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Comment by _5659 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who grew up in the Bay I find it curious to make the distinction that there are three.

There's South Bay, East Bay, North Bay and the Peninsula.

They're all very different, but lumping in the Peninsula with the South Bay feels hamhanded given that most of the South Bay IS NOT like the Peninsula.

It's kind of an in-joke that nobody actually knows where Silicon Valley is.

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The article isn't at all about three geographical bay areas, it's about three socioeconomic bay areas. I see elements of all three (but mostly the third) in my neighborhood in SF.

The article, of course, completely misses the stereotypes of people in the Peninsula and South Bay.

I suspect it's because the author is a 20something who doesn't go anywhere the BART won't take him.

By the way, what are the peninsula stereotypes? I know a few people in redwood but it seems mostly like the same stereotypes, but I really dont know that much about the area.

Yeah, I'm confused about this. I live on the peninsula and I have no idea what kind of person I apparently am.

Well, there are the rich Asians moving south from SF for better weather (the fog belt ends right where property values pick up in Millbrae). Then there are the rich whites moving north to Palo Alto to escape the sprawl of San Jose/Sunnyvale/Mountain View. Said sprawl is mostly vanilla suburban, middle-class families who work in corporate tech. Also new transplants filling in cheaper apartments, as I once was, not cool enough or paid enough to live in SF. Then you have the hard-working and long-time Latino communities getting squeezed in the middle (Redwood City and San Mateo) or pushed into the fog belt (Daly City). There is a bit of the social angst and class-conflict mentioned in the original article, but nowhere near as much--I found the south bay and the peninsula to be much more down-to-earth.

I agree on the geolocation in the bay area being a huge factor. I grew up in the South Bay(wife grew up on the Pennisula) and where you lived made a huge difference. A person who owns a small construction business or was a mid manager in the south bay(San Jose, Santa Clara..) could be at the top of the spectrum so to speak in this article(their kids go to USC, Stanford etc,) and the same person on the pennisula would be solidly middle class(kids have to attend state school or mid-tier) due to funds). I knew friends parents who both had advanced science degrees and lived in the Pennisula(Mtn View, Palo Alto) and were forever renters due to cost of living and this was late 90's early 2000's.

And it's also changed so much. I grew up in Sunnyvale and the Silicon Valley of my youth (80s-dot com bust) are so different from now. I'm guessing there's a drastically different view of the place based on both your age and when you first moved to SV.

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