2 min read

California Travelogue

California Travelogue

Bay Area

  • Quality of life seems good overall, nice climate, nice food and things to do. I could see myself living there.
  • We spent a lot of time in the Berkeley area which was nice and suburban for the most part (sorry YIMBYs)
  • The homelessness in Berkeley was "tolerable" London levels
  • The homelessness in SF proper was mostly London levels but much much worse in certain areas, quite shocking in both the quantity and the condition of the people
  • The Castro is TINY considering it is supposedly the center of gay culture. Should be a whole city IMO.
conservative choice of flag as well

Culture

  • Farmers in the californian interior seem very annoyed about water and want more dams
  • The famed American quality of service just isn't that much better than Europe/UK IMO - not clear that tipping is improving service much
  • Americans seem generally less tolerant of things being slightly bad than Europeans/Brits in a way that is hard to pin down
  • Random rural Walmarts are truly vast
  • When Americans "go camping" they mean "we take our AC with us"
  • By British standards, they hate dogs. No dogs allowed on almost all hiking trails, no dogs in the park etc. etc.
  • We went to a casino in Nevada (Lake Tahoe). It was interesting:
    • Everyone we spoke to there, staff and clientele, were extremely nice and happy.
    • I spent around $200 without noticing
    • They just give you free drinks??
    • People were SMOKING??? Indoors??
    • The camaraderie at the table (I played poker for a bit) was quite nice, taught me to play, joked etc. I can see how lonely people might like this.
    • Bf felt kind of disappointed and "cheated" by how much money we spent. He didn't like that (in this casino at least) you played poker against the dealer and not other players.
    • Probably wouldn't go back

Driving

  • The speed is slower than you'd expect - raise the speed limits!
  • Fuel is incredibly cheap, but my credit cards only worked half the time for self service
They still whine about fuel prices though
  • Compared to the UK, almost no one drives diesel cars, a bunch of "gas" stations don't even sell diesel
  • They put traffic lights on big highways in the middle of nowhere for no reason - just do off ramps guys!
  • The "sprawl and drive everywhere" model of urbanism seems to work okayish for them? There is plenty of space on the roads and plenty of free parking so it doesn't really matter if you have to drive.
  • Turning right on red is quite convenient
  • The Waymos in SF were fun, I'm not sure they're better than Uber/Lyft yet