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Porthos

San Francisco, California

I was there for the past week. The city is amazing. It's got the best food and shopping. But there is something very interesting about San Francisco. The general ambiance of the city is much more akin to New York than it is to Los Angeles, which is much closer to it than New York is, which is on the opposite side of the country.
fab

Quote:
was there for the past week. The city is amazing. It's got the best food and shopping. But there is something very interesting about San Francisco. The general ambiance of the city is much more akin to New York than it is to Los Angeles, which is much closer to it than New York is, which is on the opposite side of the country.



You should have had a good trip. I personally would like to see it (and maybe to continue along the coast until Vancouver.

Everybody had tell me that San Francisco was more "European" than most of American cities. That maybe why you feel it more similar to NYC, since it is also more "European".

Actually I didn"t liked Los Angeles. The climate is good, but I found the city without much urban interes.
Deborah

I can't say anything about LA because I was there only once, in 1965, and I stayed in some suburban-looking area known (I think) as "West Los Angeles".

New York definitely seems more European to me than other US cities do. SF reminds me more of NY than other US cities do, but I can't really be objective about it. Vancouver and Seattle remind me of SF, though.
Porthos

San Francisco is a melting pot of various cultures and ethnic groups, much like New York is, but the arhictecture and layout of the city is much more "Anglo" than Los Angeles, which feels very "Hispanic" in many ways. San Francisco reminds me more of London or Paris than Los Angeles or San Diego.
greg in noord-frankrijk

Deborah wrote:
New York definitely seems more European to me than other US cities do. SF reminds me more of NY than other US cities do, but I can't really be objective about it. Vancouver and Seattle remind me of SF, though.


Yep, but New York is so differen tfrom Europe. San Francisco is located "at the end of the world" and yet kept something quite European. New Orleans is sort of European.


Deborah

The apartments I stayed in in Moscow and St. Petersburg (around 1990) reminded me very much of the apartments in parts of lower Manhattan (Greenwhich Village, East Village, Little Italy, Lower East Side). I'm referring to the inside, not the exterior.
Porthos

I also tend to think of San Francisco as the American equivalent of Amsterdam. It's the ultimate gay haven in the western hemisphere and probably one of the most politically liberal and intellectual cities in the U.S. along with Boston. I plan on being an investment banker, and chances are, if I don't end up in New York, I'll end up in San Francisco, because of its large financial district. I like the fact that there are so many gay men there. For every gay man, there is one extra single woman looking for a straight guy like me, lol!

I also noticed that people in bigger cities seem to be shorter on average than in small towns and the countryside. Perhaps this is due to the air quality and the freshness of the produce.
Deborah

Porthos wrote:
I also noticed that people in bigger cities seem to be shorter on average than in small towns and the countryside. Perhaps this is due to the air quality and the freshness of the produce.

I thought it was due to the higher concentration of ethnic groups that tend to be on the shorter side.
fab

Quote:
I also noticed that people in bigger cities seem to be shorter on average than in small towns and the countryside




really ? That's curious.
Porthos

Deborah wrote:
Porthos wrote:
I also noticed that people in bigger cities seem to be shorter on average than in small towns and the countryside. Perhaps this is due to the air quality and the freshness of the produce.

I thought it was due to the higher concentration of ethnic groups that tend to be on the shorter side.


This could be a partial explanation, due to the fact that San Francisco is home to a large Asian population, but it doesn't explain everything. For instance, excluding the Italians and other such peoples, whites and blacks tend to be rather tall by international standards. Out here, in farm country, most grown white men are close to 6 feet, while in San Francisco, most black and white men were only about 5'10 with a great deal of rather short men as well. Where I currently live, I almost feel short when I'm in the White part of town, but in San Francisco, I was taller than the average adult man, and excluding the Asians, at least a little over average height.

Studying human height throughout history is actually a very interesting subject. Anthropologists have found that northern Europeans were actually taller during the Roman period and the first few hundred years of the dark ages than they were throughout the middle ages, the rennaissance, and all the way through the late 1800s. Their hypothesis is that when the northern Europeans did not live in crowded cities, but rather out in the open country, they had better access to healthy food and more of it, along with cleaner living conditions, because of they didn't live in crowded, dirty, congested cities. Around the time of Charlemagne, the average northern European man was close to 6 feet, but by the time of the middle ages all the way to Napoleon's time, the height average decreased to around 5'4, only to rise after the western world was well into the industrial revolution. The urban factor might also be a reason why there was such a large height difference between the Germanic peoples and the Romans. The Romans were clustered into crowded cities, while the Germans lived in huts in the open country, with fresh air and fresh food.
Deborah

My answer was based on my experience of big cities in the U.S., where there's a higher percentage of, for example, east Asians, which makes for a lower average height than in areas which have higher concentrations of people of northern European ancestry.
Porthos

Yes, but there's also a higher concentration of blacks as well. There was another culture shock about San Francisco. You look around and wonder, "Where are all the Mexicans?". Coming from areas with close to or in fact majorities of Hispanics, San Francisco felt very different.
Kirk

Porthos wrote:
Yes, but there's also a higher concentration of blacks as well. There was another culture shock about San Francisco. You look around and wonder, "Where are all the Mexicans?". Coming from areas with close to or in fact majorities of Hispanics, San Francisco felt very different.


Oh, the Mexicans are here, but you're right the proportions aren't as high as in many other parts of the state. In fact, in SF city/county the Chinese languages are more widely spoken than Spanish, with Spanish being third. The reverse is the case for California as a whole, as the Chinese languages are statewide third to Spanish, which is second.

Still, I hear Spanish every day. And sometimes use it, too. In fact, I remember the evening Deborah and I met up after work I went to meet a friend for dinner and ordered at a place where the guy did speak English (as he had addressed me in it) but when I asked for something extra a few minutes later he teasingly said "¿qué? no comprendo.' I think he was for whatever reason trying to trip me up but I just responded in Spanish for what I wanted...hehe.

Porthos wrote:
San Francisco is a melting pot of various cultures and ethnic groups, much like New York is, but the arhictecture and layout of the city is much more "Anglo" than Los Angeles


A lot of the names are quite Anglo, too. The early founders loved naming SF streets Anglo names like Jones, Polk, Webster, etc.

Porthos wrote:
I was there for the past week. The city is amazing. It's got the best food and shopping. But there is something very interesting about San Francisco. The general ambiance of the city is much more akin to New York than it is to Los Angeles, which is much closer to it than New York is, which is on the opposite side of the country.


Not having been to New York City (only been upstate) I can't really compare but San Francisco is the second densest city in the US after NYC so it's probably also the density that really gives it a similar ambience. I checked the US Census info for the Census Tract in the neighborhood where I live in SF and it said the density for my square mile is 92,000 residents.

chart

The average for Manhattan is something like 68,000 residents per square mile, I believe, so clearly SF approaches Manhattan-like levels of density in at least some of its districts.


Deborah wrote:
I can't say anything about LA because I was there only once, in 1965, and I stayed in some suburban-looking area known (I think) as "West Los Angeles".


I think it's funny you've lived in the state so long but have only been to LA once!


Deborah wrote:
Vancouver and Seattle remind me of SF, though.


Yeah, that reminds me of our previous discussion of the Nine Nations of North America which had the areas that SF, Seattle, and Vancouver are in all under one "nation" (with SF as the capital). The geographical and cultural similarities those cities share are hard to miss.

Porthos wrote:
I also tend to think of San Francisco as the American equivalent of Amsterdam. It's the ultimate gay haven in the western hemisphere and probably one of the most politically liberal and intellectual cities in the U.S. along with Boston.


Yup! It's a great environment.

Porthos wrote:
I plan on being an investment banker, and chances are, if I don't end up in New York, I'll end up in San Francisco


And if you did end up here doing that it'd almost surely be in the Financial District where Deborah and I work.

Porthos wrote:
I like the fact that there are so many gay men there.


Completely agreed!
Porthos

Kirk, did you grow up in San Francisco or did you just move there for some reason?
Deborah

Porthos wrote:
There was another culture shock about San Francisco. You look around and wonder, "Where are all the Mexicans?". Coming from areas with close to or in fact majorities of Hispanics, San Francisco felt very different.

Well, since I live 2 blocks off of Mission Street, I never wonder that!
Kirk

Porthos wrote:
Kirk, did you grow up in San Francisco or did you just move there for some reason?


Nope, actually as a kid I grew up in a few different states but I call my "hometown" to be Turlock, CA which is where I spent the last part of elementary school and all of junior high and high school. I lived mostly in San Diego where I went to college for four years but after I graduated this past spring I got a job here in SF, so that's why I'm here now :)

Since Turlock isn't far from the Bay Area (and my parents are Bay Area natives) I was always familiar with the Bay Area and always liked coming into SF when I got the chance so I already knew some of The City before I moved here but I've really been enjoying exploring it now as a resident.
Kirk

Deborah wrote:
Porthos wrote:
There was another culture shock about San Francisco. You look around and wonder, "Where are all the Mexicans?". Coming from areas with close to or in fact majorities of Hispanics, San Francisco felt very different.

Well, since I live 2 blocks off of Mission Street, I never wonder that!


Yeah, I was gonna say that Porthos probably didn't go to the Mission District!

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