@uptowngirl: I contacted my friend yesterday. He told me he goes to Meetup meetings there and he ran into this lady, who just started coming to the meetings. He introduced himself and asked where she came from. She told him she came from NYC. He asked her what brought her to San Francisco. She told him she heard the cost of living was cheaper and that she could get a job and live better. He asked her how long she had been in San Fran. She told him about three months. She told him she found an apartment in two weeks. He told me the rent she paid for the one bedroom was about $700 a month, or something like that. She claims she paid over $1500 for a studio in NYC. He told he he wasn't surprised.
She went on to tell him she landed a job a couple of days later. She said she was getting paid an annual salary of $60,000. This was actually less than where she did the same job in NYC, but her expenses of living in San Fran is half what she spent in NYC, so she could easily budget her money better.
I think you can hear negative comments from people no matter what state or city they live in. There are people who will defend NYC to their dying day, while there are those who could careless about this city and speak negatively about it. The same holds true for San Fran. My girlfriend went to San Fran and she absolutely loved it.
So, say what you will, but San Fran rates high on the scale of better places to live than NYC. In fact, my friend told me when my next surgery is over in March, and I am allowed to travel, I can come back to San Fran and stay at his house.
As a side note, I just contacted my friend and he told me the gay section of the city is very expensive compared to other area of San Francisco. This area is the highest area to live in if you want to live in San Francisco. But he also said, they are the ones with a lot of the money. But he still said that even if the gay area is more expensive than any other area of the city, it is still cheaper than NYC.
