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Comment by avalys | Hacker News Reader

This seems more about "fleeing San Francisco" than fleeing California.

Yeah, my first reaction was: you're fleeing what? SF is not California. It's not even the Bay Area. It's one city. This is what a lot of incoming people never seem to grok, regardless of how much time they spend living in SF. CA is a huge state, the Bay Area is large, and it's not all exactly the same.

OTOH we have too many people anyway, so if they want to leave because of "$17 salads", that's fine. Maybe we can eventually drive places again, without traffic jams. A man can dream.

So San Francisco is not in the... San Francisco Bay Area?

Strong disagree with this one. It is part of the urban conurbation. Sure, it might be "different" from the rest but yes, it is part of the Bay Area. Even San Rafael and Richmond are SFBA technically if you look in the map.

They said SF != The Bay Area, not SF ∉ The Bay Area. Your point agrees with him. The Bay Area includes Oakland, Richmond etc. which are pretty different than SF.

It is probably not accurate to extrapolate the author's experience in SF to what life is like in all of the other parts of the Bay, much less CA as a whole.

Disagree all you want but the Bay Area does not have SF in the center. That's north. Silicon Valley is really North San Jose and Sunnyvale. My house in South San Jose was at least and hour from SF and the streets were cleaner, traffic was better, crime was lower and things were cheaper. All of these places make up the Bay Area.

I left anyway after 3+ decades but not because of SF. I just wanted more for less. SF is and always has been a special pocket of gross. Some people love it and others, like me, avoided it at all costs. We're not all the same.

Crime has gone up in other spots too, such as oakland

In terms of economic capital, SF very much is California.

San Francisco has a very valuable and expensive tech labor pool. By GDP, however, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim very much is the dominant economy in California, not the Bay Area. Certainly a city as small as SF proper couldn't qualify for "is California" status in anything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_ar...

From your link, it's clear Los Angeles' GDP is growing slower (up 32% from 2012-18); SFBA is up 50% over the same period. With another decade, if growth rates maintain their trajectories, SF is eating LA's lunch: with each passing year, LA becomes less dominant.

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