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Comment by neilk | Hacker News Reader

It all depends who you associate with. If I only hung around with techies / startuppers I think I'd have to shoot myself too.

I'll take my "high in the desert" people over your "high in Williamsburg, Brooklyn" people any day. I agree that a lot of Burners are deeply annoying, but the core people who actually make it all happen (or the larger installations and camps) are often incredibly interesting, intellectually broad people, doing it all on a shoestring. If you think you're doing a lot with your life being in a startup you're probably not doing half of what they do in an average week.

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Not having actually lived in Brooklyn I can't say for sure but there are a ton of interesting bands coming out of Brooklyn right now, you're in the publishing heart of the world, you've got some of the best art museums on the planet right next door, and you're not going to find better theater anywhere in the U.S.

Compared to that the whole art-car, techno, cyberpunkish thing in S.F. just seems so provincial and quaint. I don't doubt that people put a lot of work into it but it just doesn't compel me at all.

If you really like theater, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre is just across the bay.

There are a wide variety of other theater venues around the Bay Area. Santa Cruz for small stuff, San Francisco for a huge mix of productions from Broadway shows to weird warehouse stuff, and San Jose, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Marin all have theater companies.

> there are a ton of interesting bands coming out of Brooklyn right now

Not to nitpick, but many of the bands "coming out of Brooklyn right now" are bands that moved there from elsewhere to try to ride the "Brooklyn band = good" wave. It's weird how arbitrary and amorphous these various scenes can be. If you can't find good music coming out of SF, you're probably not looking hard enough.

> Compared to that the whole art-car, techno, cyberpunkish thing in S.F. just seems so provincial and quaint.

It seems odd (and inaccurate) to sum an entire city's culture up with 3 indistinct generalizations.

The local music scene in SF is not good. There are few good places to see national acts but no local bands. The best you're going to get locally is DJ acts but even those guys seem to have moved to LA.

Can anyone name 5 bands from SF? 3? 1?

In contrast, when I grew up in Minneapolis there was a huge local music scene and one of the main things people did was go see local bands. There were dozens of bars with 3+ acts playing all weekend, and often during the week.

Deerhoof, Bassnectar, Girls, and Nodzzz are a few just off the top of my head. A lot of great stuff happening in Oakland, as well. The Anticon collective, etc.

There are lots of bars and venues, but I recommend checking out Bottom of the Hill in Potrero -- their shows tend to be cheap and they feature local talent a lot.

I get your point: SF isn't the top dog when it comes to music, but honestly... you can find local music no matter where you are, as long as you look for it. And if you don't look for it, all the local bands you're not going to see are just going to move to Brooklyn (or wherever else is cool that year) along with everyone else.

I've lived here for 10 years and in that time I've been to art openings, film festivals, all kinds of theater, museums, countless concerts etc and S.F. doesn't fare too badly considering it's really not a very big city at all. However, it's just not in the same league as a city like London, NYC, Berlin, Paris, or (IMO) even LA.

There are upsides to living in a smaller and less hectic city too, but you can't have it all.

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