SF has great places like SOMA, but if you stick around Mountain View and Palo Alto you will be in the heart of Silicon Valley. You'll find a lot of meetups in

SF has great places like SOMA, but if you stick around Mountain View and Palo Alto you will be in the heart of Silicon Valley. You'll find a lot of meetups in those three places. East Bay is where I live. It also has meetups, but not nearly as many. However, It takes me 15 minutes to get into Palo Alto and it is a lot cheaper to live over here than in those other places. When I go to SF I would rather take Bart in than drive. Parking can be such a huge bitch if there is a game going on. So, I am close to Bart and it takes me 40min to get into SF when I need to, which is a couple times a week. It's around $80 for a monthly pass on Bart.