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One of the first things Elizabeth Shipsides noticed when she moved to the Bay Area was that she had to shell out for bags when she went to the store. She’d never heard of such a thing. It was the first of many annoyances the mother of three found when she moved from Minnesota to Fremont two years ago.
“The lady had the nerve to ask, ‘Do you want bags?’ I have a one-year-old and about 100 items,” says Shipsides, who grew up in the Midwest. “I retorted, ‘Of course.’ She said, ’10 cents per bag.’ Yep, I can remember my jaw dropping. Later, my friends in Minnesota would describe California as ‘progressive.’ I call it inconvenient.”
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Landing in the Bay Area can be a culture shock for many newcomers, particularly those like Shipsides who come from places where the business of living is a whole lot simpler. Some are instantly smitten with the legendary beauty of the region, from the fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge to the grandeur of the redwoods. But others can’t get over how hard it is to live here: the traffic, the housing prices, the crowds.
Indeed, a new U.S. News & World Report survey found that California has the worst quality of life in the nation. That may explain the current Bay Area exodus in which people are leaving almost as quickly as they are coming in. Rest assured, however, that the Bay Area’s overall population continues to grow. Between July 2015 and July 2017, Silicon Valley may have said goodbye to 44,102 residents but it welcomed 44,732 newbies, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Those newcomers see where we live through fresh eyes. What they love, and what they hate, may surprise you.
Eric Ting moved to Berkeley from Brooklyn two and half years ago with his wife and baby daughter, Frankie. He thought he would miss the bustle of the Big Apple. He thought he would miss the four seasons. He was wrong.
“It’s like living in Narnia here,” says Ting, 45, who runs Orinda’s California Shakespeare Theater. “The weather is so calming, the artists are a real community where everyone tries to lift each other up, and we live in a craftsman a few blocks from Berkeley Bowl.”
The physical riches of the area — the bounty of beaches and forests and sunshine — are also a big perk for the family. “I can’t get over how easy it is to access nature here,” he says. “In New York, you really had to work for it.”
The view isn’t so rosy for Shipsides, who is still irked by having to pay for bags. Then there are the crowds, the exorbitant cost of housing, and the unpleasant aroma from Milpitas, which sometimes drifts up to her neighborhood in Fremont.
“My family remarked about an unusual odor to the Bay Area for weeks. It smelled like trash,” says Shipsides, who moved here because her husband landed a great job at a start-up. “We were told that Milpitas was the site of a landfill. Now, we hardly notice it at all.”
Like many newbies, Shipsides — whose family rents a house here — is fond of the Bay Area’s abundance of fusion food, such as curry pizza, but she sorely misses the “Minnesota Nice” she grew up with. She even misses Minnesota’s Department of Motor Vehicles, where there was a children’s area and free beverages. She also thinks mountains are overrated and the locals are less than gracious.
“People in California are generally rude,” she says. “While people in Minnesota are known for passive aggressive niceness, I don’t feel like I have to fight for things there.”
Danyell Davis adored everything but the price tag of moving here, and the traffic. Coming from South Dakota, she spent six months living in Sunol before heading to more affordable Coalinga. She raved about the Bay Area’s cuisine and scenery, but the numbers just didn’t work for a family trying to rent a house with two small children and three big dogs.
“I really loved the Bay, if only it weren’t so darn expensive,” says the 26-year-old mother of two, whose husband works in engineering and construction. “It just doesn’t make sense with how high the cost of living is.”
“We might consider buying a home if an earthquake decreases the price,” says Shipsides, 40, only half joking.
Certainly the Bay Area’s high-pressure environment, from freeway gridlock to getting the kids into the right schools, can turn greenhorns off. Competition is part of the ecosystem here, and some find the atmosphere too stressful.
“The Bay Area has a workaholic mentality,” says Shipsides, who left behind a tight network of friends and family and a home of her own back in Minnesota. Even “the kids are pushed academically and rarely have any play dates.”
Shortly after they came here, Shipsides joined a local Cub Scouts troop with her eldest son James, 9, who loves basketball and video games. But they dropped out because she didn’t realize it was almost entirely Mandarin speaking.
“They were nice people, but we didn’t know the language, and that proved to be difficult for all of us,” says Shipsides, who has Chinese roots but doesn’t speak Mandarin. “My son felt left out.”
All newcomers crave a sense of belonging. Experts say that might be easier to build in a place with so many folks in the same boat.
“People are very open here because there is so much rotation,” says Liza Miron, a San Jose-based life coach who specializes in newcomers. “It is easier to make friends when you are both starting from zero. You discover things together, and you bond more deeply.”
While everyone is different, Miron stresses that most people find happiness much more quickly if they are looking forward to the move. If they dread leaving their old stomping grounds, it’s harder.
“You have to let go of where you come from to be open to where you are going,” she says.
But some struggle to find a feeling of community in a region with so much churn.
“I think the Bay Area reeks of transience,” says Shipsides. “It’s a place to make a fortune amid the Silicon Valley start-ups and run away. It seems more like an area for adventure rather than a place to settle.”
For the Ting family, putting down roots came easy. At two and a half, Frankie’s new favorite things to do include riding the little train at Tilden park, eating dim sum and helping to walk the dog in the almost perpetual sunshine.
“This is home, this is the only home Frankie has ever known,” says Ting, who is also hoping for a dip in the real estate market. “She is a California girl.”
Meanwhile, Davis is dying to move back. The rub is they would have to cram everybody into an RV or give up their beloved dogs, which they can’t bear to do. “It would be heartbreaking and traumatic, the dogs are part of the family,” she says. “It’s an impossible choice to make.”
