You are probably overthinking it. As a Canadian who visits the bay area on a very regular basis for work (and lives in the backwoods in a community of 2000 peop

You are probably overthinking it. As a Canadian who visits the bay area on a very regular basis for work (and lives in the backwoods in a community of 2000 people and takes a boat to get to a real airport), there is a jarring disconnect between the media portrayal of bay area culture and the reality. I too eat meat, drink beer, and talk about the same topics. You'll find that is true of most "hackers" in the bay area too. The term hacker is used more often as shorthand to describe somebody who is into technology without getting into the details (software&hardware&ux). I have seen precisely one person ever describe themselves as a rockstar, and we rejected his job application for plagiarizing his code samples. Nobody in the real world does this, and you're unlikely to get force-fed yoga, lifehacking, etc. There are still things that weird me out about the bay area, but overall I really enjoy my time there. I encourage you to check out some tech meetups. Oh. And Noisebridge and it's mailing list aren't representative of the larger geek community in SFO either, just saying ;)