I recently moved to California. Before i moved, people asked me "why are you moving there, its so bad?". Now that I'm here, i understand it less. The state is beautiful. There is so much to do.
I know the cost of living is high, and people think the gun control laws are ridiculous (I actually think they are reasonable, for the most part). There is a guy I work with here that says "the policies are dumb" but can't give me a solid answer on what is so bad about it.
So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?
It's not "endless suburbia." It does end --- the state is just huge!
You can hop on a bike in downtown San Francisco after breakfast, and end up in the middle of nowhere in the Mt. Tam watershed before lunch.
And if that's too urban, go hike the Lost Coast. Or check out Yosemite.
Yeah but in the end I still have to go back to suburbia.
Granted pretty much the same applies to the whole of the US and Canada, either you're in the wilderness or suburbia but CA is especially egregious because you'd think with that kind of density they would've thought about building, you know, a couple of four-storey apartment blocks or something somewhere. The kind of density that enables public transport to work.
SF is the only part of the state that can be considered an actual city and the actual city part of it is confined to 3 square miles.