6 surprising things about life in SF

SF is tiny, tap water, peak design, initiating convos, the great outdoors

I now take immense joy in saying “This is America!” when someone asks whether something is possible and similarly “I thought this was America” when someone suggests that something is not possible.

San Francisco is small

SF outline over London - https://mapfrappe.com/outlines?show=68659

San Francisco is so much smaller than London. It’s just 7x7 miles and surrounded by ocean on three sides. To be honest, it feels like a much more appropriate size for a city. In London it’s not uncommon to do a 1h tube journey to see friends, whereas here you actually bump into friends just going for a walk (literally happened yesterday!).

When the local SF triathlon was on, it was a chill 15min cycle over in the morning – compared to London where it was so far away, I’d usually drop my bike the day before to spare myself the stress of the 45min ride on race day.

Something that’s slightly strange is how relatively empty the streets of San Francisco feel. Going for a run or commuting to work, you just see fewer faces. 9m people live in London, compared to 800k here, it’s quieter both in general vibe and also in street noise levels. Also the air quality is better.

But while San Francisco might be smaller in size, the roads and apartments are bigger, the WeWork more spacious, the running track quite a lot more generous.

The tap water is delicious

Despite how much we gaslight ourselves into thinking that London tap water is full of crucial minerals that are good for the body, it really doesn’t taste very nice. SF tap water on the other hand is delightful and the reason is kind of mind blowing – 80% of SF’s water supply comes directly from Yosemite via the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct.

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy

Peak design backpacks are everywhere

As a technology brother, I love my Peak Design backpack. It’s the best backpack I’ve ever had and even after two years of owning it, I’m still discovering new features. It rose to some level of infamy in the news at the end of last year.

But despite its clear superiority in the backpack department, I don’t remember ever seeing anyone else rocking one in London. Not so in San Francisco. Every single day, I see several of these backpacks. Clearly, these are my people.

Another brand I’d never heard of, but is seemingly everywhere is cotopaxi. It’s an outdoorsy brand with hectic colours and a name that I find incredibly “unstable” – as in I keep thinking it’s spelled differently or could plausibly be spelled differently. I even had a stress dream about cotopaxi after a week of seeing it several times a day, my subconscious clearly penetrated (one-shotted?) by it.

Americans are really good at initiating conversations

Something that still positively shocks me is how often someone will initiate a conversation with me out of the blue in public. This almost never happens in the UK, but I’m really excited for this skill to rub off a little.

In day to day interaction, there’s quite a few patterns I’m still trying to make sense of. I don’t really get the humour yet, but absurd sarcastic British humour definitely doesn’t go down as well as it used to.

People say “What?” very unashamedly instead of the perhaps needlessly verbose “I beg your pardon, I don’t quite follow”, but then there’s also a lot of “I’ll go ahead and get that started for you” when “Ok” would have sufficed.

And then in some establishments, ordering a coffee is a surprisingly adversarial experience – it can feel like you’re inconveniencing the staff by your mere presence. Definitely not everywhere, but some cafes reliably deliver this strange experience.

The outdoors are truly epic

Especially the cycling is just out of this world. You just cross the bridge and there are endless rides with stunning scenery.

Golden Gate park is also legendary, it’s so big! Literally two Hyde parks in size. One surprising aspect of outdoor activities is that they (unlike everything else) are actually cheaper than in London. The running track, the cycling track, and the open water swimming are all free – in London you can end up paying $20 just to swim in a lake.

Golden Gate park is two Hyde parks!

Hints of nerd culture in random parts of life

The triathlon and cycle clubs don’t run their communities through WhatsApp, they use Slack. And it’s so wonderful. Custom emojis, endless channels, constant activity, workflow automation – it’s just like working at a medium sized tech company.

One cyclist got frustrated with the hard-to-use publicly posted schedule of the cycle track, so they just made their own site: polofield.bike – a delightful, emoji based design cleverly incorporating not just closure times, but also helpful details like daylight hours. Just so :chefs-kiss: nerdy and beautiful.

Similarly, check out this weather forecast site for open water swimming in aquatic park. A beautiful concoction of iframes combining not just wind, tide, and temperature data, but also marine traffic and a live webcam!

Misc

I have a deep love for the miscellaneous category, so here is more random stuff that has been surprising!

• In London a typical work commute is 35min+, here mine is ~20min which feels completely different. Also the tram has fully working 4G, which still catches me off guard

• there’s a meme that you always need a light jacket in SF, but i’ve found this to be completely false. Especially inside shops/restaurants, the temperature is kept insanely warm – i’ve resorted to wearing shorts every day and that’s working well

• i saw a dad in the local bike ship with his two sons (maybe 6 and 8 years old) and he made them each explain what the issue with their bikes was. You don’t really see cute kid interactions like this in London

• there’s a shocking and painful absence of metro grocery stores (like tesco express), instead you have many independent corner stores and pharmacy chains (CVS, walgreens), but the pharmacies often carry a cursed vibe that is unbecoming of a grocery store

• July 15th has the same weather as March 31st, you don’t notice the seasons pass by

• people seem to have more expensive hobbies, you see the wildest modded cars on the streets on weekends

• health care is a lot more expensive, but also actually better in some ways than in the UK – pre-existing conditions are completely covered, for example

• there are no phone snatchers here, making life feel quite a lot safer

• the timezone can be a little annoying, often you wake up to countless notifications, most of the European day occurring while you’re fast asleep

• there’s way more norman doors that don’t say push or pull

• people in London are in their 20s. People in SF are in their 30s.