I live in Santa Clara, but I still get to access the city's culture on weekends -- music, theater, cuisine, et al. Many techies don't even get off their shuttles until 7pm or more, so I wonder how many actually partake in the local culture on weekdays, and how many eat and then sleep.

I suppose if you're in your 20s and without children, it makes a bigger difference, but I find I don't often have the time to do anything until the weekend anyway, and so there would be little use paying high rents when 60% of the time, I'm just crashing there and spending all my time elsewhere.

The Caltrain stops at midnight though. Make sure you don't have too much fun and stay out late or else you'll miss your transportation back. Driving is too unsafe and gets tiring as well due to distance and parking. Somehow, the majority of residents in the bay area are okay with this the status quo.

We're not okay with it. We just have to put up with it because the entire system is ridiculous. Seems like ridesharing services are one of the ways we've attempted to deal with it. I can envision in the future private weekend shuttles that ferry partygoers from S.F. to other places, so people don't have to deal with the terrible parking situation in the city, and the fact that BART and Caltrain stop far too early.

Vibrant culture requires a critical mass of arty types, though - people who are highly sensitive to rental prices and uninterested in commuting. SF is a lot more epensive now than it was when I moved there in the mid-90s; back then you could throw a cosy little rave party for $500 or rent a small apartment for $1000/month.

Actually I agree with everything you said.

Where I disagree is that I think of those things as having two faces. On the one hand, a vibrant culture and a large group of trustworthy colleagues increase people's quality of life. On the other hand, they reduce mobility, distort markets, and therefore reduce people's quality of life.

And the hacker in me wonders whether it might be possible to reduce the negative side while keeping most of the positive side.

That is true, and it explains why demand is higher than it would otherwise be. Since California generally tries to restrict supply through zoning laws, it's no surprise that prices are increasing. The Bay Area does more to restrict supply than the rest of California.

Not all tech workers need to establish trust. For every entrepreneur, there are a dozen programmers who just work 9 to 5. They could do that remotely.

Yes, that's me. I work for a SV company but you'd have to pay me a LOT more for me to actually move and live down there. Remote work should certainly be a part of the solution to this SF housing crisis.