Bay-area bound

[trochee]

[ETA: Unlocked post now (and specifics removed); please feel free to point your Bay-area friends here!]

It's official as of Monday afternoon: we're going to the Bay Area. imtboo has been admitted to a San Francisco school for her chosen field.

School starts August 21 for her, so we'll be moving out of Seattle and down to the Bay Area in that first week of August, more or less.

I will be finishing up my dissertation at a desk in a research lab in Menlo Park. But D's school is downtown -- right by the Civic Center BART stop. Unfortunately, this means that one of us will be commuting a long way on the CalTrain and/or the BART. At the moment, it looks like it might be her, since at at least for the first semester she'll only have classes two (very full) days a week, while I'll be at ResearchLab five days a week.

Any suggestions or comments, from people who live in the Bay Area (or who have lived there) about places to live -- or to avoid? I think the East Bay is out for us -- the commute to Menlo Park is insane -- but we're considering paying more to live in the city, or paying less to live on the Peninsula. Any recommendations?

Bay Area roll call:
apollinax or bicoastal?
lunacow?
evan?
xaosenkosmos -- you've already sent us comments, thanks!
damidnara?
cleverpig?
I'm sure I've missed people in this roll-call. Anybody else?

Comments

Re: the bay

[bicoastal.livejournal.com]

Totally true. You could do that - Muni or bike to Caltrain, that is. Or, if you got a car, the highway is also close by, just down Octavia. So you could live in Hayes Valley.

There's secure bicycle parking at the 4th Street Caltrain.

Re: the bay

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

True it is super easy to get to the highway from there. J and I did it last time. It took seconds.

Re: the bay

[trochee.livejournal.com]

it's true the highway is very accessible from Hayes Valley. But I'm not sure how that helps me with my commute much, right? I mean, unless I want to drive to Menlo Park every day :( .

Driving to the Caltrain seems like it's the worst of both worlds, unless we lived on the Peninsula. But driving from the city down to a Caltrain parking spot sounds expensive and traffic-prone.

But I might be missing something. Am I?