raptor: I live in San Diego, but the SF/Bay Area will always be home to me. That being said, the Bay Area now is nothing like it was when I was growing up.
Palo Alto/Los Altos/LAH/Mountain View were all quiet bedroom communities, and the Silicon Valley was just beginning it’s existence. Aside from a few large employers (IBM, Lockheed, Ford Aerospace) and Stanford University, there really wasn’t much going on in our neck of the woods.
Once the Silicon Valley exploded, the place changed and in every sense of the word. We were up there last Thanksgiving for vacation and I didn’t recognize entire swathes of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc.
I guess my point would be this: The place had a lot more appeal 25+ years ago than it does now. My dad and I used to go to Stanford football games on Saturdays. You could get in for less than ten bucks, and concessions were cheap. Same went for Niner, Raider, and Giants games. Lift tickets at Squaw and Heavenly were affordable, and the lines were short.
Once the money arrived, so did the a-hole mentality that went with it, and now you have 11,000sf French chateaux lining the hills of Palo Alto and Los Altos. I don’t blame you for preferring RSF to that.
