From Chicago To San Francisco

Finding a place to live

After taking a break from my first job, I finally moved out to the San Francisco area after talking about it for several years. I had spent ~80% of my life in the greater Chicago-land area and it was time for change. About 2.5 weeks prior to the actual move, I flew into town and stayed with my future roommate (has family local to the area). We had met in Chicago and by chance, both wanted to go west. Without a roommate, the search would've been somewhat harder, and the end cost for rent would be about $200 to $400 more per person. I was accustomed to living in my 900 sq. ft. one bed room in Chicago and didn't want to give up too much. Having a roommate made this much easier on the search and the wallet.

Apartment

Tools for the hunt:

• padmapper - padmapper misses some listings on craigslist, but is invaluable for visualization.
• craigslist - catch those that don't show up on padmapper. Recently, craigslist added a feature to search only in neighborhoods of San Francisco.  Search San Francisco specifically to see the neighborhoods filter.

There is a lot of demand for housing in San Francisco. Landlords can get away with doing very little marketing, unlike in Chicago, where tenants can do the shopping and lanlords compete for business. Many landlords in SF will say "I've got someone else looking later this afternoon" and it is not a bluff.  Go in prepared or be prepared to have someone else take your apt from you:

1. Each person should get several copies of their Credit Score.  You can get a free Credit Report once a year from annualcreditreport.com, but a Credit Score is purchased through Experian, Equifax, and/or Transunion in my order of preference. Watch out for link bait on offers you might need to phone into their company to cancel. Some of their online tools don't have cancellation functions!
2. References (ex: previous landlord's contact info)
3. Bring checkbook (until p2p payments get better or if your landlord is hip like that)
4. If you like the place, take it.  Second guessing will most likely lose the bid for the apt.

Getting Around

In the 7x7 mile square that is San Francisco, public transportation & taxi can suffice. If there's any plan to visit places like Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc., a car can be handy. Consider joining a car sharing service like Zipcar. Public transportation can work, but the cost translates into raw time instead of dollars. Personally, I drove from Chicago to San Francisco, so I have my car. I would recommend having a car, the freedom to go anywhere, anytime at 2x+ the speed of public transportation is great.

Public Transportation

In Chicago, there's the Chicago card, a plastic card with a rfid chip used for the public transportation: the "L" (subway), and buses. More conviently in San Francisco, there's a consolidation of fare cards into the Clipper card. With the Clipper, you can ride the Muni (San Francisco buses/light rail on and off tracks), BART (train that runs throughout the bay area), and a bunch of other trains. The convience part comes where the Clipper can be purchased at Walgreens! The Chicago card comes by mail to residents only, and people without the card use the old plastic dispensed card that are littered around the streets. More info at http://www.sfmta.com.

Personal Car

Street Parking - depending on the neighborhood, a Residential Parking Permit might be required. The permits allow parking over a loosely enforced 2 hour time limit.  With proof of residency, my lease, but without a California vehicle registered, I couldn't get a Residential Parking Permit, but I didn't want to move my car every 2 hours to avoid a ticket, or to walk a long ways to my car.  I bought a Visitor's Permit instead, "visiting" my roommate. Some of the employees at the SFMTA were not pleased with my work-a-round stating that my name was on the lease so I wasn't really just "visiting".  Other employees tried to save me money by stating that I'm paying for 4 weeks for the the same price as an annual parking permit.  I figured California could use the money to become un-bankrupt and I could save time and hassle.  I did end up getting the visitor's permit, though it wasn't clear at the time if i was going to sneak one by.
Garage Parking - If garage parking is desired, find a space while apartment hunting. A no hassle method is to search Craigslist. Prices vary, but isn't too different from Chicago. I was paying $200 for indoor, remote controlled garage parking in Chicago, I'm paying the same for the same in San Francisco. Parking spaces go quick in hotspots, just like apartments.

Wrapping up and Making the drive

Before heading out to the promise (silicon) valley, don't forget to wrap up.

• Finalize electric, gas, water, and internet bills.
• Handle change of address with usps.  I'd post the link, but I've tried their online app and it hasn't worked every single time.
• Give up the old keys, make sure to have access to the new keys.

Also, for driving cross country, get the car checked out early.  Better safe than sorry.

The Driving Plan

Since I was going to drive solo, my plan of attack was to drive as much as possible early to prevent fatigue or bordem.  An Ipod hooked up to the car speakers helped a lot.
The plan was simple:

1. Use TripAdvisor and book a decent room to sleep in the night before arriving at sleeping cities.  I choose to stay at C, E, and G: North Platte, Nebraska, Salt Lake City, and Reno.
2. Drive during daylight.  This avoids roadkill and unfamiliar terrain.
3. Fill up gas at around 1/2 to 3/4 empty, or when legs needed some stretching.  Wipe bugs off winshield.

The route basically was as follows (see google map insert as reference):

• Day 1, A -> B -> C
  • 6am, drive from A -- 5.5 hours -- > B
  • have lunch and call family to check-in.  
  • B -- 6 hours --> C.
  • It was about 7pm when I reached North Platte.  Ate dinner, watched the New Hampshire Republican debate 2011, which laughed me to sleep.  For the record, I vote for who I think would do a good job and could care less about their political affiliation.
• Day 2, C -> D -> E
  • 8am, same plan as above.  
  • There are two exceptions.  The first was that I woke up later because I would have a time zone change when arriving in Salt Lake City.  The second difference is that the driving times on each leg for the day was 1 hour less than the first day.  Plus I chugged an energy drink.
• Day 3, E -> F -> G
  • Also woke up an hour later for time zone shift.  This day, the driving times were only about 4 hours each leg.  I probably could have made it all the way to San Francisco, but it would've been night time by then, and I'd still need to move all my belongings from the car into the apartment.
• Day 4, Arrive at 1pm, and move into apartment.

View Larger Map

Settling in

Finally, some tips in making San Francisco easier to comprehend for an outsider:

• Trash: 
  • In Chicago, everything goes into The Trash. There's a recycling program, but the city doesn't really collect recycling.  Maybe Rahm will sort that out.  
  • In San Francisco there are disposables, recyclables, and compostables.  3 trash bins!  And I hear people get ticketed by the sanitation engineers for improper sorting.  Learn garbage sort, O(1/n).
• Car 
  • There's actually a time limit for getting your driver's license and vehicle registration.
  • Make and appointment!  The DMV is packed, unlike the idle offices in the midwest.
  • Get the car smog tested before heading into the DMV.  It shouldn't cost more than $50 at most, and better deals aren't hard to find online.
  • Links: California DMV Appointment and New to California - DMV page
  • Take care of parking as stated at the beginning of this guide.

That's it.  It's been sunny and the weather and temperature doesn't fluctuate much.  The food is great.  I hope this helps calm the jitters for anyone that wants to make it out here to San Francisco!