I recently moved from London to San Francisco. While I'd spent quite a bit of time in SF before—both for work and as a tourist—settling here permanently has involved some bigger adjustments. Here's what stands out:
People just assume you have an iPhone. Instead of WhatsApp groups, people create iMessage groups.
Grocery delivery options are much worse. In the UK we have services like Ocado with centralized logistics, delivery vans, and warehouses. Here, even services like Amazon Whole Foods delivery use individual shoppers who go to a local store and then drive in their personal cars to your place, with no centralized tracking of what is in stock.
Relatedly, Americans seem less into the idea of paying money to save time when it comes to tasks like food shopping and DIY. It’s considered virtuous to do stuff yourself.
Take-out delivery (e.g. Uber Eats, DoorDash) has greater markups than in London, presumably because the couriers drive instead of cycle.
Food in supermarkets is worse and weirder. Fresh salmon fillets include red food coloring as an ingredient. A packet of “organic” ground beef I saw at Trader Joe’s the other day had four countries of origin listed. In contrast, I’ve never purchased non-British meat in the UK.
Tin cans don’t have tabs for easy opening. I had to buy a can opener to open a can of tomatoes.
Peer-to-peer bank transfers are not supported, people rely on Zelle or Venmo.
Healthcare providers are more keen to provide various tests/checks/services. Medical staff encourage you to do things considered unnecessary in the UK. Clearly the incentives are very different—the NHS wants to save money and minimize how much healthcare they provide, whereas healthcare providers in the US want to squeeze as much money out of your insurance as possible.
Healthcare providers are more afraid of being sued. People seem more afraid of being sued in general.
The homeless problem in SF is very severe. This causes many streets to smell absolutely awful. I’ve never come across anything similar in the UK/Europe (or even India). And it’s not just contained in the Tenderloin.
Another cause of bad smells is weed. Terrible stuff.
So far, the list is wholly negative… Here are some nice things about SF:
I’ve seen more live raccoons (4) in the last month than in my entire life (3, also all while visiting the Bay).
Waymos!
Lots of cool, ambitious people live here or in the broader Bay Area.
It’s the place to be if you work in tech or AI. I can see my coworkers in person. My office building is really comfortable.
The weather is nice (although controversially I also quite like gray skies so London is not that bad in this regard).
There are places with impressive wild nature nearby.
Funny billboards as you drive from the airport.
Congrats on the move and wishing you luck settling in :)
I do not understand how a people can be so willfully disdainful of the poor that they would rather have streets that stink because of homeless people (presumably unable to access toilet facilities) than just provide housing. Obviously there'd be an issue in terms of location (I can't imagine there's space to build housing in the city itself and some would resent having to leave to a suburb - ideally one with planned transport links into the city for those with jobs) but ...I've heard Americans talk about this in such a weird way, like, it's so simple to solve, with pre-fab houses you could get it built in a year and then have nice streets, but there's this weird moralism of "I suspect they deserve to suffer so everyone must suffer to give them the suffering they deserve". Like who cares, if they truly are terrible people (they're not all terrible people) or completely useless drug addicts or whatever (they're not) then they'll still suffer, its ok, they can suffer inside their homes, they don't need to be suffering smellily on the street spreading that suffering to everyone else. It boggles the mind. Housing people doesn't just help them it helps everyone who would otherwise have... hordes of homeless shitting everywhere. The spite involved here is just so weird to me.