Asian Life in San Francisco | Asian American Poll

ASIAN LIFE IN SAN FRANCISCO
(Updated Wednesday, Jan 22, 2025, 06:39:10 AM to reflect the 100 most recent valid responses.)

Which San Francisco Bay area offers the best environment for Asian Americans?
Downtown SF | 47%
East Bay | 31%
Marin County | 8%
South San Francisco | 14%

What's the best thing about living in the San Francisco Bay area?
Breathtaking Scenic Beauty | 40%
Clean Air | 19%
Lots of Fine Chinese Restaurants | 15%
Asians Everywhere | 18%
Great Universities, Skiing and Wine | 8%

What's the worst thing about living in the San Francisco Bay area?
No Summer Weather | 12%
Perpetual Gridlock | 40%
Too Crowded with Asians | 1%
Shortage of Decent Housing | 47%

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Comments posted during the past year remain available for browsing.

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WHAT YOU SAY

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I've lived in both LA and SF, and I have to say hands down that for upper-middle classed, integrated, college-educated Asians, the Bay Area is definitely a better place to live than Los Angeles county. I'm addressing this narrow demographic band ONLY because I see a lot of people here blowing off steam and issues and citing evidence that they really know nothing about. I'm going to talk about two cities that are relatively similar affluent communities: Palo Alto and Santa Monica. And I'm justified in talking about both of them because I've lived in both of them. So while the rest of you speculate what racial tensions are like in Oakland and El Monte, I'm only going to talk about what I know: racial integration in white-dominated, upper middle-class suburbs. And I'm only going to speak from personal experience, in giving my personal opinion.

Asians in the Bay Area are perceived as intelligent, industrious and sophisticated; mainly because the Bay Area is the nesting ground for many technical industries that Asians particularly excel in. It's also home to the two best universities in California (Stanford and Cal), where the Asian population by far outnumbers all other minorities. The jobs that Asians hold out here are mostly technical, involving a high amount of training. Sure, you have the entire social strata, down to the dry-cleaning and restaurant owning blue collar workers. But for the most part, many non-Asians build their opinion of Asians around those that they know at the workplace: the disciplined, intelligent, and hard working ones. Add to that the fact that San Francisco is the most liberally-minded city in the US, and you're far less likely to have whites--or anyone else--building unreasonably prejudiced opinions of people of color.

LA has an enormous range of social classes, which are, for the most part, segregated into geographic regions. When minorities segregate and isolate themselves, they only perpetuate xenophobic tendencies. If you're an educated, integrated Asian in LA, chances are people will not automatically assume that. People are more likely to assume that you're an Asian person who only likes to know other Asian people. The jobs that Asians occupy in LA--again, only in my observations of floating around my particular economic circles--tend to be niche markets: Asian food restaurants, dry cleaners, etc. This perpetuates an image amongst whites and others that Asian people monopolize certain unskilled, unglamorous trades. And this is well and fine if you plan on only knowing Asian people for the rest of your life. But if you're intelligent enough to see beyond color, and secure enough to live in a WASP dominated world, it's very unsettling to know that that studio executive sitting across the bar from you probably thinks you work in a Chinese restaurant, and that you speak broken English at best.

That's all I have to say for the moment. And I would continue to encourage Bay Area supporters to maintain their dignity in this debate. If the LA supporters want to build their case around insults and self-aggrandizing cheers ("LA #1!"), then let them. If they think the measure of a person's worth is the size of the house they can buy on their salary, then they've proven that they've bought into the Hollywood-packaged myth of material happiness. If, in counting the number of Asian owned businesses they're looking at dry cleaners and Thai restaurants, and not at industry pioneers like Jerry Yang, then let them. But Asian society should aspire to being more than the minority who owns the most number of restaurants, or who drive the nicest cars.
Chris (Poet/Warrior) Sunday, March 10, 2002 at 01:50:40 (PST)

What is your obsession with El Monte? I live in the SGV and I have never heard of any problems in that area. In fact, Asian investment is increasing there. You just want to bash LA, so you're using a small, obscure city to make everyone think that the SGV is dangerous. Nice try. Those of us who live here know better.
J Kim Friday, March 08, 2002 at 13:47:48 (PST)

oakland has the highest murder rate in the country? when did that happen? last i heard, it didn't even make it into the top five.
penelope Friday, March 08, 2002 at 13:27:50 (PST)

[Anyways, this has been fun. Personally, I think cities are cities, and people are people all around the world. I could be out in Kansas City or Chicago and pretty much live the same kind of life I have here. It's just that my family is here.]

Screw that, TSJ!!! No way in hell I'd want to live in Kansas Crap City (Kansas is a flat piece of shit) or Cold Ass Chicago!!!

Jay... the southwest and midwest SUCK!!! Friday, March 08, 2002 at 11:27:40 (PST)

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