>visiting my friend in Chinatown is either a 10-15 minute drive, or a 40-50 minute bus ride + walk
You're describing a 4 mile journey.
A comparable journey in NYC is SoHo to Central Park.
At best, that's a 30 minute commute in NYC on transit. Probably similar in a car. In LA it's a drive no matter what.
NYC distances just feel longer because they pass more stuff (which to be fair is an argument for NYC).
In general comparing cities will always be somewhat like comparing sports teams: everyone has a favorite, for different reasons, and there's no right answer. But too many times since I've gotten here I've seen people try to compare SF to places like NYC and LA. I don't even like LA, but I'm not going to try and compare SF to LA because that'd be like comparing an NBA team to a "G League" team. People keep asking me stuff like "SF is just like a mini-NYC right?!" upon hearing where I came from, and I humor them to be nice, but no. It's really not at all.