[evgen]

As others have mentioned, you will fit right in to the Berkeley "scene". You are going to be taking BART and CalTrain a lot, since Berkeley has little in the way of venture capital and not a huge hacker community outside of the university. If you were willing to compromise on your principles somewhat then a zipcar membership and a place in Mountain View would probably serve your long-term goals a lot better. Caltrain is close, you are at the confluence of highways 101, 280, & 85 and you are sitting in the metaphorical heart of silicon valley. The weekly farmers market is year-round, you can bike to whole foods and some nice asian groceries, castro street has nice coffeeshops and a bit of a nightlife, you could probably walk to the hacker dojo, and an occasional car trip will get you everything else you need. The only thing it really lacks is a good bookstore, but you can train/bike to either the university bookstore on stanford campus or digitalguru in sunnyvale.