San Francisco has always—or at least for the last three decades—been an extremely expensive place to live. Yes, the wages are correspondingly higher in most careers in the Bay Area, but I still suffered no small amount of culture shock when I relocated there in 1986 and ended up spending twice what I'd been paying in Tucson for less square footage. Still, newly drunk on the fact that we were in fact actually living in San Francisco, we laughed at the $300 sweaters at Macys and often joked, "Who would pay $2700 for an apartment, even if it was on Russian Hill?" I guess now that figure is the going average for even the less desirable areas of town.
When I left the City in 2002, I was paying $1300 a month for a one bedroom apartment in a rent-controlled 50s-era building on Upper Market. Even then I thought it was a ridiculous amount to pay to live in a building where the elevator had been out of service going on six months. (The owner was Diane Feinstein's next door neighbor, so there was no lack of funds to get it fixed.)
Of course, Ben and I are now paying more than that for a 2 bedroom place in Denver. How times change.
I wonder where my quaint little part of the state would fall on that chart…