Currently I’m living in Osaka Japan and teaching English. I’ve been thinking about returning to the US. I’ve been to SF and really liked it. I haven’t been to NYC, but am curious about the possibility of living there. I enjoy teaching and am considering a teaching certification if I return to the US.
So, NYC and SF dopers, tell me what it’s like living in your cities. Teachers, what’s it like teaching in schools.
SF - gorgeous, but cost-of-living is obscene. Economy currently depressed following dot.bombs, mergers, general cycle.
See: www.craigslist.com and www.sfgate.com to get an idea of the situation.
Am not even close to being familiar with the education business, but subsidized-housing-for-teachers is a recurring theme, along with “why can’t we get good teachers?”. The relationship is obvious to everyone EXCEPT the Boards of Education, it seems.
Local branch of the NEA:
http://www.cta.org/CorePage.htm
Good luck!
Been to each place about 1/2 dozen times. Love SF. Hate NYC (rude people, dirty city). No idea about the economics of either place. If I could afford either, I wouldn’t even consider NYC.
The only time I was in S.F. was when I was still in diapers, so I don’t think that counts. That said…
New York is more exciting on a consistant basis than anywhere else I’ve ever been. No matter when it is, or what day of the week, there are at least dozens of interesting things going on - if you can’t find something to do, you’re not trying very hard. There’s every kind of person from everywhere. Everything goes faster, including speech rates and walking speed; that may be something that appeals to you, and maybe not. Not everything is constantly frenetic, mind you, like Times Square and midtown, and there are plenty of relatively quiet, comfortable residential areas. It’s also huge, so there’s probably an area out there that would appeal to you.
Rudeness - people aren’t rude exactly, it’s just that there are different rules of politeness here than elsewhere, and you’d probably have to adjust to what’s considered rude here and what isn’t. Coming from Japan would probably be a serious culture shock. In a newspaper advice column in Thailand, I once saw New York termed the exact opposite of Southeastern Asia in terms of standards of behavior, and that’s probably true as compared with Japan as well. New Yorkers are definitely “generous with their opinions”, as I once heard a Korean man put it. There’s very little subtlety here in all things, which I actually prefer - I’m a very direct person.
Cost of living is obscene in both places, so I don’t know how much that shoud enter into your equation. I don’t know how teaching salaries compare, although I know a NYC teaching certification is recognized by (I think) 31 states - once you have once, you can go almost anywhere and still have a job.
Long-term, I’m a child of the suburbs at heart, and wouldn’t want to raise a family here, with no yard, tiny living spaces (although as compared with Japan, it’d probably seem spacious), and so on. It’s great being here as a young single person, though. When I travel, everywhere else just seems… small.
Thank you for your replies (and sorry to be slow getting back). No native New Yorkers (other than GilaB?) chiming in? I know there are a heap of you guys on the boards… 
Well, I agree with pretty much everything GilaB said. NYC isn’t for everybody, but if you like that kind of atmosphere it’s wonderful. I love SF but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but NYC. My main gripe is the cost of living - my rent is pretty ridiculous, even though I don’t even live in Manhattan. But I have a Greek, Japanese, Korean, two Italian, Mexican and Indian restaurants, and also a bagel shop, a diner, a fancy seafood place and McDonald’s, all within two blocks of my apartment.
Life doesn’t get any better than that!
I’ve been living and working in NYC the last 12 years, except for work - 1.5 years commuting out to NJ. For a city as diverse as it is, I think it works pretty well. I wouldn’t consider the people overall to be rude. I’m actually kind of curious about where this impression comes from.
I’m a fairly reticent and mellow guy and yes, even someone like me can enjoy themself here. It doesn’t have to be dog eat dog here. It can be dog lick dog :eek: . There’s just no end of stuff to do (that doesn’t always cost a lot of money) that’s within walking distance or a short bus or subway ride. There are neighborhoods big and small and sometimes you turn a corner and stumble on to a really cool concert or an interesting flea market. The Hudson river waterfront is undergoing some changes for the better, IMHO.
I can’t offer anything about what it’s like to be a teacher but here’s a link to the UFT:
http://www.uft.org/?fid=128&tf=1593
NYC’s ethnic and cultural diversity may or may not make up for what NYC lacks compared to San Francisco and the Bay Area - San Francisco’s stunning natural setting and it’s proximity to the Sierras, the coast, the redwoods, volcanos, and deserts. From what I gather, many people have the same ideas when it comes to recreation, but you still have that variety. It depends on how important that is to you. I’ve visited the Bay Area a few times but never long enough to get a feel for what it would be like to live there.
I’ve lived in a LOT of cities and I always come back to NY. I think it’s one of the friendliest cities in the world.
(By the way SF is one of the cities I lived, and I thought people there were much colder than NYers)
I love NYC and have been considering moving there too. I really like that you can walk through the town and get around pretty easily without having to own a car. In SF you won’t need a car either, but I don’t believe that the BART is as extensive as either the NYC or Tokyo subway systems.
Having had a stay in Tokyo a while back, I can tell you that a lot of it is similar. There is always something to do and the people in general are helpful and friendly, as long as you seem like you have just moved in there. In other words, if you look a tourist and are doing tourist type things people will generally give you directions and be nice, if you are banking or grocery shopping, you won’t get the same level of politeness.
I have found that the people I know from San Francisco have more of the arrogant bastard stereotype of New Yorkers than actual New Yorkers, your mileage may vary. The weather is just generally nicer.
$40,000 a year for a first year teacher! Wow. I was hoping salaries would go up by the time I got out of college, but I had no clue they would that much…
That’s probably what you get after about 5 or 10 years on my district’s payscale.
What is it you’re asking about teaching, Osakadave? How it is to teach in a “big city” school? or American as opposed to Japanese?
BOTH cities suck if you are poor, and a teacher’s salary ain’t really gonna cut it in either place.
I personally love NYC…24 hour non-stop adventure, culture, night life, attitude, shop until you drop, party til you die, fun.
San Francisco is pretty, but a bit laid-back and clique-ish for my tastes - and for someone like me who likes to walk a lot, those hills are killers!
There is nothing worse than being poor in NYC…the whole point of living there is to get out and experience everything - and if you can’t afford it, you’re not going to have fun. Plus, you’re gonna freeze your butt off in the winter and sweat your bajubies off in the summer…other than that, I can’t think of a bad thing to say about the city. I think it is safe to say that moving to NY for the first time, you probably ought to be young, adventurous and crazy…or older, fabulously rich and crazy. Still, if I won lottery tomorrow, I would probably move back…(but sneak out of the city in July/August and in January/February).
Wimp!
I was born and raised in a New Jersey suburb of New York, so I don’t know that I qualify as a native, technically. I went to college in Manhattan, and now live in the Bronx. (Aside - I hate the way “the Bronx” sounds. It just kind of thuds, no?) And I talk like I’m from New York - does that count? (A linguistics professor once used me as an example of a Chaucerian vowel that he and most Americans don’t have, the ‘aw’ sound. ‘Log’ and ‘dog’ don’t rhyme for me; the latter is ‘dawg’.)
Well, on $40,000 a year, you won’t be able to afford your own apartment in the most popular parts of Manhattan, or to a lesser extent in the outer boroughs. (No Park Slope for you!) You could either share with people (splitting a two or three bedroom apartment), or live in, well, less popular neighborhoods, which aren’t all bombed out or crime-ridden. Many are just less convenient to The City, aka Manhattan. You could live in a nice neighborhood in Queens, let’s say. Otherwise, I could (and do) live very happily here on much less than that, but it depends how expensive your tastes are. For example, many New Yorkers don’t cook much, eating out or ordering takeout, (probably because the options are great and because apartment kitchens are tiny), but that gets expensive pretty quickly.
I think that private school salaries can be much larger, but those jobs can be harder to get.
The weather is not as, um, serene as San Francisco’s - highs of twenties to fourties are normal in the winter, and eighties to nineties in the summer. Can you live with that? I’ve had it all my life, and to me it’s normal, but many of my fellow grad students are facing a real winter for the first time, and they hate it. On the other hand, spring and fall are really amazingly nice here.
What do you want to know exactly about teaching here? I’m not a teacher, but several of my friends are student teaching in public school now, and I could ask them.
use a little imagination, osaka. san francisco already “happened.” new york is no fun on a teacher’s salary and it stinks. the u.s. is full of great places to live that give you more bang for your buck. the folowing places come to mind: d.c., seattle, chicago, san diego and on and on…
Thanks for all the answers. (And sorry again to be getting back to this so slowly.)
Garfield226 (and GilaB), you hit my teaching question on the head. I know next to nothing about what it’s like teaching in US schools, ecpecially in a big city.
aggiej, the only city on that list that sparks interest is Chicago. I’d be happy to hear what you have to say about it.
As far as the weather, I’ve lived in an unheated apartment with poor AC here in Oaska (hot, sticky summers, mild winters) for the last 8 1/2 years, am from Houston (same as above), and lived two years in Niigata (which is called the “snow country” for good reason), so I imagine the weather won’t be too much of a problem.
I’ll actually agree with this, having lived in both places ( NYC when I was young, but I spent many a summer there well into my late teens and a few times since ). As a gross generalization New Yorkers are more direct and frenetic, but tend to be warmer, while San Franciscans are significantly more laid back and a bit more polite, but also a little more remote. However it is worth noting that there are more transplanted New Yorkers in SF than any other single group and you can find plenty of decent folk in both places of course.
They are #1 and #2 in terms of cost of living - No help there. But I’d rather be poor ( or at least not rich ) in SF, due to the mild ( downright boring, really ) weather and natural beauty - A little more depression-proof. However in neither city is $40,000 ( and you might more likely start at $30,000 ) going to be anything more than a subsistence wage. I make twice that and I still have a roommate I’d prefer not to have in the Bay Area to avoid living in a apartment, which I’ve never liked ( we split a smallish three-bedroom house ).
Ethnically and culturally they are both tremendously diverse and are probably, at a guess, are #1 and #2 in terms of diversity of eateries as well ( SF has better Mexican, not as good pizza ).
Politically, both tend towards the liberal( by American standards ), though SF truly is the liberal heartland ( either one or no Republicans left holding office in the 5.5 million metro region and no major Republican office holders outside the legislature in the state as a whole - they went in the opposite direction than the rest of the country in the last election ) - What would be considered “liberal” in Peoria, might be considered downright stodgy and conservation in SF proper.
When it comes right down to it, I prefer laid-back and lovely to frenetic and decaying ( yes, yes - subjective opinion 
). But both have their strong points. SF is closer to you - Take a look first and see.
- Tamerlane
Hmm…how is it teaching in US schools…
Well, I can’t say much about the big cities, since I’ve never lived in one, but schools in general…
To sum up, it’s an uphill battle. You’re teaching a lot (not all) of kids who don’t really want to be there or do the work, with little money (both pay and budget) and with administration and parents breathing down your neck at every turn. I say uphill though, because I think things are slowly getting better, and I think that the kids now, if you push them, they’ll keep moving up.
So that’s all abstract ideas. Anything concrete or specific you’d like to know, lemme know and I’ll see what I can find out.