My experience of living in the Bay Area was mostly "boring suburbia" as well, which I suspect you can find nearly everywhere in the US. There's SF, which is a v

My experience of living in the Bay Area was mostly "boring suburbia" as well, which I suspect you can find nearly everywhere in the US. There's SF, which is a very dysfunctional city, and incredibly expensive to live in. But most of the tech jobs and employees are in Silicon Valley, which is slightly cheaper but still expensive, and very much suburbia. The quintessential Bay Area experience to me is sitting in traffic on the 101, while trying to get to or from a suburban office park in Santa Clara or Mountain View. Followed maybe by dinner in a San Jose strip mall. I would not move back unless it was really a can't-say-no offer job-wise.