<p>When I was a young lawyer in San Francisco, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with views of Alcatraz, Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate Bridge, for a monthly rent (in today's dollars, acccording to the CPI calculator <a href="http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl%5B/url%5D">http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl</a>) of about $1100, nine tenths of a mile from my office. A car is not a necessity in San Francisco. I lived there for five years without owning one.</p>