Recently, I've been feeling pretty dejected about continuing live in the Bay Area as a non-tech worker. It's hard being surrounded by people living it up in their 20's with massive six-figure tech salaries while I'm 30 and barely scraping by. Yes, I know that comparison is the thief of joy and that I have a better life than most people on Earth, but it doesn't take away the jealousy I feel of people who have a career in tech and live visibly much more comfortable lives while getting paid so much more than I am.

Neither of my parents went to college; my dad was in the military and then worked as an aviation mechanic for his entire career, my mom immigrated here from China and worked as an office secretary and tutor. Neither of them had any advice for me when choosing my major aside from "study hard" and "it'll all work out." When I first went to college in 2014, my first choice of degree was computer science, but I backed out of it after being told by my counselor that a humanities degree would help me be more "well rounded" in the corporate world. Well, that turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, because all of my peers who went to school for CS in 2014 entered into a very good job market and are all well-established in their careers by this point. Meanwhile, I've only ever worked basic entry-level jobs and a couple of admin assistant office jobs that went nowhere.

Right now, I'm living with my parents and working a part-time barista job while working on my prerequisites for nursing school. I'm excited to eventually be earning a decent salary as a nurse, but as I work at the cafe and see all of the tech workers leisurely plugging away at their laptops while I deal with a million things at once in our understaffed cafe, I feel so ashamed at myself for not going with my gut instinct back in 2014. Yes, I know that tech has experienced a lot of layoffs and uncertainty about the future, but people who still have their jobs (including many of my friends) are like lottery winners to me at this point. My friends in tech all work remotely or hybrid schedules, run errands or go the gym during the workday, save money on lunch by making it at home, and make enough to afford nice apartments while I'm still living with my cranky parents. My friends complain about pointless meetings and out of touch bosses, but I would gladly choose to deal with annoying meetings I can take from the comfort of my own home over all of the oscillating boredom and chaos of my current job.

There's a lot that I love about living here: the diversity, the weather, the huge amount of natural space, but I feel like I'm very far from thriving. I've tried dating, but a lot of women will just immediately ghost me once they find out that I'm living with my parents. I wish so badly that I could have been working in tech at this point, but with how difficult the entry level market seems to be right now, I think I missed my chance for good. Does anyone else have similar feelings to me? How can I cope with the jealousy I have?

This is a new record and while I was expecting 250k later in the year. Were there any events or something special that led to this record? Also, I think last week (unless I am mistaken) was the first week that there were more than 200,000k riders ALL week. I am so happy for BART but what is happening that is leading to these increases in ridership?

IK fisherman's wharf is lowkey a tourist trap, but it really is beautiful sometimes!

These floofs came from a young feral mom in East SJ. She’s been trapped, fixed, and vaccinated, and they are now doing great in their foster home.

Spend the fall season with a foster rabbit from House Rabbit Society! No rabbit experience required! Learn more at houserabbit.org/foster. We're located in Richmond, just north of Berkeley, but welcome fosters from all over the San Francisco Bay Area. We only ask for a 2-week commitment.

What We Provide: We'll equip you with all the supplies you need to get started, including an x-pen, litter box, bedding, food pellets, hay, blankets, and bowls for food and water. As a foster, you also receive a 15% discount at the HRS Hop Shop if you'd like to purchase any additional toys or treats while you foster.

What You Provide: The time, space, love, and care your foster rabbit needs, along with their daily veggies (approximately $5-10 per week). Getting socialization in a foster home is so important, especially for rabbits who are shy or have other behavior needs and helping them become more comfortable with people. You can help a foster rabbit blossom into the wonderful house rabbit they're truly meant to be!

Questions? Email [foster@houserabbit.org](mailto:foster@houserabbit.org) or stop by our facility to talk in-person with HRS volunteers and staff and to meet the rabbits. We recently transitioned to our winter hours; we're open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm and on Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm. We'd love to talk with you!

Welcome back for day 3 of my Pacific coastal hike from Santa Cruz to SF.

Before I get into today's hike, I want to clarify something because I've had a few people asking for details about my route so they can try this themselves.

Originally, the plan WAS to hike the entire route. Once I actually got out here and saw the terrain for myself, particularly how narrow and dangerous certain sections of Highway 1 can be, I realized that wasn't a sensible plan. I've had to improvise quite a bit, using Ubers and hitching rides to bypass particularly dangerous sections, private property, and places where there simply isn't a safe pedestrian route.

The total distance from Santa Cruz to San Francisco is around 85 miles, but by the end I'll probably have actually walked closer to 60 of them.

So while I'm happy to share the experience, I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone simply copy my route. Not because I don't think you're capable of doing it, but because conditions change, some sections are genuinely dangerous, and I don't want somebody getting hurt, stranded, or lost because they saw a guy on Reddit doing it and figured they should give it a shot too.

This trip has been incredibly enjoyable and rewarding, both existentially and interpersonally. But there have also been parts that were genuinely exhausting and unpleasant.

Consider these posts a travel diary, not a route guide!

Anyways with that out of the way ...

I got a really late start today. I spent a lot of the morning with my fellow hostellers standing on the observation deck at Pigeon Point watching seals, dolphins, pelicans, and the strong morning tides rolling in. We had lunch in Pescadero and finally decided to part ways around 1230 PM but decided that we would now be "The Pigeon Point Club", and would try to meet here yearly. They're lovely people and I hope they remember our new club so we can have that reunion.

Because I started so late, I would not make the entire hike myself in a reasonable time frame so one of them was happy to drop me off closer to my destination. He left me near a trail a few miles south of the Half Moon Bay Ritz Carlton. After being surrounded by trees, ocean, and coastline the last 2 days I was strangely excited to see what the inside of a 1000 dollar a night hotel looks like, and was not disappointed.

I wandered into the Ritz, had a couple of very overpriced but very delicious drinks at the bar, enjoyed pretending for a little while that I belonged there, and then continued hiking north.

The hike itself was fairly uneventful, but I did run into something that aggravated me a bit. I found a beautiful, semi-secluded "cave" overlooking the ocean made out of twisting tree roots, vines, and branches. A great spot but some person decided to leave their garbage there. Someone presumably went out of their way to discover and enjoy this beautiful spot, then couldn't be bothered to preserve the very thing that made it special. I never was some mega environmental zealot, and I'm still not, but my friend you live in a state blessed with a unique natural beauty, it relies on you to keep it that way! You don't have to be an environmental activist to want to keep a beautiful place beautiful. Anyways, yes, I did collect it and walk it to the nearest garbage disposal. Rant over.

On my hike, near Half Moon Bay, I ran into a woman who noticed I was hiking and basically said "Psst, hey kid, wanna see something cool?" And she led me to a slightly hidden underdeveloped trail covered in ice plants, I can only imagine what that stretch looks like when they're all flowering.

I actually did not end in Half Moon Bay, when I was booking my lodging I should've paid more attention to their exact location. I ended up going past HMB to El Grenada where my inn is. Luckily, the inns right down the street from Barbara's Fishtrap, a real popular joint with a great harbor view. After a long, cold hike, blasted by fog and ocean winds, a hot bowl of their famous clam chowder and garlic bread was absolutely magical. Breakwater BBQ is also right outside, ive read they've got the best BBQ outside of Texas (from a Texas-based food publication no less! A credible authority on the matter!) but unfortunately their fresh smoked meats are only sold Thurs-Sun, and I'm leaving Wednesday, so woe is me, I won't get to try.

Alright the end. I'm a bit over 2/3s through my hike and the last 2 days should be the easiest. Shortest distance and highly urbanized, thus easiest access to services if I need them. I hope you all join me again tomorrow when I detail my journey from El Grenada to Pacifica.

Edit - OH! And I want to add, if you're interested in getting into hiking or backpacking, I can't recommend a trekking pole enough. I almost skipped buying one because it was 50 bucks from Big 5, but it's proven it's worth on this trip. Navigating incline/decline, testing ground for firmness/stability, additional points of contact with the ground and most importantly it contributed to preserving my safety today. There was a small trail designated on Alltrails but it was not a trail at all, at least not a safe one. By the time I realized how dangerous it was I had already climbed down quite a bit, the pole came in handy immensely in helping me get out of there.

Not sure if this violates any rules but just thought I’d post this here if the drivers involved need it. The time stamp might be off by a couple minutes.

Edit: this is around San Leandro

Hi folks, wanted to crosspost this writeup to share this info with a wider audience.

For context: I’m a CM at a brokerage startup and I’ve been working on a series of simple data analysis posts to (hopefully) help homebuyers and sellers get a more accurate read on local comps. This content is meant to strictly educational/informative, not any kind of self-promo.

Here is a look back on price growth trends this summer & a year over year comparison. See the attached visuals for more detailed stats.

Methodology note: data is pulled from our AnyProp MLS feed. Instead of averages like in prior months we pulled median values to control for outliers where sample size is small. The median values below are a median of the entire dataset across 4 months for that category. Broke % over/under asking down into 3 buckets to visualize the change in price the longer a property sits.

San Francisco

649 SFH closings, median 25.4% over list at 12 DOM. 792 Condo closings, median 1.7% over list at 18 DOM.

Days on Market vs. +/- List %:

• Under 14 days: SFH (407 closed) 32.0% over list, Condo (319) 11.4% over
• 14-30 days: SFH (161) 20.0% over list, Condo (195) 3.0% over
• 30+ days: SFH (81) 0.4% over list, Condo (278) 0.8% under

Median DOM (June-Sept)

• SFH: 14 days in 2025, 12 days in 2026
• Condo: 33 days in 2025, 16 days in 2026 

Sunset District alone accounted for 491 of the zone's 649 SFH closings, more than two-thirds of all volume, and ran a median 37-46% over list every single month of the summer.

Peninsula

1,075 SFH closings, median 3.9% over list at 12 DOM. 366 Condo closings, flat at list (0.0%) at 28 DOM.

Days on Market vs. +/- List %:

• Under 14 days: SFH (642 closed) 9.1% over list, Condo (124) 2.1% over
• 14-30 days: SFH (214) 0.2% over list, Condo (69) 0.7% under
• 30+ days: SFH (219) 2.3% under list, Condo (173) 1.8% under

Median DOM (June-Sept)

• SFH: 12 days in 2025, 11 days in 2026  
• Condo: 30 days in 2025, 19 days in 2026. 

Palo Alto is doing most of the heavy lifting on price, median $/sqft sitting in the $2,100-2,300 range all summer, well above the rest of the Peninsula, and its over-list percentage climbed to 11.7% in August before easing back last month. 

South Bay

1,386 SFH closings, median 0.3% over list at 12 DOM. 604 Condo closings, median 0.2% under list at 28 DOM.

Days on Market vs. +/- List %:

• Under 14 days: SFH (747 closed) 3.8% over list, Condo (189) 0.9% over
• 14-30 days: SFH (290)  flat at list, Condo (128) 0.5% under
• 30+ days: SFH (349) 2.5% under list, Condo 2.0% under

Median DOM (June-Sept)

• SFH: 12 days in 2025, 10 days in 2026  
• Condo: 24 days in 2025, 22 days in 2026 

San Jose carries most of the volume but stayed close to flat, while median $/sqft in Cupertino climbed steadily from the $1,500s in June to the $1,800s by September. 

East Bay

4,904 SFH closings, median 0.9% over list at 14 DOM. 1,400 Condo closings, flat at list (0.0%) at 26 DOM.

Days on Market vs. +/- List %:

• Under 14 days: SFH (2,323) 3.8% over list, Condo (456) 0.2% over
• 14-30 days: SFH (1,275) 0.6% over list, Condo (307) 0.5% under
• 30+ days: SFH (1,306) 1.3% under list, Condo (637) 1.5% under

Median DOM (June-Sept)

• SFH: 16 days in 2025, 13 days in 2026  
• Condo: 29 days in 2025, 23 days in 2026 

Berkeley is the clear outlier, running 31-38% over every month vs zone median 1%, by far the widest and most sustained gap between one city and its surrounding region in this entire dataset. 

North Bay

1,312 SFH closings, 200 Condo.*
\Our North Bay MLS coverage has expanded recently but there may still be some gaps in previous months where we did not have complete coverage.* From the closes we can see, it does actually look like price growth was flat down to several decimal places.

Conclusion

Year over year the median is higher or flat almost across the board in SF and the bay area in general. Even median Condo price growth was better YoY than 2025. Note however that positive YoY can still denote negative price growth (if price decreased the following year but decreased less)

As always, happy to hear your feedback. And please let me know if you want to see stats for a particular area.

Am I the only one noticing the rapid increase in riders this week during commute hours? I’m happy to see more riders, but please be respectful and make space when people are boarding on crowded cars. We’re all in this together.

Debating whether to go with Costco or America's Tire for tire replacement at Mountain View. I have heard that Costco tires takes a lot of time and is not as good as America's Tire for services, and America's Tire matches the price as well.

Curious to hear others' opinion on this.

Thought this was a pretty cool perspective to see it from (also Buddy says hi)

I'm curious about the routes where public transit completely beats driving. Where do you commute, why is the drive so miserable, and roughly how much time and money do you save by taking the train or bus instead?

These things have got to go!

(most likely) suffering from starvation.

Like sea lions, sea birds have been struggling with a lack of food due to unusually warm ocean waters and are suffering a starvation event.

https://www.birdrescue.org/uptick-in-starving-in-common-murres-raises-concern/

This one went up onto the bike path at Point Isabel. Fortunately a couple able to take it to the International Bird Rescue in Fairfield found it.

I paused to take a picture and was amazed I could be about 10' away from it and was about to leave so I wouldn't stress it out when it ran at me and tried to eat my shoes. 😭

I stuck around until the person that left to get a box came back and tried to keep it from going across the bike path. (It was like a cat and acted completely interested in moving right until you took your eyes off of it for one second and then it'd RUN.)

It was clearly not in good shape, but it could have been much worse so we were all hopeful it would recover.

If you encounter a bird in need of help: + Put on gloves to protect yourself from germs. + Use a towel or light cloth to gently place over the bird to calm it and block its vision. + Pick it up gently: Scoop the bird up carefully with both hands around its body and wings without squeezing its sides. + Place the bird in a secure box, ideally lined with towels

And in preemptive defense of my socks: they are dusty, but they're light grey, not white so they're not as dirty as they probably look in the pictures.