I'm Italian and I think I know something about good food: trust me, there are only exceptions in San Francisco. Most food is crap, or just average. And ALWAYS overpriced.
Take the "trendy" places: Flour + Water, Farina, Cocina, etc.
If you go there, you will hear Americans shouting "Sooo good! Delicious! Amazing! Soo tasty!", etc.
Reality is that if you take any random restaurant or trattoria in Rome, chances are you will eat something AMAZINGLY superior, for 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost.
(then there are some tourist traps, and they don't count, of course. They're just a scam).
It would be quite surprising if Italian restaurants in SF would be better than Italian restaurants in Italy.
I'm not a restaurant / food expert, but found that food is most of the time average, sometimes great, sometimes crap, around the world (in Rome, Tuscany, Paris, Germany, Nordics, Asia, US). Depends where you go, what you order and what are your reference points (culturally or taste wise).
What I think the point of the article is that, denser and well earning cities can offer more average _and_ premium choices.
(And Americans, specially in California, always say that the everything is awesome, delicious etc :)
If anyone thinks they can get good Italian food on the west coast of America...Asian food in SF is much better and affordable. Pita curry wraps for a $6 lunch? Damn, that's innovation.
The same can be said for basically any country and it's native cuisine. E.g. sushi in Japan.
That said, in my experience the US does other countries' cuisines better than most. By that I mean Italian food in the US is much better than Italian food in Japan.
Given America's large immigrant population and tradition, you'd expect it would in many cases do rather well at foreign cuisines. Despite this, however, in my experience the average Japanese "Italian" restaurant is a much better bet for getting good food (even if not necessarily all that close to what they might serve in Italy) than the average American "Italian" restaurant, because unfortunately, the latter often really, really, suck at the basic "edible product" level...
>overpriced every other basic commodity of human existence.
I'm a starving grad student who lives a block from the mentioned, The Mill. I can't afford anything of quality traditionally associated with prosperity (car, house, family, etc.). But I can afford quality of the quotidian - headphones, breakfast, coffee, shoes, beer. And so I spend on those things instead - because there's no way I will ever be able to even afford a crappy car in this city.
And the quality is better in SF. It's true, there is always someone willing to sell you a $10x priced version of what you just bought if you want to be the sucker. But SF actually does a pretty good job at giving you what you pay for. You do pay a lot - but you get the best damned toast and coffee in the country. If you just wanted 'some toast and coffee' you should have gone across the street to Eddies - because that exists too.
The result is you get fantastic experimentation at the very cutting edge of even the quotidian. Not only does the bay area churn out Musks & Jobs', but we also churn out the Bakers & the Mas - who can make us the best bread and clothes the world has seen, at a price I can afford, blocks from my home. And such places exist because the community is willing to support them. The art of breadmaking has died in the rest of the country because of the race to the supermarkets' bottom. I think it's extraordinary that the SF population supports the common arts even at personal cost.
I think this particular (non-)problem is distinct from the expulsion of culture happening because of the commute/rent issues facing the city.
You're deluded if you think San Francisco has the best bread or coffee in the world. I don't even know what to tell you.
Hint: because of astronomical rents in the city, anything you buy for say $X will use lower quality inputs than a comparable thing you buy for $X somewhere else. It's a necessary economic fact. Businesses have to break even, at least, and in the face of high rents they have to skimp elsewhere.
If you want something legit, head north to Portland. The low rents there mean that real artisans can afford to put out quality product while still pricing their wares within market ranges.
If you can make bread in Ohio, but the people will only pay $1 a slice, there is no way your margins will support you buying a $100,000 oven to bake in, fresh grains to mill yourself, and a highly-educated person to reason out modern recipes. You have to compete with Safeway. Same with espresso & espresso machines.
If you can sell your bread for $4 a slice in SF, all of a sudden (even with the high rent), you can now afford those very real improvements to the art. There are lines out the door at The Mill - and the very reason this story was written was because they are selling their wares at market ranges. But they're selling wares produced with top quality resources, produced by top quality artisans.
The beauty of The Mill, mentioned - is the baking is done all in the open in front of the customers. If they tried to use substandard ingredients, honey not from local farms, a poorly functioning oven, or otherwise tried to reduce their quality to what is found elsewhere their customers would not return. At the end of the day, the margins are probably similar, but you have a lot more capital to work with in SF.
Median HHI in San Francisco is only 37% above the national median, so you're not getting away with charging 4x as much for bread (though your rent may easily be that much higher).
Also, a $100k oven and "highly-educated" bakers sounds more industrial than artisan... Manhattan has far more and far richer rich people than San Francisco, and I can't think of anyone there who would say that the best bread in the city is at some high-end place that can afford expensive equipment. And New Yorkers love to overpay for things!
The same happens in Japan: expensive but every bar has a wood fired pizza oven, every Indian restarsunt has a wood fired naan oven, ... The food is just so good there, they don't cut corners at all.
After living abroad, SF is a great value for anything other than rent.
I think restaurants in Japan are often great+ because Japan has an extraordinary service culture. They try. Just giving a tiny little bit of a damn goes a long way...
+ There's obviously tons of pedestrian/fast/chain/meh food in Japan, but even that stuff is generally a few notches above the same thing in the U.S. Even U.S. branches of Japanese chain restaurants generally seem far worse than the home branches...
It is not just service culture, it is competition, high expectations from consumers, and the ability to invest in equipment that goes along with high prices.
I agree with the first two, but I don't think expensive equipment is really much of an influence -- a lot of small restaurants (and bars etc) in Japan turn out amazing food with little more than a hob and a frypan, and indeed that seems more the rule than the exception.
[Of course, higher prices also can help pay for higher-quality ingredients, which do play a part.]
Not everyone puts capitalism ahead of their passion. Many small business owners got into doing what they do because they are passionate about making whatever it is they make or providing whatever service they really care about. When that happens, you get an individuals that is capable of balancing his own economic interest with his own interest for self-actualization.
I cannot stay silent here. The coffee in Portland is superior to SF. (Yes I've tried multiple options in both places). I'd say that even the food options are about par - with Portland being cheaper.
Just because you can buy a $6 breakfast (consisting of a cup of coffee and a slice of toast and jam), $300 jeans or $200 yoga pants in SF doesn't mean you have to. For every The Mill, Blue Bottle, LuluLemon or whatever hip-jeans store there is in SF, there's a McDonald's, Denny's, Marshall's, Burlington Coat Factory and Payless Shoes counterpart (and god knows how many pop-up import shops). That's the great thing about SF -- you can spend as much or as little as you like on material goods.
The rent situation is, of course, out of hand, but that's mainly a supply constraint problem that's not easily solved due to our unique brand of NIMBYism.
I agree that there are both high and low cost options. The author seems to trying to sensationalize the story. [1] But it is true that the cost of living in the Bay Area is high. It's affecting things like home ownership, income levels, homelessness, public transportation.
[1] VentureBeat's audience is probably reasonably geographically centralized here, where we understand, but I can see how someone from the Midwest would be completely surprised by $4 toast and think that those prices are the norm. (It's the same reaction I get when I explain that yes, there is a slide in the Google office, but most people take the stairs like normal human beings).
Is the cost of living, apart from real estate, really that high? I just checked http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ and compared SF to Cleveland (which seems like a decent not-super-expensive city).
Results:
Groceries 5%less
Housing 68%less
Utilities 9%more
Transportation 9%less
Health Care 1%less
The ONLY thing significantly more expensive is housing (which has lots of causes, and isn't really related to the new tech immigrants and more to do with people who aren't willing to let bigger buildings be built). Utilities are MORE expensive in Cleveland!
You seem to be getting very cheap food in USA. Where I live (Moscow) $6 for breakfast is cheapest you can find, but I wouldn't pay $300 for jeans (I buy mine for like $50-$70; some surely would).
Food struck me as weirdly cheap in Moscow--restaurants were expensive, but street stalls and groceries were cheap, especially compared to markups on other consumer goods (I bought a webcam there for $70 that would have cost $30 in the US). Bread, at least, was always cheap as dirt, and available in better quality/variety than in American supermarkets.
Prices don't stay still. Street stalls are cheaper but fulfilling breakfast still around $6.
Cheapest bread is heavily subsidized, but I struggle to find inexpensive variety bread in Moscow (and I live here). It's either very plain or very expensive or both. Even a small town near polar circle my wife is from happens to have better bread selection. I end up baking my own, which is awesome.
Where I live, the levi jeans that cost $30 in the states cost $120. The local brand jeans disintegrate after a month or so....I see visits to SF or anywhere else in the state as shopping trips.
This one really confused me: "Rarely are these goods and services truly accessible and affordable."
What do goods/services aimed at wealthier segments of the population have to do with accessibility and affordability?
I presently cannot afford a Ferrari, should I be up in arms about the lack of affordability/accessibility to the said Ferrari?
If we are talking housing, one could make a case for the need for affordability/some form of social protection. Although, I'm not entirely sold that people have a "right" to live in a prestigious neighborhood that they cannot afford, but when an entire city gets priced out, it's much easier to argue.
High price goods and services push low price goods and services out of the market in a place like SF where space is at a premium and the rich might otherwise patronize lower-cost establishments.
If a place that charges $10 for high-tech tacos moves in next door, the place that sells $1 adequate quality tacos is going to get less business from the techie crowd and as a result may not actually bring in enough revenue to stay open for the people who can't afford $10 tacos.
I've heard similar thoughts from people running mid-tier restaurants in Palo Alto.
Absolutely, but isn't that a problem that all major cities have? My favorite Asian restaurants in NYC aren't in Chinatown Manhattan but Queens, specifically because of the extremely affordable rents that allow specific businesses with cheap food to survive.
Newsflash, large cities have luxury stores that sell fancy things for lots of money. You'll find all the the examples also exist in any other large city.
Well that's sure not what I thought it was going to be.
Also, most of the these illustrations are just bad:
> Someone creates a business for consumers with too much money... like black-car, chauffeured rides.
Regardless of what you think of Uber as a company, it's a great idea, and there's not really anything luxurious about it. It costs a little more than a taxi and is definitely on par with other car services. When I'm in LA, I use it all the time. Beats having me drive around between clubs, right? What I use it to get to is much more pretentious that the car itself.
> See: Blue Bottle coffee.
Does the author know anything about coffee? The real stuff is going to be expensive.
> bourgie businesses...buzzwords like “organic” and “fair trade” and “artisanal,”
These things have specific meanings. This statement smacks of anti-intellectualism (and coming from right-wing me, that sounds a little funny.) Are you really going hate on fair trade? How can you begin rationalize that with *bourgie"?
I recently moved from New York to Philadelphia. There is a lot less money here, especially at the top end. New York County (Manhattan) has a per capita income of $59k, versus $21k for Philadelphia County. In a way, it's kind of refreshing. Much less glam, more "well-maintained 1980's construction." Nobody walking down the streets with $200 yoga pants, and I don't even know what would be the equivalent here of 5th Ave. in NYC or Michigan Ave. in Chicago. And even if there was something equivalent, I don't know who would go there. New York has bankers, Chicago has traders, San Francisco has internet millionaires and VCs, but Philadelphia is missing that large class of high-spending "working rich."
Overpriced food and other "staple" items is a reality everywhere, not just SF.
For instance, for $4 you can get a regular cookie ($1.99) and fountain drink ($1.90) at multiple midwestern city locations of Panera. I pay more at my locally-owned coffee shops, but the cookies are bigger and hand-made.
Another example is a lunch meal I've grabbed on occasion since 2000 at a local cafe in mid-sized midwestern city. Back in the day, it was $4.25. It's now $6.75. Same food, same portion size, higher price.
The problem is two-fold. On one hand, inflation and costs are driving up costs. On the other, everyone wants to be seen as "upscale" and--in proving PT Barnum correct--will pay dearly for that appearance.
So why do we pay more when we can’t tell the difference?
To answer this one must realize the true nature of these services. Their main product isn't in physical goods such as food or clothing. Rather, it's a psychological product. Customers are paying for the affirmation that their tastes are superior. For that they are more than willing to pay extra. Expensive toast is really a psychological indulgence rather than a culinary one.
This is something I've been thinking all along, but it's probably a little bit more than just "status affirmation". It is also about enriching life experience, where you sort of value things that happen less frequently more.
I agree, status affirmation is but one of many motives. An appropriate catch-all may be that things of this matter are primarily theatrical in nature. Which is fine, until everyone begins acting and we forget what the real thing was.
I've lived in the SFBA for nearly my whole life and for as long as I can remember SF has been kind of pretentious with food, even before the recent tech boom. My non-tech worker friends who are long time residents are into it, but my tech worker friends who moved here for jobs are not. So I don't think the food thing has anything to do with the tech industry.
The astronomical rent is a different matter, of course...
This article is so based in false premises its hard to know where to start. For 1) San Francisco has the highest minimum wage in the country. 2) California has an high sales tax with a base of 7% and 8.75% in "the city". She also choose a trendy place for her $6 dollar breakfast that and taxes are a large reason for the amount.
I think what everyone really notices is the exorbitant rent prices in "the city". The reason for that is rent control and subsidized housing which artificially lowers the supply of housing thus raising prices. I am techie living in a crappy part of SF in a crappy building since I don't want to pay half my salary in rent. Across from me is a Mercy housing complex with an income limit of 30k. They enjoy large rooms, views and cheaper rent than me but no blames pricing on that. Its all the techies fault for bringing income and demand to "the city".
> the reason for that is rent control and subsidized housing which artificially lowers the supply of housing thus raising prices.
That's a peripheral reason.
The fundamental reason is geography, which both limits the supply available real estate near the core of the City, increases the for real estate in the City, and makes it expensive to build travel conduits to reduce the travel time of commute-suitable housing outside the city.
I disagree. Much of Manhattan is now cheaper than SF, and it faces all of the same challenges. Heck, Manhattan doesn't even have the benefit of being connected via land on one side, and its total area is considerably smaller. Getting anywhere off Manhattan requires crossing water.
But yet its real estate availability is much higher than SF, and its commutable feeder cities/suburbs are innumerable.
The fundamental problem is political. San Francisco is a desirable place to live - tech industry or otherwise - but everyone wants in, and once they get in, they do everything in their power to ensure no one else gets in. It is literally the most development-hostile city I've ever seen.
San Francisco is expensive because San Franciscans would rather starve, see people evicted, see an exodus of the people and culture that made the city famous, suffer incredible transportation problems, etc etc, than lose a single dainty Victorian house on their street.
Forget sustainable development. Forget development that aligns to existing neighborhood characteristics. Politically speaking, the only development plan on the table in SF is no development whatsoever.
Rent control in Manhattan is very different from rent control in SF. For one thing, the number of rent controlled units is extremely low - the source of every sitcom episode about inheriting a dead relative's apartment.
There's rent regulation, which is closer to what SF calls rent control, but even the proportion of regulated apartments in NYC is much lower than in SF. SF's rent control is based on year of construction, and due to the construction-hostile politics of modern SF, that means a lot of units in SF are controlled.
NYC on the other hand has a lot more new construction which aren't regulated, and even the regulated apartments are steadily falling out of regulation (this was intentional - unlike SF, rent regulation is a mechanism to prevent sudden price fluctuations, not a permanent means to suppress rent).
The rent control situation in NYC is very different from the situation in SF.
I read a lot of articles on HN nowadays that are part of what I think of as "SF exceptionalism" -- articles around the idea that things in SF are somehow very different than in other places. Even when couched in the form of a complaint, as this article is, it's hard not to think that what the author is actually doing is showing off about how rich their city is -- look, toast and coffee here costs $6!
I've lived in the Bay Area a long time and this sort of attitude puzzles me. There are plenty of rich areas up and down the Valley, and many places where a $6 breakfast is not something to write an article about. But yes, because it happens in SF it must be special.
I go to Burger King on market and 10th and get a $3 burger. You could spend $10 at Super-Duper or whatever, or you could go a block down to McDondald's at the Montgomery station exit and buy something from their dollar menu.
To the left, you are "privileged" when you put in a decade of schooling and work long hours to improve your marketable skills to make over the median income, especially if you are white, Asian, male, or straight.
Call me what you like, but I look forward to a day when nobody's hard work is discounted as "privilege" because they were born in group X, and nobody assumes that they know everything about you because of your superficial phenotype.
I don't think it is really related to tech, I'm in Dubai where we have no tech, and we pay even more in many places for food/coffee and even clothes.
probably its more like a cultural/human nature thing?
All I know is that I want some of that Tech density to spread out to Texas. Texas right now is probably one of (if not THE) top states to start/grow a business in. If you're in SF and you're young (and/or willing) come over to Texas and get rich over the next 10 years, then go live wherever you want with your future partner and kids. ;)
But then you have to live in Texas; even Austin still has some of that icky Texas non planning left in it, as well as dumpster divers everywhere, something I never saw in the Bay Area.
Texan currently living in SF here. You'd be hard-pressed to convince me that Austin or any other major city in Texas is dirtier or grungier than SF[1]. I've gotten used to it now, but SF really is an amazingly dirty place. Going back to San Antonio or Austin is literally a breath of fresh air compared to here.
[1] You said Bay Area, but lets at least try to compare apples to apples.
Texas can be pretty grungy (downtown Dallas) and is fairly sterile suburban when dirt isn't involved. Austin core is quite nice, but the poverty is just weird: there are no obvious homeless people, but plenty of people living in their cars. San Antonia is also a nice city in its core.
I would never live in Texas again because of the heat, as well as the values even in liberal Austin. Also, I don't like to drive everywhere.
I just ate at Kronenburger for the first time. I JUST moved here from Chicago. We were a party of four, all got burgers and a bunch of starters. Total cost: $60. This would have easily been upwards of 80-100 at Kuma's in Chicago.
It really depends on where you go. I've found that overall, dining out is much cheaper here. I just got lunch the other day at St. Francis Fountain. With drinks, the total cost was about $20. Something similar, like going to say the White Palace or 11 City Diner downtown in Chicago would have easily cost double that.
Maybe this guy has never lived anywhere but here in SF, but dining out here seems much cheaper.
The tech industry ruined SF in the late 90s. Live/work spaces and the attraction of the Mission to .commers ruined SF. I don't think anything happening now is making it any worse.
geez. waaaaaay back in 2007 i remember la boulange on fillmore (about 4 blocks from "the mill", apparently) did a croissant and a coffee for less than 3 bucks... i used to go there in the mornings with spare change i found around my place from the night before.
Take the "trendy" places: Flour + Water, Farina, Cocina, etc. If you go there, you will hear Americans shouting "Sooo good! Delicious! Amazing! Soo tasty!", etc.
Reality is that if you take any random restaurant or trattoria in Rome, chances are you will eat something AMAZINGLY superior, for 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost. (then there are some tourist traps, and they don't count, of course. They're just a scam).
My 0.02.