I am near the tail end of interviews with a group in Palo Alto and might be moving to the San Jose area. Aside from emissions, is there anything I should know about the area as far as cars go?

Right now I would probably be looking at getting a decent apartment with a garage till I know the area and what commutes are like.

I have lived previously in DC and NYC (Brooklyn) before moving to AZ.

Cheers!

 

It's certainly a great area to live but not without a few catches. Housing is insanely expensive, "2-car" garage barely fits one and traffic is getting bad. As a car guy however, awesome place to be with plenty of get-together events. You should come check out one of them before the move, especially Car and Coffee at Treasury Island.

 

With living in DC and NYC, I know all too well about traffic. I had expected as much about the housing prices as I was noticing they were climbing above even NYC a little while ago but thank you for the heads up on the garages. Right now Im just looking for an apartment with a garage where I can do the basics in such as oil changes and easy installs.

I will try to see whats happening when I hear back about whether I get the face to face final one. Its looking good from the way things have gone so far. The only sucky thing is that I just installed my exhaust and now looks like I will have to swap back to stock for the emissions visual when I get out there. Oh well, only takes a little while to do that.

 

I was born and raised here - and still here. Not much you need to know about car specific things. Garage is not a must because weather is fine, there are nice 100k + cars everywhere you look so safety or worrying some punk will key your nice car isn't really a concern (unless you do something to deserve it then it's a different story haha) I can let you know where the good drives are around here, I work just down the road from Palo Alto in mountain view. Anyway, Goodluck on the interview and happy to answer any questions!

P.s. Traffic sucks so do NOT live in SF or Fremont or Milpitas. You'll want to be in Palo Alto (NOT EAST!!!, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, West San Jose, Saratoga, Los Altos, if you can afford it)

If you have school age children and you care about API scores, you want to be in Cupertino /Lynbrook area of west San Jose

 

Mostly Im looking for a garage to be able to do my own service and store tires etc. Mainly, I just dont trust people to be careful around other people's stuff. The dings on the rear doors of my Lexus speak to that.

Right now, Im looking at the west and sw areas of SJ. They seem to have the garages I am looking for as well as within my price range with decent square footage. No kids so not worried about school districts right now. Basically around the 280

Thanks for the information and the luck! Am going to be out there on the 15th so I will be touring around to get a feel for the neighborhoods.

 

Feel free to pm or post here as you narrow things down, I'm from NorCal all my life and been in the Palo Alto to Silicon Valley last 20 years.

Cheers and welcome!

 

Thanks! Will be out there from the 14th through the 16th for my final interview and to tour around the area and apartment shop. If I can find something secure with a plug so I can use the battery tender Im good. Right now, the leading place is located in Willow Glenn.

 

Nice. Willow Glenn is actually a cool little area. They have a nice downtown as well (think small city downtown feel, not big city downtown feel)