Since I’ve been getting some comments about how wireless communications is putting people to sleep, I’m going with a different post (don’t worry, wireless comm. will be back in no time :P).
As many of you know, I was in New York for the past year, and I basically fell in love with the city. Since I love San Francisco (I’m referring to all of the Bay Area as San Francisco) too, I was excited about coming back, but at the same time I was sad to leave the Big Apple with only a year under my belt. The following compares and contrasts the two cities as I experienced them.
The main difference, as most know already, is that San Francisco’s culture is strongly technology-influenced, while New York’s is more old world and based heavily in finance. In New York, for the most part, money is created; in SF, things are created. Both are obviously important, and what used to be a large gap between the two cities has slowly become closer, as New York is now a burgeoning tech metropolis (“Silicon Alley”), and San Francisco has become the financial capital of the West Coast.
Both are eerily similar cities since they have overarching cultures that dictate how the cities operate. These cultures, however, differ dramatically. San Francisco’s is relaxed, where professionalism and efficiency are in the personality of the people rather than in the look. Specifically, higher authorities in the office are not necessarily disciplinarians; they don’t care where you are, what you’re wearing, or about your personal decorum; they just want you to get your work done, efficiently and correctly. This ties in to the tech culture that is fostered in SF; things need to be created, and to do so, work needs to be done, quietly and with focus. New York’s culture, on the other hand, is a fast-paced one where things seem to get done almost mechanically, often with the help of interpersonal interaction. You meet people, you learn what they’ve done, you decide how you can be helpful to them and how they can be helpful to you, and rinse and repeat. First impressions are important; so everyone is in a suit, walking like a blur, trying to one-up one another in the battle to get to the top of the mountain. While New York’s competitive nature is palpable - a gun shot, San Francisco’s is more subtle - almost like a slow bleed. The working life in New York is in sharp contrast to the playing life, while in San Francisco the lines are a bit more blurred. Despite the different approaches, both lifestyles lead to the same result: ridiculously competitive and accomplished workforces. It’s clear that different people subscribe to both schools of thought.
Obviously, I’m making some serious generalizations that can easily be debunked, but I’m writing from what I noticed. A disclaimer, of course, is that I never worked in New York, so my view of it is that of a student who saw this culture from friends who worked and from my general adventures in the city.
With regard to city culture, New York is an overwhelming aggregation of everything a person could possibly want in a city. Anything you can think of, New York will have, which makes leaving it difficult. San Francisco is New York at a much smaller scale. I remember I was in SF while my brother was living in New York, and I had been raving about the greatness of SF. Then, when my brother finally visited the city, while he liked it a lot, he wasn’t satisfied, and indignantly asked, “That’s it?” Sadly, I understood that feeling he had once I lived in New York. It’s almost unfair to compare New York to other cities because it usually contains a lot of what other cities have. L.A. - entertainment. Done. SF - tech. Getting there. London - finance. Done. Paris - beauty. Just go to the Upper East Side and never come back. It’s just a hodgepodge at a grand scale, so you see everything you want to see, and often, many things that you don’t want to see. New York hits you with everything imaginable.
San Francisco, on the other hand, is a naturally beautiful place that has a calm that few cities can achieve. The bay, rolling hills, crooked streets, and a lot of greenery make San Francisco a sight to behold. On top of that, it’s perhaps the most efficient and forward-thinking area in the world, which makes the people worthy of beholding as well. So many different neighborhoods, revealing different individuals who have come to the city to make their progressive ideals come true. You can feel that attitude almost everywhere you go, which doesn’t make sense, but is indeed true. I think you can ask anyone here if they feel the same way, and they would answer with a resounding ‘yes.’
To conclude, this was more of a stream-of-consciousness post, so forgive me for not having much structure or purpose. It’s just something I tend to talk about a lot since I really love both cities.
