[nostrademons]

You're looking in the wrong places. If you want to meet people with interesting niche hobbies, meet them in the niche. If you like rock climbing, go to a climbing gym. If you like building hardware, go to TechShop or Maker Faire. If you're into martial arts, there are some great Krav Maga gyms in the Bay Area. Or you could always hang out with the people in your company - no comparing yourself based on where you work for there, because you all work for the same place.

The networking scene is for networking, so of course it's filled with careerists. The coffeeshop scene is largely the same (though occasionally you meet one of the local students), since "let's grab coffee" is Silicon Valley shorthand for "I would like to assess your usefulness to my future career goals."

But there are many other scenes in the Bay Area. My wife ran the local Peace Corps alumni chapter for a while, so I end up hanging out with a lot of very interesting do-gooder international development types. I still get together for pizza with a bunch of my old Googler friends, even though I left almost 2 years ago. There are plenty of very authentic startup founder types around too, ones who aren't in it for a quick buck but because it's what they do and have been doing for 15-20 years now.