When I moved to the Bay Area I got a little (not terribly priced!) studio apartment walking distance from downtown San Jose. As you say it certainly is no Big C

When I moved to the Bay Area I got a little (not terribly priced!) studio apartment walking distance from downtown San Jose. As you say it certainly is no Big City downtown district like SF, but I must say I feel very happy with the decision - there are quite a few good places packed into the small downtown that I can just walk to whenever I feel like it, and the light rail is right there to take me to work. Having a reason to walk every day is actually great, I far prefer it to being stuck in traffic instead. I don't even have a car, but just using buses+light rail+caltrain has worked really quite well thus far for the times I want to go to nearby towns/SF.