patrick.net

Sorry,

not a proud Californian.

Label me bemused Northwest coaster...

Sushi in Marin: $80
Sushi in Chicago: $55
Sushi in Ohio: a stomach pumping

I have one thing to say about the South: Ghetto.

That is a good description of South Bay, near San Jose.

Sushi in Marin: $80
Sushi in Chicago: $55
Sushi in Ohio: a stomach pumping

Let's go to Kaygetsu sometime. With some luck $80 can buy some sushi. Just make sure you look around before you say something bad about Apple.

iTunes ITMS really pisses me off. Ok, got that off my chest. Let's do it.

I have one thing to say about the South: Ghetto. Strip malls, poor everywhere, horrendous schools, complete lack of tolerance, awful summers, and insane crime.

Huh??

So --"tolerance" aside-- you're saying California doesn't have ghettos, strip malls, tons of poor, horrendous schools or crime? Please. I'm not even so sure we're all that "tolerant" frankly. There's plenty of smug, arrogant lefty NIMBYism & PCness around here.

iTunes ITMS really pisses me off. Ok, got that off my chest. Let’s do it.

I have a samsung mp3 player, which is a storage class device. No need for software.

Either way, I’ll take a Nieman Ranch steak over a Chicago steak any day, even though that may be blasphemy.

Kobe. Kobe. Kobe.

"I somehow knew the Lakers would eventually get into this conversation."

Ooooooooo, soylent steak!

I somehow knew the Lakers would eventually get into this conversation.

Huh?

Either way, I’ll take a Nieman Ranch steak over a Chicago steak any day, even though that may be blasphemy.

Blasphemer!

I propose the price of steak is a micro economic thing. Chicago has so many great steak houses that they must compete, bringing the price down. In Northern Cali I have trouble finding a steak that's made of cow, let alone quality beef. So, in NorCal they can charge a ridiculous price, dress it up with sprouts, and call it "steak".

I find Kobe beef too fatty for my tastes.

It can be really fatty. Cook it medium-well or well-done for the flavor.

SFWoman Says:

"I was just bringing the kids to have them put money in their little passbook accounts."

Close the BofA passbook accounts (that pay almost nothing) and set the kids up with a BofA Checking accounts then open on line ING or Emigrant Direct accounts and show the kids how to transfer money they deposit in the bank to get higher interest (I got my first checking account when I was 8 years old)...

Immigrants are now starting to bypass traditional gateways and move inward.Nashville, Dallas, Ann Arbor, Raleigh, Montgomery, and a hundreds other micropolitan areas are becoming reknowned for their family friendly atmospheres and opportunities to immigrants that can rise above the poverty level much easier than in CA.

This is actually true. Way back in 1996, my first job out of law school was as a public interest immigration lawyer in NYC. Even back then, a lot of our clients were moving to places like Savannah, Georgia, and Kansas City, MO. It was really strange. People would step off the plane from Fuzhou province and make a beeline for...Savannah.

One of the clients who I still keep in touch with owns three restraurants now, in three different cities. He is sort of a trail blazer, he is the first person I met who did this. He started out in NYC, opened a restaurant there NYC and, once successful, asked a relative to run it. He then opened a bigger restaurant in Baltimore, MD. Now he's got one in Detroit that is HUGE. I mean, it's huge. It's one of those all-you-can-eat $5.95 buffet places, but the place seats like 500 people. And he fills every seat during the lunch hour! I don't know how he does it, the place is in the middle of a strip mall and there are dozens of other restraurants to choose from in the area, but he really knows the restaurant business and somehow manages to fill the place every day.

I actually represented a Mexican guy one time whose father was sponsoring him for a green card. The thing was, the kid was Mexican and the father was Chinese! I almost had a seizure when they both walked into the office, I was handling that case as a favor for someone else and had not met the clients until that day. Her daughter was sick, and she told me it was just a routine hearing; I trusted her so I agreed to cover it. Credibility is very important in the legal business and I knew that if I represented such obvious scammers my name would be mud down at the INS -- that is, after everyone stopped laughing. But the hearing was set for that day and I had no choice, so I went down there with them.

As we walked down to the Federal Plaza I overheared the clients talking in Spanish to one another, which was strange becuase I had never seen a Chinese person speak Spanish before. When we got there, the immigration officer acted just as I thought he would when faced with a Chinese "father" and a Mexican "son." He looked like he was about ready to deport us all, me included, then and there. "I don't see any family resemblance," he said. The nightmare was happening.

The son got his green card that day. It turned out that a few months before they'd had to do a DNA test, and they really were father and son! They looked nothing alike, one was stereotypically Mexican and the other was, you know, Chinese. But they really were related!

Anyway, the dad had first immigrated to Mexico City, and then to New York, and finally to Tennessee! He picked up both Spanish and English along the way, and married three different women. He showed me a picture of his daughter, and she was blond! I guess his genes were really recessive.

When the son came up from Mexico he went straight to Georgia, not CA. He worked in a Dunkin' Donuts there and owned his own home. This took place back in 1996 or 1997, I am sure it has become even more popular today.

Mr Vincent,

:oops: see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_smilies

Returning,

I think when you brought this up a week or so ago, someone mentioned that Virginia Beach is a special case. I have to agree. Most of the South have pluses and minuses, but cost of living is much lower and nice houses in good school districts can be had for $150K. Wages are quite low though.

@Returning to Bay Area,

Coastal Virginia is one of the most expensive areas of the South and is itself experiencing a housing bubble on a scale similar to CA's, so this is not the best representative for the entire region.

RTBA, skibum:

Regardless of the intricacies involved in figuring out direct cost-of-living comparisons, there remains one truism: many goods are nationally priced. These goods are priced on the margins, which means prices are set by high-inflation/high-wealth/high-volume regions. Low inflation regions either avoid these products, substitute for these products, or simply have/use less of these products.

This is the basis of the entire Wal-mart growth strategy (exploiting inflation differentials) up until recently. A Hawaiian vacation costs the same to a SF'er as it does a Virginian in nominal dollars, it just costs a whole lot more for the Virginian in real dollars.

A Hawaiian vacation costs the same to a SF’er as it does a Virginian in nominal dollars, it just costs a whole lot more for the Virginian in real dollars.

When you see that Europe is packed with Japanese tourists, you know that Yen is strong.

I think that pay is higher in CA. So, I believe the standard of living is higher in CA.

@Returning to Bay Area,

Not so. 2003 Census figures: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h08a.html

California median income: $48,912
Virginia median income: $52,776
U.S. median income: $43,349

Interesting point. I suppose the corollary to the Walmart example, would be the recent national expansion of Whole Foods, targeting higher income areas (as well as self-described socially conscious consumers).

What are socially conscious consumers?

I thought people buy at Whole Foods because of quality.

newsfreak,

"Parts of Virginia horse country are very expensive."

I know, my parents used to live on the northern fringe of it (Leesburg). It's really an extension of the DC/NoVa suburbs.

HARM,

Virginia is an usual case. Northern Virginia is very rich and has some of the highest avg. incomes in the country, it's so big populationwise that it skews the state. But NoVa isn't really in the south. It's really more mid-atlantic than anything.

-usual
+unusual
:oops:

newsfreak,

Come on, have you seen Great Falls? (right next to the Potomac river) There are plenty of horsey properties in Northern half of Virginia. They've just become incredibly expensive in the last five years.

@RTBA,

When I used "toleranace" in quotation marks, I wasn't insinuating you yourself were being intolerant of things you don't like about the South. I was referring to your comment about the South's relative 'lack of tolerance', as in racial prejudice, segregation and the things that non-Southerners generally associate with the South.

We talked about this here in an earlier thread (don't recall which one) and basically all agreed that, while these concerns are valid (especially when taken in the historical context of slavery/civil rights movement), this argument tends to be overblown by non-Southerners. Most metropolitan areas of the South today don't look like "Deliverance", nor are you required to be a Klan member in order to get a job anymore. There is also a certain lefty smugness that is very offensive to many non-Californians, which can also be considered a form of "intolerance". That's what I was trying to get at.

HARM Says:

"I’m not even so sure we’re all that “tolerant” frankly. There’s plenty of smug, arrogant lefty NIMBYism & PCness around here."

In California "tolerant" means tolerant of left wingers and weirdos (you must tolerate a school teacher who writes FUCK BUSH on his forehead with a Sharpie or a guy dancing around in plastic underwear making duck noises. A "tolerant" Californian will NOT tolerate any parents who mention that teaching kids in Spanish is a bad idea or tolerate anyone who likes NASCAR and goes to church...

newsfreak,

With all due respect, your mom doesn't make for a community. I live in NoVa and there's a pretty vibrant community of immigrants (domestic and from abroad) here. I encounter many more foreign accents here than I do southern ones.

newsfreak,

Okay. And sorry, since I got a little overheated.

What do I love about California? Tom Cruise.

Mmmmm, placenta.

I wonder if there are prions in placenta.

Mmmmm, placenta.

I rather have pancetta.

SF Woman,

I'm amazed. I guess I've got to get out more.

SFWoman,

The Japanese pioneered the use of placenta in face creams and health supplements. The fashionable Chinese have followed up on this trend.

skibum,

I don't get why anyone in the BA needs to shop at Whole Foods, there are so many organic/humane focused farms here that it's really easy to buy that stuff from farmer's market or CSA directly at 1/2 the price.

SFWoman,

Nope, if it was "quality" stuff, it'll be human.

I heard stories about people eating them too, but I will not elaborate.

I heard stories about people eating them too, but I will not elaborate.

That is technically cannibalism.

I think Jewish people bury the foreskin after a circumcision.

Once on the Discovery Heatlh Channel this couple cut the umbillical cord with a sword after the mom gave birth. It was supposedly a Scottish custom. I think the dude just made it up, personally (even if there is historical precedent I doubt his father and grandpa did it), but it was still sort of cool.

Peter P.

"That is technically cannibalism."

Are you intolerant of cannibals?

SFWoman,

I think you are right. I have seen pictures of an Orthodox burial detail whose job it is to retrieve body parts after a suicide bombing. It is both beautiful and heartbreaking to see, they go over every inch of the area to ensure that the decedents are buried properly. The worst part was that the picutres I saw were taken a couple of years ago, after a suicide bomber attacked that school bus. Talk about bad.