This post is Part II in a series. Read Part I: How Life In NYC Compares To San Francisco In 6 Charts.

One’s the backdrop of Mrs. Doubtfire and The Rock, the other’s the setting of Ghostbusters and Holden Caulfield’s escapades. The land of sourdough bread and perpetually needing a sweatshirt vs. the concrete jungle where dreams are made of (that line always felt like it had one preposition too many). Two great American cities with great American rent prices, both filled with people with a great amount of civic pride.

That’s right, we’re back for Part 2 of our San Francisco vs. New York City comparisons. In case you missed Part 1, a couple key plot points: NYC stays out later and sleeps less (though SF wakes up earlier), SF is a land of dive bars, the outdoors, and coffee shops (New Yorkers are at the cocktail bar), and NYC locals catch up on sleep on the weekends before heading to brunch like in Sex and the City.

Last we left off, we noticed commute times were comparable, but we still had some questions about these two cities. We dove back into a bunch of chronos data to figure out how people move around each city, where and how much people work, and tried to figure out if everyone in New York still goes straight from work to the bar like they do in Mad Men. Oh, and also where people travel when they leave each city. The answers to these (and more) await.

1. What's the balance of people commuting into and out of each city?

Trips into and out of SF and NYC on a typical weekday. Chronos

These two maps show weekday trips that either began in the city and ended outside of it, or vice versa (no intra-city trips here). Green dots represent people departing and red dots depict people arriving. The meter along the bottom shows how many people are entering and exiting the city for each half-hour period.

So what’s actually happening here? Things are pretty mellow in both places to start, though you might notice a little more late night activity in NYC. The real disparity shows up as people head to work, and by 8:00 am about 70% of trips are outbound from SF to surrounding cities and suburbs, whereas 70% of NYC-area trips are inbound into the city.

Things cool down in the early afternoon, but by 4:30 pm, people start heading home, and SF sees the trend flip as they start to get more inbound traffic and NYC sees people departing to surrounding areas.

Conclusion: Living in SF and commuting out of the city for work seems to be more popular than suburban-living and city-working, whereas the opposite is more often the case for people in and around NYC.

2. Where are the people of each city working?

Does everyone in SF have a stealth startup they’re running out of a coffee shop (The Creamery, probably), and are all New Yorkers holed up in a Wall Street high-rise, poring over Excel?

The stereotypes of each city do play out some, with SF having a strong bend towards Large Tech and Startups, and NYC’s Finance population giving a comparably strong showing. NYC’s reputation as a Media hub is there, too, and both cities featured a large contingent working in Healthcare.

The graphic shows any place where people conduct work, and so we see a lot of people in SF opting for Coffee Shops and Libraries, whereas New Yorkers were more often found at restaurants (the old power lunch/dinner) or private clubs (or, colloquially, the super-power-lunch/dinner).

One other interesting tidbit was New York’s edge in working at colleges. While SF had some representation lead by City College (followed by USF and SFSU), few people who live in SF commute out of the city to Berkeley, Stanford, or surrounding schools. Across the country, New York had a larger percentage of people at colleges, lead by NYU, CUNY campuses, New School and Columbia (Roar, Lion, Roar).

Conclusion: The stereotypes of San Francisco being home to techies and New York being Finance folks’ backyard is tangible, and SF tends towards coffee shops for business versus restaurants and, on some occasions, private clubs in New York.

3. How much time are people actually working in each city?

Ask someone how they’re doing, and people in either city are likely to reply “Good, busy — working a lot.” This begs the question: which city is actually working longer hours?

SF vs NYC, work arrival and departure times. Chronos

This one is good for some bragging rights (on either side, depending if you like to brag about working more or less): New Yorkers are showing up earlier and leaving later. Whether that means they’re working harder or SF is working smarter—we’ll leave that to the denizens of each city to debate. What we do know is that New Yorkers arrive almost 10 minutes earlier and leave around 25 minutes later, on average.

Also, note the higher peak in New Yorkers’ arrival time, which may be indicative of more strict expectations in NYC of when the work day begins. SF’s curve is flatter, which fits with our perception of a lot of flexible and non-conventional hours for many folks in SF. Also, both cities have a tail that runs through post-midnight, so there are definitely outliers in each spot putting in those long nights — if you’re curious who they are, you can probably just ask someone how they’re doing.

Conclusion: New Yorkers are putting in more time at work than San Franciscans, staying almost a half hour later on a typical day.

4. We looked at people commuting in and out of each city, but what about people who both live and work in each city — what are their movements like?

Weekday movement within each city, SF vs NYC. Chronos

There’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it down: Like before, green dots are departures, red dots are arrivals. This time, the meters on the bottom depict arrivals at home (gold on the left), work (blue on the right), and other (grey in the middle—could be social, exercise, errands, etc.). Additionally, the height of the meters shows the relative percentage of people moving within that half hour (I wasn’t lying when I said there was a lot going on here).

As you’d expect, there’s a swell of people around two main blocks: heading to work (the 8a-10a window) and heading home/out for the evening (5p-8:30p). While not many people are moving about the city from midnight on, they’re mostly all heading home, and NYC does have more night owls than SF.

In terms of where in the city people are heading, SF is clearer than NY: people tend to head to the Financial District and SOMA during work hours and then to the Marina, Mission, Hayes Valley, and Divisadero Corridor on their return from work. NYC is so dense with home and work overlap that it’s more difficult to tell, but the Wall Street area does get higher traffic at the start of the work day, and the LES and Brooklyn tend to get more people heading back from work later in the day.

Conclusion: SF appears to have comparatively more distinct work and non-work neighborhoods, with an influx into the Financial District and SOMA during the workday, whereas NYC’s neighborhood distinction isn’t as strong.

5. Where are people heading after work?

We know New Yorkers are leaving work just under a half hour later than San Franciscans, but where are people heading after they punch out their time cards?

First stop after work, SF vs. NYC. Chronos

At first glance, these two pie charts look mostly the same, and nothing too unexpected: on a typical weekday, people are heading home after work—if you opt for Netflix and takeout more often than happy hour, you’re not the only one.

But there is one major difference between the two cities: New Yorkers are heading to a social spot — typically a restaurant or bar—as their first stop after work at almost double the rate of San Franciscans. Knowing that many SF locals are heading out of the city for work, this disparity could be the result of Manhattan cocktails and cuisine pulling more people than the finest Mountain View has to offer, or it could be New Yorkers putting off the seven floor walkup they have to look forward to upon returning to their abode.

Conclusion: People mostly head straight home from work in both cities, but New Yorkers are heading straight from the office to restaurants and bars at near double the rate of San Franciscans.

6. Where did people travel to from each city over the summer?

As for city bragging rights, NYC wins a pretty big one here: SF’s top travel destination was NYC, whereas SF didn’t crack NYC’s top 15. LA and Vegas were also up there for both spots, and generally both showed a proximity bias.

SF destinations skewed slightly more towards outdoors-friendly spots with Santa Cruz, Big Sur and Tahoe making appearances, whereas beaches (Hamptons, Connecticut Shoreline, and Jersey Shore) were the more frequent destination of choice for many New Yorkers.

New Yorkers also explored internationally a bit more, with Montreal and Toronto showing up, and the only non-Canada international spot on either list, Paris, claiming a spot. San Franciscans did get one international locale, Vancouver, on their list, but more importantly, with Burning Man in August, got Black Rock Desert, which is basically another planet.

Conclusion: Both cities showed some proximity bias in their top destinations, though SF’s top destination was NYC. NYC appeared more international with Montreal and Toronto, plus the only non-Canadian international destination to hit the top 15 in either spot, Paris.

So there you have it — with these six questions and the previous installment, you’ve never been more prepared to contribute intelligently to the next "San Francisco vs New York" debate: SF has more people outbound than inbound during the day, people work longer hours in NYC and are twice as likely to head to a restaurant or bar straight from work, and overall, NYers were more likely to be found traveling internationally over the summer.

We’ll be back soon with another look at how people live, and if you’d like to be a part of it and see how you’re actually spending your time, grab chronos for iOS (we just added a step-counter for iPhone 5S users) or Android, free.

See Chronos' methodology here.