I lived in SF for 5 years and recently moved to NYC.
SF is dirty in the gross parts, but it's not as dirty as places like Chicago, NYC or even Paris. It just so happens the dirtiest parts of SF are where startup people work and hang out: SOMA, Tenderloin, the Mission. The level of dirtiness in these areas is so off the scale (one regularly steps over human poo) that it warps one's perspective as to how dirty the city is in general. In contrast there is a layer of garbage and grime everywhere in New York City. So much so that after a day of walking around in the summer, you can turn a white handtowel black just by wiping the sweat off your brow...
Between Chicago, NYC, and SF, Chicago is the one major US city you mentioned that actually has a design that accomodates sanitation. NYC is filthy, but that makes sense, because there are no alleys.
I've never heard anyone say Chicago was dirtier than San Francisco before, and I'm just going to assume you've never spent any time here.
I have not spent much time in Chicago, but I was born there, and have friends there. Where they live(d): Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and Bucktown all seemed pretty grungy. Also, it seemed pretty dirty driving from the airport to their places. Whenever my dad drove us to see our old house in Berwyn, that seemed dirty too... I think by sheer size alone Chicago has to beat out SF in terms of dirtiness. The dirty parts of SF are just so epically dirty that it makes people think the whole city is covered with needles and poo. Really it's just a few select corridors... the rest of the city is very clean.
I lived in SOMA, I lived in Bayview, and I lived in Noe Valley, and all of them were covered in poo. I spent time in the Mission, which was covered in poo. The only place in San Francisco that wasn't fantastically dirty was North Beach, presumably because the tourists mopped it all up.
Berwyn isn't Chicago.
Wicker Park, Uky Village, and Bucktown are all essentially the same neighborhood --- they're adjacent, clustered, and only a few square miles; they're Chicago's version of SOMA or Greenwich Village. And yet they're tree-lined (right now, they're covered in fall canopy), and every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes.
NYC and SF are dirty in large part because they are poorly planned.
Dude...you lived in Bayview? Of course you found it filthy! It's one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. SOMA is marginally better, but still pretty grungy and industrial.
I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo, though. Noe Valley seems no more or less filthy than the nicer areas of the Castro.
I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo
I found that observation a bit odd. The part about North Beach being clean was also a bit suspicious. Whenever people make blanket claims about how dirty SF is, I wonder if they've ever been to the western half of the city.
If Noe Valley is covered in poo, at least it's dog poo.
I've never seen anything too disgusting in Noe Valley. The main principle of distribution of filth in San Francisco seems to be this: homeless people are too lazy to climb hills.
I lived near 30th and Noe (on Harper). Harper was clear. It was way up on a big hill. The bottom of the hill, 30th, Church, Dolores --- great Chinese food, filthy.
My point was, I lived in really crappy SF, I lived in hipster urban SF, and I lived in residential SF, and they were all filthy.
every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes
This is the first thing that I noticed when visiting New York for the first time. The place stunk, because the sidewalk was half for garbage and half for pedestrians. I just couldn't believe it.
(Pittsburgh is like this too. I remember having to literally move boxes of garbage away from the doorway to a restaurant to get inside. Not a great way to start your meal. The food ended up being bad, too, and I got a big piece of paper mixed in with my food. I don't think I ate anything for the rest of that conference...)
Anyway, Chicago has its problems, but it is certainly nice-looking and well-designed. I have not visited anywhere else in the US that is as clean.
(Tokyo and Copenhagen are similarly clean, though. Even Hong Kong is better than New York.)
I lived in Chicago for 5 years, San Fran area for 10 years, Los Angeles for 7 years, and Kansas City for about 8 years. I have to say that SF is probably the dirtiest, at least in parts, though Chicago always felt kind of rust-belty in many parts, rather than dirty. In KC, cleanliness tracks money more closely than any other place I've been. The Southwestern cities have always struck me as the cleanest of the places I've been outside of Germany (at least 30 years ago), Switzerland, Canada, and Monaco. Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, Albuquerque.
The other big problem with SF is the parking. Horrendous. And yes, many of the people there do seem to spend a great deal of time in an advanced state of self-congratulation.
I second you on Toronto. I lived there for a few months and was absolutely amazed at how clean it was. Recycling, compost, and trash bins on every corner. Whenever I tell people about Toronto, the first thing I talk about is its cleanliness.
"In contrast there is a layer of garbage and grime everywhere in New York City."
Only for certain unusual values of "everywhere." Even in Manhattan, certain neighborhoods are very clean; venture out into Brooklyn, where far more New Yorkers actually live, and the trash dynamics totally change.
Of course, this is true of all generalizations of New York. The city is so enormous that it's possible to go for decades without realizing that the part you live in is actually just a small part of a large ecosystem. So when anyone (especially a New Yorker) says "New York is..." the first move to understanding what they're saying is to ask what neighborhood they live in. Conclusions about "what New York is" are going to be pretty different coming from someone living in Park Slope vs. Chinatown.
Um, have you been to Bushwick? It smells like dead rats and human urine, I'd hardly call it clean. Brooklyn is pretty big, you're making the same mistake as the people you're talking about. FWIW I live in SoHo and it still smells like piss in places, I don't mind though—it's just part of living in the city.
In fact, for a city of this size it's quite well maintained.
I live in Brooklyn and it's dirty. I would argue that Brooklyn is grimier than Manhattan. The nice parts of Brooklyn are really nice, but most of Brooklyn looks more like Bushwick than it does Park Slope.
The public transportion in Chicago is a joke compared to San Francisco? The Blue Line and the Red Line run 24/7, and connect most of the city. The only cities of comparable size with better public transportion are NYC and DC.
All I've taken in SF is BART which was a better experience than the El. Also, the spoke model makes it a lot harder (but less confusing I suppose) than the NYC or Parisian model to get from point a to point b without having to detour through downtown.
If you include MUNI light rail in the picture (it does add another ticket/payment to the trip) then SF is covered much better than Chicago. The El is not bad, but the fact that you have to go down to the loop to get anywhere is a major PITA.
Much of the coverage you're talking about is essentially bus coverage, isn't it? Are we really comparing trollybusses with trains? Chicago is saturated with busses, but I wouldn't know how good they are, because nobody I know lives somewhere where you have to take a bus.
As a life-long Chicagoan I still find it incredibly strange that people believe Chicago is safe. It has a very high crime rate, double NYC in every category.
The overwhelming majority of the major crime is in the south side of Chicago and the far West. It's still the safest downtown of a big US city I've been in.
In contrast there is a layer of garbage and grime everywhere in New York City. So much so that after a day of walking around in the summer, you can turn a white handtowel black just by wiping the sweat off your brow...
That's because the NYC summer is hot, not because the city is dirty. (Maybe you have oily pores?)
That's true, but it's still a dirty city. However, it's a different type of dirty than SF. The dirty parts of SF are dirty due to insanity and apathy. NYC is dirty because there are so many people out and about, all the time.
I've noticed this as well. NYC is grimy and can get dirty, but it's not the kind of unsanitary filth that you might find in a sewer. As such, I don't mind walking about all day and getting a bit sooty, at least I won't catch something from it.
I hear all of these people talking about dirty cities, but have you been to anything in the south? Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans? After a trip to the rougher areas of Memphis or New Orleans, you'd probably eat off the sidewalk in the Tenderloin.
SF is dirty in the gross parts, but it's not as dirty as places like Chicago, NYC or even Paris. It just so happens the dirtiest parts of SF are where startup people work and hang out: SOMA, Tenderloin, the Mission. The level of dirtiness in these areas is so off the scale (one regularly steps over human poo) that it warps one's perspective as to how dirty the city is in general. In contrast there is a layer of garbage and grime everywhere in New York City. So much so that after a day of walking around in the summer, you can turn a white handtowel black just by wiping the sweat off your brow...