Most Neighborly Neighborhood in Bay Area

So, I've been thinking about that question that you get asked when you give a street or neigbhorhood a review, where you're supposed to rate the neigbhorlness of the location. So that got me thinking, what is the friendliest, most neigbhorly neigbhorhood in the Bay Area? In other words, where do neigbhors actually know each other and lend each other sugar and that sort of thing?

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StephSF 2yrs+

How about in those co-ops? I know that Berkeley has a whole bunch and maybe some of our East Bay residents can speak more to that, but those have always struck me as being the ultimate in neighborly spirit.

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NightOwlnOrinda 2yrs+

That is probably true. North Berkeley is a really friendly area. There are a lot of Graduate Students with kids up there and really liberal professionals--I imagine (I never lived in North Berkeley) that they would be really neigbhorly. Other parts of Berkeley though, like West Berkeley there is more of an urban, watch your own back sort of a vibe. And much of South Berkeley has too much turnover to really feel like a neigbhorhood.

Also, there are a lot of crazy people in Berkeley who will stalk you if you are overly friendly. I had at least two stalkers during my college experience. One was a strange middle aged neighbor who made me take care of her plants while she moved and the other was this weird Frankenstein looking guy who hung around at the cafe I went to and would sit right by me and just stare at me for hours on end--verrrry unnerving!

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StephSF 2yrs+

Has anyone here ever visited/lived in a co-op? The concept really intrigues me, in an "I would never live there myself" kind of way...

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NightOwlnOrinda 2yrs+

I had friends in Berkeley, of course, who did--but I could never really bring myself to share that much.

I remember when I was a kid in New York my mom took me along to have dinner with these people who all lived on this one floor of this apartment--like five families all living together. It was a commune, I guess and they all would eat dinner together and take care of each others children when they worked (they were doctors and nurses) and it seemed like it worked fairly well. (I think they were actually trying to recruit us to become family #6, but it didn't work out.) I think that it could work if you get the right set of people but that generally it is fraught with possible problems.

But I am speaking more about a commune than a co-ops. Co-ops give you a little bit more space. In Berkeley they are often little more than a group of house mates that agree on cooking and cleanign assignments.

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StephSF 2yrs+

It sounds like a good strategy - I've just heard some weird things and remember having to filter through the commune and co-op situations as I was looking through places to live when I was Craigslisting what kind of housing options were available in Berkeley. I remember several houses were signing based on their nicknames (huh?) and there was one where the tenant was not allowed to be in the house during normal business hours because of the landlord/roommate "need their creative space."

I know I'm lumping a lot of Berkeley stereotypes together, but I've heard both good and bad things about the co-op living situations. Never gotten any stalkers, though! That sounds fun.

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StephSF 2yrs+

In terms of neighborly neighborhoods, I know that I've posted to this thread three times without ever actually answering the question at hand. I have some friends who live in Santa Cruz, and are pretty active in the community there. They rent a condo that has a pool and a hot tub where the tenants all hang out on hot days, they walk down the streets and say hello to everyone, and they show up to margarita bars on Taco Tuesday where the bartenders know them by name. To me, that is the closest that I've seen to people borrowing sugar and the general calibrater that I use when rating neighborly spirit in an area.

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NightOwlnOrinda 2yrs+

I can definitely see that in Santa Cruz. That hippy-dippy aesthetic does generally make for pretty good neighborliness.

I think the most neighborly place I ever lived was in Davis--a touch outside of the Bay Area. It is the kind of place where if you lose your wallet your neigbhors will go out of their ways to return it. My wife, when she was a student there, dropped her ID and one of her neigbhors tracked her apartment down to return it to her. The funny thing was that my wife was a little paranoid back then and wouldn't answer the door, since she didn't recognize the neigbhor as someone she knew. So after repeated attempts to return the wallet, the guy went to get the apartment manager fearing that something had befallen my wife. It was kind of funny in a way--my wife's stalker was just a good Samaritan trying to help her out.

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jotoma 2yrs+

As an out of towner looking to move to San Francisco, can you explain a co-op?

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NightOwlnOrinda 2yrs+

Yeah, Co-ops aren't unique to SF (as a kid I remember visiting one in New York once) but basically it is a building or living place where people buy shares or a membership of the building and they live there, sharing the maintanence expenses etc. In SF its often a little hippy dippy (was big in the 60's when communes were in, of course). There aren't that many of them around any more and usually they are made with groups of friends but for those that don't mind the close quarters, it can be an interesting experience.

Co-ops can also refer to businesses owned by employees--which is also popular in the Bay Area. Lot's of food stores set up on this model.

Hope that helps.