Product Description

Extensively updated and revised for 2006, this 504-page new edition maintains its strong focus on San Francisco, but expands greatly its coverage of the entire region, especially Silicon Valley. Of the 174 pages devoted exclusively to discussion of neighborhoods and communities, 52% describe San Francisco neighborhoods and North Bay communities, while 48% focus on the East Bay, Peninsula, and South Bay towns. This edition also includes a new, detailed map of San Jose designed to accompany the in-depth treatment of each of its neighborhoods, reflect the importance of the city, and complement the more broadly focused South Bay area map.

From Santa Rosa to San Francisco to Vallejo, from Walnut Creek to Oakland to Newark, and from San Bruno to San Jose to Los Gatos, this Newcomer’s Handbook® provides its readers with the most up-to-date information on housing styles, costs, and trends; redevelopment; and all the other niceties of Bay Area life, including education! and childcare, transportation, cultural life, and much more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32090 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 494 pages

Customer Reviews

covers just about every aspect of living in and around San Francisco
The Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to and Living in the San Francisco Bay Area covers just about every aspect of living in and around San Francisco. I mean everything! Including "Moving and Storage," "Getting Settled," "Children and Education," "Sports and Recreation," "Transportation" and everything in between, this thick book answers almost any question about San Francisco.

The introduction to the book is just as cool: "San Francisco is the land of the 49er Gold Rush, the Great 1906 earthquake, and the missionary expeditions of the Spanish; it is the birthplace of Levi's jeans and home of the railroad tycoon Leland Stanford; it is host to one of the greatest feats of engineering, the Golden Gate Bridge, and as a cultural epicenter, it fueled the hippie flower-power revolution, gave rise to Rolling Stone magazine, and played host to beat generation poets." Geez, now I want to move to San Francisco!

This guide to "America's melting pot" provides information about the local lingo, so you will not feel too much like an out-of-towner. For example, "The Haight" is the famous Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, "The City," always capitalized, "is the way natives and local newspapers refer to San Francisco" and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is "the under-and-above ground subway-style train network that connects the East Bay and peninsula with San Francisco."

This guide also provides detailed information concerning the many municipalities of San Francisco, including web sites, area codes, zip codes, post offices, police stations, emergency hospitals, libraries, public schools, community resources and public transportation. The "Cultural Life" section is also pretty cool, providing tons of information about film festivals, music, theater, ballet and dance, restaurants, nightclubs, comedy, art, museums and anything else you can think of. San Francisco is one cool town, and this book is undoubtedly the perfect guide to moving there!

San Fransisco, here we come!
My husband was recently transferred from Kansas City to San Fransisco, so when I saw this book for newcomers to the Golden Gate city, I just had to have it! It is such a great buy, as it contains all of the information that we want to know before we move there. It tells the history and atmosphere of the different neighborhoods there, along with many other pertinent facts. This well-researched and accurate book with maps is all one needs to feel at home in San Fransisco!

Can't fault the contents, but didn't meet my expectations
The book is well written and well oriented to its audience. It is not, however, a travel book by any means.

It is a general overview of most of the areas in/around San Fran. It stands alone in addressing in fair detail the towns around the bay area. Most travel guides give these areas token lip service, but for a person intent on relocating to the bay area this is critical information. That said, though, most of the information is cursory and the internet links provided are the first few links from a Google search. For example, I was less than thrilled to read the author suggesting Craigslist as an apartment finder in the bay area. No kidding, I thought.

What this book is very good at is delving a step or two deeper. Assuming you can forgive the internet link issue, it does have decent information on schools and other information for parents. That would make it useful to that audience.

As a guide book - nope. As a relocation guide - ehh. As a resource for families - probably. I ended up returning this not because it was bad, but just because it wasn't the best for me.