How to live in Silicon Valley: a walk through the city

Silicon Valley, often mistakenly called “Silicon”, is the center of information technology and the heart of world progress. The central offices and R&D laboratories of most leading corporations are located here: IBM, Apple, HP, Oracle, Google and many others. Most Internet services appeared here: YouTube, Evernote - their offices are also located in the Valley. I suggest you take a walk around Mountain View, a small town whose main population is employees of those same legendary companies from Silicon Valley. Let's evaluate together whether they are happy there or so-so?

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Almost 75 thousand people live in Mountain View - a rather large city by local standards. Although it was founded back in 1902, it began to develop rapidly starting in the 1950s - it was then that the world’s first production of silicon transistors, which became the basis of electronic microcircuits, opened in MV. Interesting fact: it was in Mountain View that the computer store was located, with the owner of which Steve Jobs once agreed to sell the first batch of his computers Apple I. Today, the city has dozens of main offices of high-tech companies, including Google, Mozilla, Symantec, Coursera, Linkedin, Meebo, accommodation Microsoft PowerPoint and MSN Team. Almost all residents of Mountain View are employees of these offices.

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We drove to Mountain View from Palo Alto, where we saw with our own eyes the house of Steve Jobs, where he spent the last twenty years of his life and died in October 2011. California has ideal roads, driving on them is a real pleasure. And the views are picturesque.

Mountain View has a great pedestrian center. The first thing we did was find a place, park the car (by the way, they have free parking! yoo!) and went to grab something to eat. foursquare, which we often use to find the most interesting places and good restaurants, suggested that there was excellent sushi nearby. They are made in a real Japanese restaurant, where the owner is Japanese, and so are the waitresses. The portions were huge. I've never eaten such big rolls in my life. There were a lot of fillings everywhere - the cooks did not skimp. It’s funny that in the end the cost was not much more expensive than in the Moscow “Two Sticks”, where the quality of the rolls is an order of magnitude lower. By the way, the place is called "Niji Sushi", address 743 W Days St. Highly recommend!

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It’s much more pleasant to walk on a full stomach! The main street in Mountain View is called Castro Street (not after Fidel, I hope?). The sidewalks on it are wide, fenced off from the road by trees, around which there are small stone decorative elements and benches. The houses are low-rise. Almost all of the first floors are occupied by good restaurants and shops. By the way, among passers-by, according to Serezha, who, one might say, has already become a local resident, you can very often meet famous billionaires and venture capitalists who are looking for promising startups, investing in them, and then “harvesting the harvest.” Americans do not like to show off, so rich people often go to the same places as student interns, and in similar clothes.

The only thing that can identify a wealthy person in Silicon Valley is a luxury car. And even then, Tesla has been the rage here lately. And based on local average salaries, it is not so inaccessible. If we project the cost of a car onto the income of the population, it turns out that it is about as difficult for the average resident of Silicon Valley to buy a Tesla as it is for an ordinary citizen in Russia to buy a new foreign car like a Focus or Solaris.

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There are a lot of flower beds and flower beds on the streets, which are fragrant and delightful with their brightness, in contrast to bare trees, which still hint: “It’s winter, February.”

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The city administration building is located a little further from the particularly crowded streets. There are smaller cafes, restaurants and shops here - such a quiet, pleasant center. It’s like walking two blocks away from the main street in Vladimir. One to one.

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Every detail in the city beautification is extremely beautiful, verified and well maintained.

At some point, the central street turns into a boulevard with a perfect lawn.

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In general, it is so great to live in a place where there are others nearby to your city, in which it is incredibly interesting or at least just beautiful. Where you can go for a change, to have a good time. In the place where I live now, this is not enough, alas.

In the courtyards on lawns resting young people.

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The city is all spick and span. And on the streets you can’t stop feeling its southern location: characteristic landscapes, architecture.

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Too many Californians do not own their homes, but rent them. I won’t say for sure, so as not to accidentally lie to you - most of them or not. It feels more like yes. Buying real estate costs exorbitant amounts of money, and in addition, many current residents of Silicon Valley are not clear that they want to live here all their lives.

Many American media are trumpeting a serious problem: California is turning into one huge office of an IT company.

Generating thousands of jobs, reaching new heights in IT and innovation, the state attracts more and more people, many of whom simply have nowhere to settle. Herself Bay area very densely populated: good apartments are in demand here, even though the price tag of $ 2500 is monthly for a no frills studio, not including a fridge. Some even save apartment apartments in an hour and a half drive one way from work for the sake of economy. And here it’s not the greed of property owners: there’s no place to build in Silicon Valley.

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In addition, specialists who come here to a new job often bring with them families, children (or give birth on the spot) who need certain social facilities: hospitals, kindergartens, schools, clubs. All this in Northern California is not enough, according to the American mass media. No, of course, after Russia, even the current state will seem like paradise, but the Americans are sounding the alarm.

However, every cloud has a silver lining. Due to the fact that a very large amount of housing in California is rented, the corresponding market is very developed here. Firstly, many complexes are initially built not for sale, but for rent. Development companies build hundreds of apartments, and then compete for their clients, putting forward the best and most lucrative offers. Here, for example, is a residential complex Park Place which communicates on the banners that they are pet friendly. “We speak like dogs,” is written on the vertical canvas, if this very successful American play on words can be translated that way.

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From time to time on the streets there are points for automated rental of bicycles. What the inhabitants of Moscow and St. Petersburg will not surprise.

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Prototypes of self-governing people often drive around the streets of Mountain View and the surrounding area. Google Car, and a couple of times we saw a mysterious machine, hung with equipment from Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),. In many stores you can pay with iPhone with fingerprint scanner.

We decide to return to the very center again - to look at the railway station, which we liked so much along the way, and generally slowly move towards the car, since there was little time: we had to make it home for dinner and the plane, which was leaving closer to midnight.

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Very pleasant, relaxing, but at the same time invigorating place. I felt in the air notes of the atmosphere of a small town in the north of Italy.

Mountain View is a small city; you can get to your desired location in no time. So we arrived at the station quite soon.

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Adjacent, such an American-American road. It's funny that some of the trees are green here, others are without leaves.

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The area is called "Centennial Plaza" and the station building itself and the surrounding area are decorated in an antique style - a kind of good old Wild West.

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Over the past six months since then, the impressions of niskolechka have not faded. These are the very moments that you remember again and again, hoping to go back in time and live them again.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Personal experience: how to restart in the Silicon Valley business incubator after a failure

Silicon Valley Real Estate: the ruins of a house sold for a million dollars

Ours in Silicon Valley: how to become a millionaire in the US

Top-10 cult places of Silicon Valley

How to take a break from San Francisco: top 10 seats

Why am I leaving Silicon Valley?

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