Pick a Card...

I realized on this trip that I keep fare cards for three transit systems (Boston CharlieCard, New York MTA, San Francisco BART) handy, because I end up in all of these cities on a somewhat regular basis. It's very nice that in all these locations, I can feel at home, get around reasonably well, and have friends to see! It's a kinda neat feeling to get off a plane or Amtrak, and get right on the transit system without even hitting the ticket machine. I also have system maps for all three systems (as well as Minneapolis Light Rail) on my CrackBerry.

As for comparing the cities--well, Perlick put up a post comparing New York with the Bay Area, and Boston/Cambridge as well; his discussion (synthesizing other opinions) and the reader comments were quite interesting.

Incidentally, on this recent Bay Area trip, I was guessing that San Francisco is larger than Boston, but I wasn't sure by how much. A little Wikipedia seaching revealed the following (2000 Census data):

Boston: 589,141
Cambridge: 101,355
Somerville: 77,478

San Francisco: 764,976
Oakland: 420,183

So the nominal "city" portions are pretty comparable, but the combined populations of SF and Oakland make the Bay Area much larger. This was also reflected in the sizes of the downtowns--Boston's is pretty limited (skyscrapers from the Pru to the Financial District), while it is much larger in SF.

It was also interesting to walk around San Francisco proper, and realize that there's still lots of industry (garages, body shops, furniture warehouses) in the city--like around the Instructables/Potenco office. It has always felt to me that in New York City, these industries were relegated to the outer boroughs (Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx), instead of remaining on Manhattan, due to real estate prices. I considered this a bit of a pity--creating a monoculture of ritzy shopping, restaurants, and high-end condos takes something away from the jumbled-together character of a city, I think. Then again, living downwind of a painting booth doesn't sound fun.