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Spazzle posted:Most of the bay area is a bunch of unwalkable shithole suburbs. it's true, despite SF's cool hip image most of the bay area is cookie cutter suburbs and office parks.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:35
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etalian posted:it's true, despite SF's cool hip image most of the bay area is cookie cutter suburbs and office parks. Yeah, outside of SF/Daly City and Oakland/Berkeley, the Bay Area is basically suburban LA. And while they have plenty of differences, even SF and Oakland have more similarities to central LA than many people realize. We even have our own equivalent of the inland empire (but with more farms): the outer east bay to Stockton/Tracy, etc. And as of 2013, San Joaquin county is actually considered by the US census to be part of the Bay Area combined statistical area (CSA), which makes it an even better comparison to San Bernardino county (which is part of LA's CSA) than it was before. Rah! fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 05:40
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etalian posted:it's true, despite SF's cool hip image most of the bay area is cookie cutter suburbs and office parks. How far do we have to get from downtown SF?  
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Apr 6, 2015 07:08
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Ron Jeremy posted:How far do we have to get from downtown SF? Maybe I'm misreading you, but are you saying that looks like "cookie-cutter suburbia?" Because those are early 20th century row houses within SF city-proper, which is basically the exact opposite of "cookie-cutter suburbia". Even the second pic, which looks like Daly City or maybe southern SF (in the 1940/1950s, when those homes were first built), isn't like any suburb I know. Those areas are more densely populated than 99% of America.
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Apr 6, 2015 07:39
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Rah! posted:Maybe I'm misreading you, but are you saying that looks like "cookie-cutter suburbia?" Because those are early 20th century row houses within SF city-proper, which is basically the exact opposite of "cookie-cutter suburbia". Even the second pic, which looks like Daly City or maybe southern SF (in the 1940/1950s, when those homes were first built), isn't like any suburb I know. Those areas are more densely populated than 99% of America. Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same.
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Apr 6, 2015 09:07
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Trabisnikof posted:Little boxes on the hillside, Yeah I'm familiar with that poo poo-tastic song about Daly City. I admit I was giving Daly City too much credit overall, because like half of it is pretty typical CA-style suburbia. It's still more densely populated than 99% of America though, and has significant areas of rowhouses and density that you typically don't see in suburbs. When I think cookie-cutter American suburbia, I think of low density, pointlessly windy streets, bigger lots than the inner city, mcmansions, lawns, and cul-de-sacs, all of which is almost non-existent in SF and the part of Daly City closest to SF, and I'm definitely not seeing it in those pics, aside from the mini lawn strips, half of which are paved over with concrete nowadays. I don't think of early/mid century rowhouses with high population density that are built on a grid, no matter how similar each building might look to each other. Most CA suburbs are more dense than normal for the US, but still not Daly City dense, let alone SF dense...with maybe one or two exceptions, like Santa Ana (though it doesn't have rowhouses like SF or Daly City).
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Apr 6, 2015 09:40
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Isn't SF's problem all the 1950-1970 2 story places out on the "avenues" that need to be leveled and built into 10 story places, but I believe anything over 4 stories can't be built with wood framing and immediately costs 3x as much to construct so no $75k income "poors" are going to ever be able to afford those either.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:05
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I like how the whole reddit staff got a meltdown over the thought of being forced to work in Daly City: http://valleywag.gawker.com/keep-daly-city-uncool-1659706738
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Apr 6, 2015 18:09
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etalian posted:I like how the whole reddit staff got a meltdown over the thought of being forced to work in Daly City: Unless they were planning on locating next door to the Daly City BART station, I would be pretty pissed about my employer moving to a location where the only non-joke commute options are a corporate shuttle or a personal car.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:18
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SAMTrans is still a thing, isn't it? But yes, a lot of Daly City isn't very walkable.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:21
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Leperflesh posted:SAMTrans is still a thing, isn't it? Non-joke options, I said.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:23
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Oh no, I have to drive myself to work. Woe is me.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:23
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Oh no, I have to drive myself to work. Woe is me. Emphasis corrected, HTH.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:48
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withak posted:Non-joke options, I said. A ton of regulars manage to handle using SAMtrans for a commute as shocking as that may seem. It even accepts Clipper. But I realize white people have issues riding the city bus so most tech workers will find it an impossible task.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:54
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As a resident of LA, I can't imagine the horror of driving to work.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:02
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Trabisnikof posted:A ton of regulars manage to handle using SAMtrans for a commute as shocking as that may seem. It even accepts Clipper. My problem with SAMtrans would be the sparse, infrequent service, not that it is a city bus.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:08
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Trabisnikof posted:A ton of regulars manage to handle using SAMtrans for a commute as shocking as that may seem. It even accepts Clipper. It's less that and more the fact that you either need to dump a ton of money into owning, maintaining, and fueling a car, on top of your sky-high rent (which in my mind is partially justified by not needing to own a car in the first place), or rely on SAMtrans, which is as good as most other suburban bus services (i.e. not very).
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Apr 6, 2015 19:46
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Keyser S0ze posted:Isn't SF's problem all the 1950-1970 2 story places out on the "avenues" that need to be leveled and built into 10 story places, but I believe anything over 4 stories can't be built with wood framing and immediately costs 3x as much to construct so no $75k income "poors" are going to ever be able to afford those either. There are plenty of two story buildings in the avenues (as well as 3 and 4 story ones), but SF doesn't need to demolish any of them to build enough housing. It would help if there were some raised height limits though, especially along transit corridors/busy streets, like taraval, Irving, Judah, and 19th ave. Also, you can build wood frame structures taller than 4 floors, it happens all the time in SF.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:07
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Rah! posted:There are plenty of two story buildings in the avenues (as well as 3 and 4 story ones), but SF doesn't need to demolish any of them to build enough housing. It would help if there were some raised height limits though, especially along transit corridors/busy streets, like taraval, Irving, Judah, and 19th ave. Yup, it'd be possible to get over 100k new units of housing if the rest of the city had Mission-like (mostly 4/5 story) height limits - Barcelona is a city that accommodates many more people in a roughly similar land area without being dominated by skyscrapers. It'd probably still be a project-by-project fight for development rights in SF, though. SF is an outlier in that "as-of-right" projects (fully compliant with zoning ordinances, neighborhood plans, etc) can still be appealed and rejected.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:30
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withak posted:
I live in the suburban hell that is the south bay. I bike to work  Also, the grocery store is 3 blocks north, my town's 'downtown' area (lol right?) is 4 blocks east and has cafes, restaurants, bookstores, etc.But there are no bars full of bros with alleys that smell like vomit and poo poo, so it's nearly uninhabitable.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:51
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Family Values posted:But there are no bars full of bros with alleys that smell like vomit and poo poo, so it's nearly uninhabitable. Hey man, those bars used to be filled with elderly professional drunks and/or gangsters instead of bros. It wasn't always this bad 
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Apr 6, 2015 20:55
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Rah! posted:There are plenty of two story buildings in the avenues (as well as 3 and 4 story ones), but SF doesn't need to demolish any of them to build enough housing. It would help if there were some raised height limits though, especially along transit corridors/busy streets, like taraval, Irving, Judah, and 19th ave. google fu shows that most are "Type III common wood framing" and can go up to around 5 stories or 65 or 80 feet or something...........although Seattle weezed some up to 8 by creating some "mezzanine" floors. There is also a Type IV (using heavy timber and steel bolts like a mill or pre-1960 buildings). I've lived in a wood framed 4 story newer place in Oakland and you could hear more than one dildo's bass on their tv 5 apts away. meh.....gimme concrete walls please and get off my lawn. _________________________ " TYPE III Type III is a more robust wood framing type that allows 5 stories over a Type I, usually concrete, podium to a maximum height of 85 feet, though without bonuses typically 65 feet." _________________________ I've had every sort of Bay Area hell commute. SF to San Mateo/Mtn View back in the 1990's pre-Google bus/decent shuttles/options/Bart to millbrae days, San Mateo to SF/Oak/South San Jose...........Sunnyvale back up to SF/Oakland. I could never win. Wherever I moved I ended up having to go back some other way.  I'm happy to be an old fart in Sacramento now and only have to commute once per week on the rickety rear end Amtrak and it's actually okay (although slow on shared Union Pacific tracks) when it's not running over people and causing 3 hr delays.  Keyser_Soze fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 21:11
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Family Values posted:I live in the suburban hell that is the south bay. I bike to work I'm thankful I can do this, but I'd never be able to do this if I wanted to actually own a place instead of paying $2k+ a month to just live here in one of those apartments that will be red tagged when the big one comes.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:29
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Family Values posted:I live in the suburban hell that is the south bay. I bike to work Sunnyvale? etalian fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 21:30
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There are decent downtown pockets in most of the South Bay places, unlike most of the East Bay (except Oakland/Berkeley). San Mateo/Burlingame = both good San Carlos/RWC = probably ok now Mtn View = okay Sunnyvale = good enough Santa Clara = meh San Jose = very good now Campbell = good enough Los Gatos/Saratoga = good Fremont/UnionCity/Hayward/SanLeandro/etc = poo poo
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Apr 6, 2015 21:39
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Keyser S0ze posted:There are decent downtown pockets in most of the South Bay places, unlike most of the East Bay (except Oakland/Berkeley). Fremont's got a "let's build a downtown" project going, given how the city was formed by five small towns merging and incorporating to avoid getting annexed, but it's still going to be hell to live here without a car.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:41
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etalian posted:Sunnyvale? Might be Mountain View. West of Sunnyvale's downtown doesn't put you south of a grocery store, but Mountain View puts you south of the Safeway at Shoreline and Montecito. But whether you'd call "crossing Central Expy and Caltrain" a mere three blocks is another thing altogether. Sunnyvale's alright in parts. I can sorta manage on a bike if I wanted and have been trying to get back up to 5 days a week. Or at least until we move offices to the ex-new-LinkedIn building. I might still be able to manage that on a bike if I use Fair Oaks to cross El Camino and then cut across to Sunnyvale Ave to cross Caltrain and Central. I haven't really tried that yet. Still riskier than going south and only having to cross 280. EDIT: In other Sunnyvale news, I just got my notice in the mail of the next meeting on the Butcher's Corner redevelopment later this month. Since that lot's literally two houses down I'm thinking about hitting that one up to bitch about what it's going to do to traffic at Wolfe & El Camino when the same city council just voted down the best short-term option to deal with that (dedicated VTA lanes). As much as 5-7 story apartment complexes don't yet fit in that area, I'll still suck it up and say I want development there because we need it. But if they aren't going to actually tackle the street traffic that comes from adding 200+ housing units and 6,000 sq. ft. of retail/offices at an intersection that's already kinda lovely (particularly if you're approaching from Fremont or 280 or are on a bike) there's a problem. ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 22:34
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withak posted:Emphasis corrected, HTH. As someone who has driven to work their entire life, I don't see your point.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:46
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Might be Mountain View. West of Sunnyvale's downtown doesn't put you south of a grocery store, but Mountain View puts you south of the Safeway at Shoreline and Montecito. But whether you'd call "crossing Central Expy and Caltrain" a mere four blocks is another thing altogether. Nah, I live in Campbell, not that my details really matter for the point. The grocery store we shop at is on Hamilton and it's actually NW of my house rather than due north.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:47
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Keyser S0ze posted:google fu shows that most are "Type III common wood framing" and can go up to around 5 stories or 65 or 80 feet or something...........although Seattle weezed some up to 8 by creating some "mezzanine" floors. There is also a Type IV (using heavy timber and steel bolts like a mill or pre-1960 buildings). There are a lot of those larger type III buildings going up in SF lately. Here's one of them (an 80' six story building with 5 wood frame floors above a concrete podium) burning down in Mission Bay last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGyyB317II0 Keyser S0ze posted:I'm happy to be an old fart in Sacramento now and only have to commute once per week on the rickety rear end Amtrak and it's actually okay (although slow on shared Union Pacific tracks) when it's not running over people and causing 3 hr delays. The last time I rode Amtrak to visit a friend in the central valley, it was delayed on the way there because it hit a person. Then on the way back it was delayed because it hit a car  There was a short freight train delay too.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:57
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the secret "troll" part of the High Speed Rail initiative I support (regardless of how dumb it is for not following the Euro's initial recommendations to run it straight down Hwy 5) is that they had kickers in it to update the Capital Corridor (Sac to San Jose) for one, at least still do that, fuckers! People commute every day from Sac to San Jose on that thing, lots to Richmond (Bart), Emeryville (SF Bus) as well. Get that thing down to 1 hr to Oakland instead of 2 and it's faster than driving (plus beer on the way home).
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Apr 6, 2015 23:07
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Keyser S0ze posted:There are decent downtown pockets in most of the South Bay places, unlike most of the East Bay (except Oakland/Berkeley). Let me add a few to this: Menlo Park: Okay, borderline "good enough" (Feldman's is one of my favorite bookstores in the Bay Area, and the Menlo library isn't bad either). Palo Alto: Good enough, due to the proximity to Stanford and some decent cafes, despite being yuppie as gently caress. I also love the Stanford Theater to pieces. I would also put Redwood City in solid "good" territory nowadays due to their surprisingly interesting county history museum, Haus Stadt, the presence of a smoking cafe* (Broadway Tobacconists), and kickass Mexican restaurants up and down Middlefield. All that's missing is a good bookstore, although their downtown public library isn't bad. Edit: *Seriously, SFers are the biggest bunch of hand-wringing busybodies out there when it comes to tobacco. God forbid if I want to enjoy a cigar on a bar patio surrounded by weed smokers. ProperGanderPusher fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 00:19
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Haus Stadt This german bar really owns, was the only bright side of getting jury duty in RWC for two days.
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Apr 7, 2015 00:26
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ProperGanderPusher posted:
I've never been hassled for smoking tobacco in SF, whether it be a bar patio, the sidewalk, a park, etc. Maybe I've just been lucky, or have only smoked around passive aggressive weenies who wait until I'm gone to complain. I rarely smoke tobacco these days though, maybe the smoke haters got more militant.
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Apr 7, 2015 00:41
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ProperGanderPusher posted:I would also put Redwood City in solid "good" territory nowadays...All that's missing is a good bookstore, although their downtown public library isn't bad.
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Apr 7, 2015 00:54
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Rah! posted:I've never been hassled for smoking tobacco in SF, whether it be a bar patio, the sidewalk, a park, etc. Maybe I've just been lucky, or have only smoked around passive aggressive weenies who wait until I'm gone to complain. I rarely smoke tobacco these days though, maybe the smoke haters got more militant. The minute I try, the typical bartender gets on my case about having to be fifteen feet away from any doors or windows. The only place where I can get away with it safely is North Beach, where all the old timers still smoke outside the cafes and the beat cops don't even bother enforcing the smoking laws. Walking while smoking is still fine in general for me but I prefer to lounge around and have a drink while smoking. In any case, SF still doesn't have a smoking cafe right on the sidewalk. RC-1, SF-0.
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Apr 7, 2015 01:56
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Fremont's got a "let's build a downtown" project going, given how the city was formed by five small towns merging and incorporating to avoid getting annexed, but it's still going to be hell to live here without a car. http://www.fremont.gov/1655/Downtown It's just gonna be a big strip mall probably, but what else could it be? I work in an office nearby, I guess once this thing becomes Auto Mall Parkway Version 2 I'll probably be moving to cheaper digs. edit: and yes, this is not a walkable city. edit 2: lmao: http://vizdemo.com/fremont/ "Check out our 360 degree view of the Downtown and slideshow below to get a flavor of what we envision for the Downtown." Featureless gray boxes, and apartments above retail shops, I guess. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 04:09
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doctorfrog posted:http://www.fremont.gov/1655/Downtown Wow the  downtown looks like one of those office parks in North San Jose.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:15
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Wow the Thanks to growing up near North San Jose I get confused when someone says downtown and it's not a desolate borefest.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:16
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ProperGanderPusher posted:The minute I try, the typical bartender gets on my case about having to be fifteen feet away from any doors or windows. The only place where I can get away with it safely is North Beach, where all the old timers still smoke outside the cafes and the beat cops don't even bother enforcing the smoking laws. Walking while smoking is still fine in general for me but I prefer to lounge around and have a drink while smoking. I have someone in my building who smokes like the dankest OG Kush ever + ground up tires, and it seeps up into my apartment around Midnight, 4 am, and 6 am...it constantly wakes me up and I think I have an electrical fire. I've had to buy multiple air purifiers to deal with it. I applaud anyone who makes the effort to smoke on the street or in a public space.....just don't do it in your bathroom in a multi-unit building. Cigarette smoke on the other hand has become entirely laughable to me, I swear whatever this person is smoking....oh my god...
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Apr 7, 2015 04:24
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