One Year in San Francisco as a Software Engineer
I&#x27;m also from Toronto living in SF. This is pretty spot on.<p>Some other things that struck me about living here.<p>- SF is cold! (yes, this coming from a canadian) In Toronto you get &quot;real&quot; seasons and snow during winter, but SF (especially in the areas closer to the ocean) is blasted with cold wind and fog year-round so there&#x27;s really never a hot season. In addition to that, SF has its infamous micro-weathers: it might be foggy on one patch of the city, rain on another and be sunny (but still windy) on yet another part of town, all at the same time.<p>- Food scene: SF does a lot of spins on food. If I were to describe food here, I&#x27;d have to say it&#x27;s generally &quot;gimmicky&quot;. It&#x27;s very common to see people lining up for unique eye-catching things like asian+mexican fusion, dashi-broth ramen and taiyaki ice cream, but finding good traditional chinese or greek or korean food or even a half-decent shawarma is tough. Also, having to wait in line for 30+ mins almost everywhere detracts a lot from dining experiences. Many places are also ridiculously cramped. I&#x27;ve never had to walk _through the kitchen_ to get to a restroom anywhere else before.<p>- LGBT community: Toronto has a large LGBT community and one of the largest parades in North America, but people generally don&#x27;t try to be too outrageous. In the one year I&#x27;ve been to SF, I&#x27;ve ran into butt-naked people numerous times (in contexts ranging from them just walking down the street to them running the Bay-to-Breakers marathon). Also ran into a leather fetish gear festival around costco a while back. Nothing really against that sort of stuff, but can be awkward to inadvertently run into it when you&#x27;re just out and about with the kids on a random weekend.<p>- Geography and nature: Within SF, there are gorgeous places scattered throughout the city (e.g. views from Russian Hill, around Randall museum, presidio area). If you have a car, there are also a ton of amazing state parks in the surrounding areas, from redwood forests to beaches. You can see wild sea life up close at fitzgerald marine reserve and even spot whales at pigeon point.