[lvs]

Precisely my sentiment as well. It's possible that the articles on this site give a narrow view of what's happening there, but I doubt it. I can't help but feel as if I forever missed the opportunity to live as an adult in that vibrant and thinking city I once knew in my youth.

[famousactress]

You did. For now, and the foreseeable future. It's still an awesome city on a bunch of levels... but in my twenties I'd go up there to play in bands and see friends and I remember really tripping out on the diversity of social groups. There was clearly massive socio-economic variance in small area but a general consciousness that those weren't the lines at which to draw social boundaries along. Lots of gaggles of friends at bars or coffee-shops with wildly different backgrounds, jobs, and outlooks.

Now it's a sea of fucking bearded hipster macbook pro startup dev nerds. To be clear: I'm a bearded hipster macbook pro startup dev nerd. I don't get credit for not being that. I DO get credit for not piling on by joining the cultural dog pile.

Personally I consider it close to a cultural and professional imperative to avoid living in the bay as a developer, for a whole host of reasons.

[beatpanda]

It breaks my heart every single day to be here, having spent my entire childhood wanting to live in a city that disappeared by the time I was finally able to move here, and now I spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to figure out where to go from here.