Our latest transition brings immense change. It is absolutely mind-boggling. Here we are in San Francisco. It is a city in which I have never thought about living. Likewise, it had never entered my mind to live in New York City which we just left a week ago after living there almost three years. I haven’t seen much or experienced much of San Francisco yet but my initial impression is that it is considerably different that New York. Of course, there is only one New York City and one Manhattan in that city.
In comparing San Francisco and New York City statistically we find New York has a population of 8.1 million living in a land area of 302 square miles. This means there are 27,016 New Yorkers living in every square mile. That’s crowded in my book and it felt that way. Meanwhile in San Francisco the population is 805,235 and San Franciscans live in only 46 square miles for a per square mile population of 17,169. It still sounds crowded to me. Actually, these two cities rank first and second in the U.S. in terms of density of population. San Francisco’s physical size is one of the smallest of the larger cities.
The climates of the two cities are decidedly different. New York receives an average of 50 inches of precipitation each year while San Francisco gets only 20 inches. New York’s winters, as I can attest, can be long, cold and snowy. Granted, they haven’t been this year but the last two winters saw single snowfalls of over 20 inches with frigid temperatures.
San Francisco has a reputation of being cold. This has not been true upon our arrival. It has been sunny and around sixty degrees. Of course that isn’t Florida where it is in the 80s but it does allow one to be outside to see the flowers in bloom and the majestic green trees. The trees in New York are currently naked of leaves appearing as dark skeletons against the gray sky. Here I haven’t yet seen a tree without leaves or needles and many shrubs are in bloom. This is early February. We’ve only had a brief glimpse of the famous San Francisco fog. Of course, we haven’t been here a week yet. We have much more to learn and see in the Bay Area.
Of course anyone who follows football will know that the Super Bowl is this coming Sunday. The New York Giants got to the Super Bowl by beating the beloved San Francisco 49ers with a last second field goal. I don’t think anyone in the Bay Area will be rooting for the hated Giants on Sunday.
There will be much more to write about as this latest mind-boggling transition develops.
Stan the Man Baxter
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