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Moving to Bay Area
PlushyCthulhu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
I just got a new job in the bay area and will be moving there at the end of June. I know housing is going to be crazy expensive, and I'm curious on your advice. Points of concern:
Price: I'm budgeting about $1300 for a 1B. If push comes to shove, I'd rather go a little higher than have a roommate.
Commute: I will be working in Menlo Park. There is a shuttle from the CalTrain stop - is San Fran->Menlo Park viable or would it crush your soul if you had to do it every day? I do have a car, but I'd rather not have a long drive every day if I don't have to.
Access to San Francisco: For weekend and such, can you drive in and park (they have P&R stations at the BART right?). Would I feel like I was missing out if I lived south of Menlo Park? Are their any legit downtown areas between San Fran and San Jose or is it all full suburbia?
Dating: Probably fine wherever, but if I put Menlo Park into OKCupid I just get a ton of San Fran people. I'm guessing they don't really date outside of the city if they can help it - how is the scene in Silicon Valley proper?
Right now I'm tentatively thinking about Redwood City. Thoughts?
Thanks much.
I just got a new job in the bay area and will be moving there at the end of June. I know housing is going to be crazy expensive, and I'm curious on your advice. Points of concern:
Price: I'm budgeting about $1300 for a 1B. If push comes to shove, I'd rather go a little higher than have a roommate.
Commute: I will be working in Menlo Park. There is a shuttle from the CalTrain stop - is San Fran->Menlo Park viable or would it crush your soul if you had to do it every day? I do have a car, but I'd rather not have a long drive every day if I don't have to.
Access to San Francisco: For weekend and such, can you drive in and park (they have P&R stations at the BART right?). Would I feel like I was missing out if I lived south of Menlo Park? Are their any legit downtown areas between San Fran and San Jose or is it all full suburbia?
Dating: Probably fine wherever, but if I put Menlo Park into OKCupid I just get a ton of San Fran people. I'm guessing they don't really date outside of the city if they can help it - how is the scene in Silicon Valley proper?
Right now I'm tentatively thinking about Redwood City. Thoughts?
Thanks much.
Steam/LoL: plushycthulhu
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I have no idea about SF; 1300/1B in Menlo Park is probably going to be on the low end, but possibly doable (my g/f is currently paying something in the 1400-1500 range), whereas 1300 in Redwood city is likely going to go a lot further (Menlo Park is a LOT of Stanford grad students/postdocs in addition to the normal rich retired / silicon valley types, so you're paying a premium for being able to bike to campus in Menlo Park).
SF is relatively decent about parking in general; there's some parking at bart stations, as well as parking lots in SF that aren't insanely expensive
how old are you? Menlo Park is very much in the Stanford & Silicon Valley area, so there's absolutely a lot of people there (in the 20-low 30's range)
Taking Caltrain from SF to Menlo Park would really depend on how much time it takes the shuttle to get from the train station to your work and where you live in SF. Before we moved my boyfriend worked in SJ and it took him 2 and a half hours to get from our house to his office because there was a half hour bus ride, the train ride, and then a light rail ride from the train station to his workplace. But we also lived basically on the other side of the city from the train station, so ymmv. It really depends on how much free time you want to have on your work days; you can use Google maps to map out a public transit commute from places in SF to your workplace to get a better idea.
There aren't really any park and ride stations at BART in SF. You can find parking around the Glen Park BART station fairly easily and then BART into downtown or wherever from there, but it's street parking and therefore not guaranteed. Daly City BART has a dedicated parking lot that I think is still free and that's pretty close to the city (15 minute BART ride to downtown SF). You can also park in the Richmond/Sunset district for free and take the bus around the city, but until you're familiar with the city parking at Daly City is probably easiest. Honestly living in San Jose isn't a whole lot farther south than living in Menlo Park, but San Jose's downtown doesn't at all compare to San Francisco's downtown. There are some things to do but it's not nearly as big.
Redwood City is a decent in-between SF and Menlo Park, and is about half an hour away from SF, but I've never lived there so I can't comment much beyond that.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask here or shoot me a PM, I lived in San Francisco all of my life before moving down to San Jose at the beginning of this year.
If you work in Menlo Park then you'll be using Caltrain instead of BART. It's not a horrible system, but I'm not sure you really need to go that route, as you are basically doing a reverse commute from everyone else (to which Melinoe alluded). The thing about the Bay Area is that there's really only one real downtown - San Francisco. There are other small pockets of nightlife, but you won't find anything more than a block or two in places like Palo Alto or Los Gatos in that area. If you don't have a strong desire to live near those places, then you aren't going to get away with not driving anywhere, including into the city. You can try BART, but it stops running at around midnight, so if you plan on staying out until last call or later then you'll need to drive.
All of the above is my long-winded way of saying that outside of San Francisco, everywhere else is suburbia. If you really want to avoid a daily commute, your only option is to pick a place close to a Caltrain station, which sometimes has a pretty hefty premium in terms of rental cost, parking, and forcing you to get up ass-early in order to get a parking spot before the lot fills. There's good reasons to pay this time/cost premium to live close to a BART/Caltrain station in order to commute into San Francisco for work, but if you're doing the opposite than it really doesn't make sense. In your case, you could be getting the flexibility of a 15-minute drive as opposed to a 5-minute drive to the train station, a 20-minute train ride, followed by a 10-minute walk into the office. I hate driving too, but I would choose the former over the latter every time.
Part-answer to this question, it makes a huge difference where in SF you end up living, because although the city is small in terms of miles it is hard to get across efficiently. If you found a place right by the Caltrain station, might be okay.
From where I live, in the northwestern part of the city, Richmond District, it would be out of the question. Google Maps tells me the actual distance is 5 miles, sounds like so little! Yet I know from experience I would have to catch 2 different buses and burn at least an hour just getting to the train station in the first place. I take that trip whenever I want to go to a Giants game, the park is right next to the station.
Steam: badger2d
That was where we were living when my boyfriend was making said 2 and a half hour commute :P it's doable but hellish. He'd leave the house around 5:45 or 6 in the morning and not get home until 7:45 or 8 at night.
SF is very very very expensive and you'll be far better off not trying to get an apartment there. The CalTrain commute is not horrible (and probably better than driving every day), but it is a commute. You're better off commute-wise living somewhere on the Peninsula. Menlo Park is kind of small; have you tried putting Palo Alto/Mountain View/Sunnyvale into OKCupid?
There are legit areas of interesting things going on in most towns (Mountain View's is quite nice, Santa Clara actually has a lot going on), but if you want NIGHTLIFE, that's San Francisco. San Jose has stuff going on but last I heard they roll up the sidewalks at 2 am (and by that I mean, the police clear everybody out).
If it were me, I'd say live on the Peninsula, drive or take CalTrain up into the city on weekends when you want to have fun, and plan on splurging on a hotel room from time to time when you don't feel like driving back.
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Basically, hit up padmapper.com and, well, good luck.
I'm 31 and single, so I'd like an active area but I don't need to be partying it up every night.
Yeah, when I sort by distance it becomes okay, just San Fran is within the 25 mile minimum range filter they have, so the sidebar/quiver/general default stuff just dumps a ton of San Fran people unless I'm specifically filtering matches. Sounds like that if I look throughout silicon valley there should be plenty of people though.
Thanks for the advice guys. Oh yeah, one more thing - have any of you commuted along the Bay Trail bike path? I'd consider trying to do that if I can get near it without a huge premium, but the map I looked at showed two big breaks right above Menlo Park.