
the weather is ok. there's usually a few hours per day where it's pristine but quickly gets too cold/windy. And it's too uncomfortable to eat outside for dinner.
Public transit is unpleasant and slow, so most people who can afford it resort to 100% rideshare. And having your own car here is also a pretty bad experience (though some people would say this is a feature not a bug)
Petty crime is high. My friends regularly have to deal with car break-ins. (yes the same person would have multiple break ins in a single year, and no they don't keep anything in their car)
It's hard for me to speak to the culture, most of my network is in tech, and most people I know intend to leave at some point. Living in a city that people don't plan on living in for very long does not create a very good community or culture.
I live here because this is where my job is and where my friends are, but I want to leave pretty badly. I just don't really have anywhere else to go, if not my home country