avocado8

Top 10 Things I Love About the Bay Area

I compiled the following list for some colleagues who are trying to decide whether to move to the Bay Area, and I thought I'd share it here.

1. The weather.
2. The diversity (and all the good things diversity brings: great food, great cultcha, new perspectives, art movies... I could go on, but I won't). San Francisco is basically the New York of the west coast, only sunnier.
3. The fact that you can start playing ice hockey at age 30 here, and actually have 100 other people your age to play with.
4. Snow is only 3 hours away, if you want it.
5. I don't feel like a freak (and this is not just about hair color). Everybody here is in software or networking or web development. An acquaintance once told me about a time he was sitting on a bench in South Park (in SF) at lunchtime. A guy on another bench let out an anguished "arrrrrgh!" and yelled, "does anyone know anything about blah blah blah system calls on Mac OS9?" Someone from across the park responded, "I do!" and went over to help the frustrated engineer. Pretty neat.
6. It's fun to live on the political and social bleeding edge. We may have energy, budget, tax, and education crises, but California leads the way in environmental and social policy. Whatever we're doing now, the rest of the country will be doing 10 years from now.
7. The food. Name a cuisine, we've got it here. And the variety of organic and vegetarian options is staggering.
8. It's a travel hub. Three major international airports serve the Bay Area, and it's as easy to get to Hawaii, Seoul, or Tokyo as it is to get to Boston, New York, or Dallas. If you hate to fly, the wine country, the mountains, and the Monterey Peninsula are all within 1-3 hours' drive.
9. Unlike in LA, it's actually feasible to walk here.
10. My husband. We both grew up in Massachusetts, have friends and relatives in Baltimore and DC, and travel to Hawaii regularly, but we met here. It's obviously the place to be!