"there's no denying proximity to a Google bus stop isn't something real estate agents believe is valuable."

so removing the double negative at the start and the end:

there is agreement that proximity to a Google bus stop is something real estate agents believe is worthless.

Which doesn't follow in the link, which mentions the Google Bus Stop.

Just confused, the piece looked interesting but I couldn't really work out what was going on.

The full circle thing is odd as well, it looks like the grungy hippy area is becoming more commercialised not less.

Eh? Google homepage, minimalist. Crappy stenciled parody (if thats the right word) of the Google homepage, elaborate? El Reg hacks getting paid by the word, possibly.

They should take a look at London house prices before moaning!

A big company, with high pay, sets up in the area. House prices go up because people want to live there. So?

For god's sake, it's not that simple is it?

Yes, a hundred thousand American Pesos is worth 55K *over here*, but over *there* it's worth a hundred thousand Dollars. Think of it in terms of cheeseburgers. Cheeseburger costs a dollar in the US, cheeseburger costs a pound in the UK. You can buy X amount of cheeseburgers in your locale depending how much you are paid. The amount of cheeseburgers you could buy *on the other side of the world* isn't really important in that situation.

but as they'd say in SF "I could care less" ... clearly there is a major misplaced negative problem over there. (or is that there isn't?)

"SFR must be not much cheaper than London, really."

Are you really so deluded? Britain is a rip off.

Your point is well made, but the problem is that now cheeseburgers in that area cost $15 and have some fancy-schmancy European cheese on them rather than good old fashioned American processed cheez substitute. Won't someone think of the children?

Did anyone else tap in the search terms?

GalCiv2, whilst I'm sure is a pretty comprehensive game, is probably not trying to push up property values?

A Big Mac can be had for $0.55. And bigger than they are here. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E3DF1430F936A35750C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

It is infuriating to see a good used bookstore displaced by a Starbucks or an "arts space" of questionable artistry. Likewise with good crummy bars that turn into bagelries selling soft round breads.

However, the cycle of neighborhoods through seedy to gentrified seems all but impossible to break. Wyndham Lewis mentioned it in _The Apes of God_, published 1930. I don't think graffiti's going to do much to stop it. Though in a country where colored ribbons are a tool of foreign policy and biomedical research, why should we complain?

Almost sadder is to see the people who bought in to the urban mystique, imagining themselves Bohemian, when their mortgages and the private-school decals on the rear windows of their Volvos show so clearly that they aren't. Show up some time at an advisory neighborhood commission hearing on liquor licenses and see how they revel in that urban flavor.

San Francisco is one of the very most expensive places to live in the USofA. SF can proudly match prices with the most expensive european cities. A Big Mac, allegedly available for $0.55 somewhere, is twice as expensive in SF as in Redmond WA.

San Francisco is expensive because it is surrounded by water and other natural barriers. It's harder for SF to sprawl like most west-coast US cities have done. Housing is expensive, so wages are higher so housing is more expensive in a death spiral that is worse for punkers than it is for software engineers.

In SF, $100k buys you a software body with less than 5 years of experience, if you can find one at all.

And Geez, I'm sorry that after being ostracized in high school and slogging through six years of college, that I can get a six-figure job and afford to live right in town. If that's not ok with y'all, you can put down your xbox controller and re-take the SAT. Who knows, maybe you'll get to maintain my PC or run my test cases. Who's the punk now, huh?

All things considered, the 21st century is a pretty good time to be an engineer, and a rotten time to be practically anything else.

599K for 3br/2ba ANYWHERE in the Bay Area is cheap...even if it IS a shoebox. As for all you currency converters: It doesn't matter how much I make, only how much I keep. 100K can be a boatload of money...if you have the right accountant ;)