so it would seem that oakland is the place. as long as the woman can get to school easily and i can continue doing the dj/event planning thing it's all good. although she's got her eye on berkeley. ultimately we don't wanna pay more than 1500$ month, but if you sf heads are caking off, then 2G's wouldn't be unreasonable.
btw, are there records in the bay? and more seriously, anyone doing graphic design out there? is it easy to break into that scene?
Yes and yes, though record-wise there are armies of diggers and a record mafia of old collectors. You will find records, but you will have to pay. The Bay is like graphic design mecca too, I'm sure you can find an opening.
You should definately be able to find a nice spot in the East Bay for under $1500. It isn't so much renting a spot to live that's so difficult, but buying a single family home that's the holy grail. Don't overlook Berkeley, and though rough parts of Oakland don't scare me, I wouldn't want to live there.
As for transportation...I was sans car for the first five or six years I lived out here and got around OK (DJ gigs could be kind of a pain, though). I do think it is pretty fucking stupid that BART shuts down so early (depending on which station you're at, the last train is usually around 12:30), but I made do with BART, AC Transit, and Muni just fine.
Zipcar.com, Citycarshare.com and Flexcar.com are everywhere. Fuck owning a car. If you must have your own transportation get a motorcycle and rent a Zipcar when you have to haul stuff. Between my motorcycle and Zipcar I probably spend an average of $15 a week on transportation.
After doing BART for 4 years and Muni for the past 2 I got sick of it and got my motorcycle.
Avoid San Jose. Prices in SF for a studio/1 Bedroom range from $1300 to thousands.
?!?!?!?!?
San Jose is a not a bad place and for the price, It???s a really great option.
I admit, being a native of S.J., it does have its downfalls...But so does everywhere else.
S.F. is a really beautiful city and The East Bay Is right Next Door too, so you win either way. You have loads of Galleries, Night Life, Groove Merchant (!!!!), J.Toro and what not.
East Bay is another great option and also I'd look into even Daly City.(right next door to S.F.).
By the sounds of it you and your fianc?? are going to need some room probably and I have been in allot of places in S.F. and for some reason, it just seems really small(except towards Justin's area, It's pretty roomy over there) for what you are paying for.
San Jose (given the range of 1200 to 1900) you can a pretty nice place (two or three BDRM) be it an appartment, loft, house, etc and key word,"SPACEIOUS"
Also, the best places to live in San Jose are either Downtown OR Willow Glenn. Good thing about both these areas is there are new store developments and just seconds away from the most Major Highways. Even Campbell is kind of nice, but not too easy to get around.Stay away from everything else(Cambrian,Los Gatos,South Side,etc) East Side is another beautiful area, but gets allot of slack of being a bad area. There are bad areas everywhere!
My wife and I were talking about moving to s.f., but for what you pay and what we've looked at(we looked at allot), It just was not worth it to us.
I think we are aiming for San Diego in the next couple of years:)
All great places and I hope you find something soon!!
Oakland and Berkeley are your best bets. Berkeley has a stigma for some people because of what it signifies historically/culturally/whatever. I live in South Berkeley and I can tell you there is no perceptible difference between this neighborhood and somewhere like Temescal (North Oakland) where I used to live. All the suburbs south of Oakland are depressing to me. They really just have nothing going for them. Commuting to Hayward shouldn't be bad although you may hit a lot of traffic certain times of the day. You can find records but it takes a lot of commitment to find anything good on a regular basis.
i think your best bet is to live in the east bay. from el cerrito on down to fremont and/or beyond to lafayette, etc. youll get some better prices but having a car/motorcycle/transportation in the bay area is VERY necessary. bart and public transpo arent the best but useable.
i live in sf in the richmond dist and i have a pretty nice spot for $1500. though hairybeladonna has the BOMB spot in san mateo for $1800 but its a house. thats the difference. get an apt in sf/oak for the same price as a house in daly city or san lorenzo.
dont hesitate to holler at any of us bay folk anytime you need some advice... unlike those bastard NYers, bay folk are peaceful and friendly...
..and with regards to diggin... it aint chicago! good luck...
ugggh. so were you like into that stuff before you were with bev?
my 2 cents:
i lived in san francisco for 8 years. 5 different spots, from stonestown atp's, to park merced, to outer sunset, to the richmond. rent was not that bad at $1200 for a 2 bdr apt, to $1700 for a 3 br house.
last year me & the mrs moved to san mateo because it's cheaper, but mostly because parking is infinite and i see the sun more. i'm only 15 minutes away from the action in sf, and i actually work in the east bay which is a short 15 minute hop across the bridge.
like kidinquisitive said, all the cities south of oakland are quite depressing, hayward included. as a city dude/transplant, i can't really speak too much on the town but it appears that oakland or berkely would probably be the best bet for you.
as for records, good luck. plenty of competition and spots are filling their sparse bins with more and more reissues.
youre in mateo? where abouts? you and jinx should roll throught the moon room sometime...folls can testify for that one.
yep, in the matty yo! across the street from the mariott on s.grant, in the barrio holmes. whats the moon room? is it a bar where the artist formerly known as king one rocks his purple bunny jawn while juggling 2 copies of don blackman?
youre in mateo? where abouts? you and jinx should roll throught the moon room sometime...folls can testify for that one.
yep, in the matty yo! across the street from the mariott on s.grant, in the barrio holmes. whats the moon room? is it a bar where the artist formerly known as king one rocks his purple bunny jawn while juggling 2 copies of don blackman?
if only, the moon room is more exclusive than that.
Barrio huh? Right by trader Joes? I used to live down the street from there, over by gateway park. then on E. 40th by the tracks, now Im over by Beresford, by hillsdale High School.
ugggh. so were you like into that stuff before you were with bev?
YES! since elementary school in fact. i was in 1st grade and went to a birthday party for judy zamora and tried "chocolate pork" and have been in love with filipino food ever since. though like all asian cuisine i dislike all desserts and candies. love the food hate the dessert.
next time your lolos make dinaguan HOLLER! ill eat your portion...
so it would seem that oakland is the place. as long as the woman can get to school easily and i can continue doing the dj/event planning thing it's all good. although she's got her eye on berkeley. ultimately we don't wanna pay more than 1500$ month, but if you sf heads are caking off, then 2G's wouldn't be unreasonable.
btw, are there records in the bay? and more seriously, anyone doing graphic design out there? is it easy to break into that scene?
Trew,
Where is she going to school at?
$1500 for two people is do-able. My wife and I were paying a little bit more than that for a nice 2-BD in the Sunset, at 10th and Irving which is a really great neighborhood. In Oakland, you'd get a bigger bang for the buck. Personally, I'm not huge on Berkeley since North would likely be too $ and if you're going to live in South Berkeley, you might as well live in Oakland and get away from all the students.
Personally, the difference b/t S.F. and the East Bay is less an issue of cost (though that's real) and more in terms of environment. Living in S.F. is definitely "living in a city" in ways that Berkeley and Oakland are not. IF you want all the convenience (and inconveniences) of urban life, than do S.F. For your price range, you do have a range of options, especially if you don't have kids.
If you want more space for less money, I'd look in Oakland, especially around Grand Lake since there's a nice commercial district of restaurants and bars there. The pace is decidedly more chill though compared with parts of S.F.
I totally agree with everyone who said, "don't live past the tunnel." Contra Costa is just another world entirely and while I find Orinda and Lafayette to be charming bedroom communities, it's to SF and Oakland what Westchester is to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Plus, trying to commute through the tunnel SUCKS. All the stop-and-go of bad bridge traffic with none of the view.
Same goes for any suburb south of Oakland. If you don't have kids, you have absolutely no reason to want to live there.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
I totally agree with everyone who said, "don't live past the tunnel." Contra Costa is just another world entirely and while I find Orinda and Lafayette to be charming bedroom communities, it's to SF and Oakland what Westchester is to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Plus, trying to commute through the tunnel SUCKS. All the stop-and-go of bad bridge traffic with none of the view.
I don't mean to be the sole advocate of Lafayette, but dudes here are sleeping on some of that good ish. You can easily get a tremendous view of Mount Diablo as well as the hills that surround Lafayette. You get close proximity to the Lafayette Reservoir for some great hiking/recreation. Then there are all of the other surrounding reservoirs and parks that run along the backside of the Oakland/Berkeley hills. You get an easy escape route both up towards Vallejo/Sacramento as well as down to I-5. The best Texas style barbeque in the whole Bay Area is in Lafayette. Many key high school basketball playoff games are played at St. Mary's. And while you still have fairly easy access to everything there is in the East Bay/SF, you actually maintain SOME ROOM TO BREATHE.
I mean, I loved living in downtown Berkeley, but after 3 years of it, I was ready to strangle a moonlight-howling junky or a haughty, pampered college student or a self-righteous, libero-soccer mom or a robotically cruel bank teller or especially those cursed street signals that beep incessantly. Not to say that Lafayette didn't have its drawbacks, but you've got to be really insecure to think that you always have to be in the middle of a hustle-bustle scene to be anywhere at all worthwhile.
There's a certain value in people not having to live like packrats that is lost on about 80% of the people who live in the Bay Area and if you are taking their advice on how to live, you are going to end up in an overpriced, inadequately maintained, marginally dangerous, shoebox of a dwelling, reasoning that your slightly inflated salary really does cover the astronimically bulged cost of living...just like them. Sorry dudes, I don't doubt that some of you are living in places that you and possibly even me would love, but having everything you could ever need all located within the block that you live on sounds more like a nightmare than a dream to me.
I mean, I loved living in downtown Berkeley, but after 3 years of it, I was ready to strangle a moonlight-howling junky or a haughty, pampered college student or a self-righteous, libero-soccer mom or a robotically cruel bank teller or especially those cursed street signals that beep incessantly.
Yeah but in all fairness dude - you lived RIGHT in the heart of probably one of the most chaotic parts of Berkeley outside of the immediate south/campus zone. I used to live a few blocks from your old spot and that whole area is pretty far from "peaceful" so I can appreciate the desire to find some breathing room after.
Just saying: there's a lot of options that lie between "downtown Berkeley" and "Lafayette" in terms of environment, safety, comfort, affordability, etc. I think Lafayette/Orinda isn't a bad move if you've lived in the urban space of the Bay for a few years and you're ready to chillax in a quieter space but for a couple in their 20/30s with no kids? I think most people would prefer Oakland or S.F. for myriad reasons and for the price range Trew is considering, he's got good options in all those places that don't involve living upstairs in a flop hotel off 6th Av.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
I mean, I loved living in downtown Berkeley, but after 3 years of it, I was ready to strangle a moonlight-howling junky or a haughty, pampered college student or a self-righteous, libero-soccer mom or a robotically cruel bank teller or especially those cursed street signals that beep incessantly.
Yeah but in all fairness dude - you lived RIGHT in the heart of probably one of the most chaotic parts of Berkeley outside of the immediate south/campus zone. I used to live a few blocks from your old spot and that whole area is pretty far from "peaceful" so I can appreciate the desire to find some breathing room after.
Just saying: there's a lot of options that lie between "downtown Berkeley" and "Lafayette" in terms of environment, safety, comfort, affordability, etc. I think Lafayette/Orinda isn't a bad move if you've lived in the urban space of the Bay for a few years and you're ready to chillax in a quieter space but for a couple in their 20/30s with no kids? I think most people would prefer Oakland or S.F. for myriad reasons and for the price range Trew is considering, he's got good options in all those places that don't involve living upstairs in a flop hotel off 6th Av.
Our move to Lafayette was definitely reactionary...but it wasn't even conceived until we unsuccessfully tried for months to find a suitable place elsewhere in Berkeley/Oakland.
As far as the spot we had in Berkeley, luckily we got in there pre-tech boom. The most we ever paid there was $630. The couple that moved in across the hall from us about a year after us who had the same floorplan as us was paying $1300 for a rather small, mice-infested one-bedroom space!!!
But yeah, Lafayette was actually, literally great for us...even as a multi-culti, childless couple in our late 20's.
Yet we should consider that even that wasn't enough for us as a reaction to being subjected to the Berkeley cluster in that we then moved to Eugene, OR for a year only to then return to spacious, free-wheelin Austin. And if we move again, it will be to Panama/Costa Rica/somewhere-in-the-Caribbean.
Obviously, we're no city slickers. And you know I can't say that without trying to discouraging others who find themselves attracted to the typical city slicker lifestyle.
Contra Costa is just another world entirely and while I find Orinda and Lafayette to be charming bedroom communities, it's to SF and Oakland what Westchester is to Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Hahaha, well said. My homie's ex-girl sorta lived with her parents in Moraga. I say "sorta" because her parents were only in the country six months out of the year; the other six, she was just chillin' out in Moraga in this swanky-ass house, so we'd posse up and go out there on the weekends for some R&R, barbecue, etc. We started calling it "the farm," and in a lot of ways, both good and bad, it reminded me of Connecticut. It was a nice place to visit, a nice little escape destination, but I can't imagine I'd want to live there.
As far as the spot we had in Berkeley, luckily we got in there pre-tech boom. The most we ever paid there was $630.
Man...those were the days. My ex shared this crazy 5 BD Victorian in the outer Mission where the TOTAL rent was something like $1200-1400. Not surprisingly, the landlord illegally evicted them and promptly doubled the rent.
I can't stand Berkeley for the most part but there are pockets I'd still live in. There are tons of parts of Oakland and SF that one can achieve the kind of life Harvey's talking about - as such a staunch defender of Oakland and San Francisco rap music I'm a bit surprised that he's slaying both cities so hard in favor of Lafayette. East Oakland itself is as big (and more varied) as many smaller towns in the "outer Bay Area". And without having seen Harvey's actual spot back then I can say that I've seen plenty of substandard housing around Contra Costa county - that's not at all unique to the bigger cities of the Bay. The dope traffic is now flowing out to Pleasanton, Livermore, Concord, Pittsburg, and so on... I'd rather be in Oakland at this point.
Comments
Yes and yes, though record-wise there are armies of diggers and a record mafia of old collectors. You will find records, but you will have to pay. The Bay is like graphic design mecca too, I'm sure you can find an opening.
You should definately be able to find a nice spot in the East Bay for under $1500. It isn't so much renting a spot to live that's so difficult, but buying a single family home that's the holy grail. Don't overlook Berkeley, and though rough parts of Oakland don't scare me, I wouldn't want to live there.
Zipcar.com, Citycarshare.com and Flexcar.com are everywhere. Fuck owning a car. If you must have your own transportation get a motorcycle and rent a Zipcar when you have to haul stuff. Between my motorcycle and Zipcar I probably spend an average of $15 a week on transportation.
After doing BART for 4 years and Muni for the past 2 I got sick of it and got my motorcycle.
San Jose is a not a bad place and for the price, It???s a really great option.
I admit, being a native of S.J., it does have its downfalls...But so does everywhere else.
S.F. is a really beautiful city and The East Bay Is right Next Door too, so you win either way. You have loads of Galleries, Night Life, Groove Merchant (!!!!), J.Toro and what not.
East Bay is another great option and also I'd look into even Daly City.(right next door to S.F.).
By the sounds of it you and your fianc?? are going to need some room probably and I have been in allot of places in S.F. and for some reason, it just seems really small(except towards Justin's area, It's pretty roomy over there) for what you are paying for.
San Jose (given the range of 1200 to 1900) you can a pretty nice place (two or three BDRM) be it an appartment, loft, house, etc and key word,"SPACEIOUS"
Also, the best places to live in San Jose are either Downtown OR Willow Glenn.
Good thing about both these areas is there are new store developments and just seconds away from the most Major Highways.
Even Campbell is kind of nice, but not too easy to get around.Stay away from everything else(Cambrian,Los Gatos,South Side,etc)
East Side is another beautiful area, but gets allot of slack of being a bad area.
There are bad areas everywhere!
My wife and I were talking about moving to s.f., but for what you pay and what we've looked at(we looked at allot), It just was not worth it to us.
I think we are aiming for San Diego in the next couple of years:)
All great places and I hope you find something soon!!
Much peace and respect:
Adrian
Hmm, I've been away for months, pop by to check things on the strut and people are still hating on San Jose.
some things will never change...
seriously
Well, except for Shitzr's parent's garage...
Still need to get over there man, Burlingame was dope.
hope to meet the SF massive soon. i've only met King Most in the real world, so the bar is set kinda high for everyone else haha.
i live in sf in the richmond dist and i have a pretty nice spot for $1500. though hairybeladonna has the BOMB spot in san mateo for $1800 but its a house. thats the difference. get an apt in sf/oak for the same price as a house in daly city or san lorenzo.
dont hesitate to holler at any of us bay folk anytime you need some advice... unlike those bastard NYers, bay folk are peaceful and friendly...
..and with regards to diggin... it aint chicago! good luck...
ugggh. so were you like into that stuff before you were with bev?
my 2 cents:
i lived in san francisco for 8 years. 5 different spots, from stonestown atp's, to park merced, to outer sunset, to the richmond. rent was not that bad at $1200 for a 2 bdr apt, to $1700 for a 3 br house.
last year me & the mrs moved to san mateo because it's cheaper, but mostly because parking is infinite and i see the sun more. i'm only 15 minutes away from the action in sf, and i actually work in the east bay which is a short 15 minute hop across the bridge.
like kidinquisitive said, all the cities south of oakland are quite depressing, hayward included. as a city dude/transplant, i can't really speak too much on the town but it appears that oakland or berkely would probably be the best bet for you.
as for records, good luck. plenty of competition and spots are filling their sparse bins with more and more reissues.
spelunk: just hit me up.
shitzr-
youre in mateo? where abouts? you and jinx should roll throught the moon room sometime...folls can testify for that one.
Will do so in the near future. I am oh so broke right now though.
yep, in the matty yo! across the street from the mariott on s.grant, in the barrio holmes. whats the moon room? is it a bar where the artist formerly known as king one rocks his purple bunny jawn while juggling 2 copies of don blackman?
if only, the moon room is more exclusive than that.
Barrio huh? Right by trader Joes? I used to live down the street from there, over by gateway park. then on E. 40th by the tracks, now Im over by Beresford, by hillsdale High School.
Matty Yo! Holler
Glorious.
Plaese to not discourage the boy; I want to hear more about how relocating to Dullseville Minnesota could save me up to 5K per year.
YES! since elementary school in fact. i was in 1st grade and went to a birthday party for judy zamora and tried "chocolate pork" and have been in love with filipino food ever since. though like all asian cuisine i dislike all desserts and candies. love the food hate the dessert.
next time your lolos make dinaguan HOLLER! ill eat your portion...
Trew,
Where is she going to school at?
$1500 for two people is do-able. My wife and I were paying a little bit more than that for a nice 2-BD in the Sunset, at 10th and Irving which is a really great neighborhood. In Oakland, you'd get a bigger bang for the buck. Personally, I'm not huge on Berkeley since North would likely be too $ and if you're going to live in South Berkeley, you might as well live in Oakland and get away from all the students.
Personally, the difference b/t S.F. and the East Bay is less an issue of cost (though that's real) and more in terms of environment. Living in S.F. is definitely "living in a city" in ways that Berkeley and Oakland are not. IF you want all the convenience (and inconveniences) of urban life, than do S.F. For your price range, you do have a range of options, especially if you don't have kids.
If you want more space for less money, I'd look in Oakland, especially around Grand Lake since there's a nice commercial district of restaurants and bars there. The pace is decidedly more chill though compared with parts of S.F.
I totally agree with everyone who said, "don't live past the tunnel." Contra Costa is just another world entirely and while I find Orinda and Lafayette to be charming bedroom communities, it's to SF and Oakland what Westchester is to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Plus, trying to commute through the tunnel SUCKS. All the stop-and-go of bad bridge traffic with none of the view.
Same goes for any suburb south of Oakland. If you don't have kids, you have absolutely no reason to want to live there.
I don't mean to be the sole advocate of Lafayette, but dudes here are sleeping on some of that good ish. You can easily get a tremendous view of Mount Diablo as well as the hills that surround Lafayette. You get close proximity to the Lafayette Reservoir for some great hiking/recreation. Then there are all of the other surrounding reservoirs and parks that run along the backside of the Oakland/Berkeley hills. You get an easy escape route both up towards Vallejo/Sacramento as well as down to I-5. The best Texas style barbeque in the whole Bay Area is in Lafayette. Many key high school basketball playoff games are played at St. Mary's. And while you still have fairly easy access to everything there is in the East Bay/SF, you actually maintain SOME ROOM TO BREATHE.
I mean, I loved living in downtown Berkeley, but after 3 years of it, I was ready to strangle a moonlight-howling junky or a haughty, pampered college student or a self-righteous, libero-soccer mom or a robotically cruel bank teller or especially those cursed street signals that beep incessantly. Not to say that Lafayette didn't have its drawbacks, but you've got to be really insecure to think that you always have to be in the middle of a hustle-bustle scene to be anywhere at all worthwhile.
There's a certain value in people not having to live like packrats that is lost on about 80% of the people who live in the Bay Area and if you are taking their advice on how to live, you are going to end up in an overpriced, inadequately maintained, marginally dangerous, shoebox of a dwelling, reasoning that your slightly inflated salary really does cover the astronimically bulged cost of living...just like them. Sorry dudes, I don't doubt that some of you are living in places that you and possibly even me would love, but having everything you could ever need all located within the block that you live on sounds more like a nightmare than a dream to me.
Yeah but in all fairness dude - you lived RIGHT in the heart of probably one of the most chaotic parts of Berkeley outside of the immediate south/campus zone. I used to live a few blocks from your old spot and that whole area is pretty far from "peaceful" so I can appreciate the desire to find some breathing room after.
Just saying: there's a lot of options that lie between "downtown Berkeley" and "Lafayette" in terms of environment, safety, comfort, affordability, etc. I think Lafayette/Orinda isn't a bad move if you've lived in the urban space of the Bay for a few years and you're ready to chillax in a quieter space but for a couple in their 20/30s with no kids? I think most people would prefer Oakland or S.F. for myriad reasons and for the price range Trew is considering, he's got good options in all those places that don't involve living upstairs in a flop hotel off 6th Av.
Our move to Lafayette was definitely reactionary...but it wasn't even conceived until we unsuccessfully tried for months to find a suitable place elsewhere in Berkeley/Oakland.
As far as the spot we had in Berkeley, luckily we got in there pre-tech boom. The most we ever paid there was $630. The couple that moved in across the hall from us about a year after us who had the same floorplan as us was paying $1300 for a rather small, mice-infested one-bedroom space!!!
But yeah, Lafayette was actually, literally great for us...even as a multi-culti, childless couple in our late 20's.
Yet we should consider that even that wasn't enough for us as a reaction to being subjected to the Berkeley cluster in that we then moved to Eugene, OR for a year only to then return to spacious, free-wheelin Austin. And if we move again, it will be to Panama/Costa Rica/somewhere-in-the-Caribbean.
Obviously, we're no city slickers. And you know I can't say that without trying to discouraging others who find themselves attracted to the typical city slicker lifestyle.
Hahaha, well said. My homie's ex-girl sorta lived with her parents in Moraga. I say "sorta" because her parents were only in the country six months out of the year; the other six, she was just chillin' out in Moraga in this swanky-ass house, so we'd posse up and go out there on the weekends for some R&R, barbecue, etc. We started calling it "the farm," and in a lot of ways, both good and bad, it reminded me of Connecticut. It was a nice place to visit, a nice little escape destination, but I can't imagine I'd want to live there.
Man...those were the days. My ex shared this crazy 5 BD Victorian in the outer Mission where the TOTAL rent was something like $1200-1400. Not surprisingly, the landlord illegally evicted them and promptly doubled the rent.