Actually this is an accident; San Francisco's reputation as a tech hub is due to its accidental proximity to San Jose and silicon valley.
It may well be a coincidence that SF's government is so inefficient though. Portland has the same tolerant attitude, and their city government doesn't seem to be inefficient.
I don't think you addressed evgen's point - Let's assume that the atmosphere in the Bay Area is part of the reason SV is where it is (having read Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley" I'm not sure I'd agree) - to refute his point you would have to show that San Francisco is indeed a tech hub. Otherwise it could be the case the the tolerant attitude of the entire Bay Area caused SV to happen where it did, and San Francisco picked up its reputation as a tech hub because it is in the area and shares the atmosphere, even though San Francisco itself had nothing to do with the tech hub forming. I suppose you could argue that San Francisco and its history were indispensable in forming the Bay Area atmosphere and attitudes, but you did not say that.
I would say it's more to do with money than atmosphere.
The Bay area is uber-rich because of a) gold and b) highly favorable geography. The natural harbor created by the bay made San Francisco the major port on the west coast until the early 20th century. At the time that the US wrested California from Mexico, SF was effectively the capital city in the state. Add to that the beneficial agricultural conditions stretching down from the Sacremento Delta (where the city's water still comes from) and it's the kind of perfect setup you read about in books like Guns, Germs and Steel.
Right. And the "atmos" of Boston is why the high-tech hub around route 128 is where it is, having of course nothing to do with its proximity to a couple of world-class universities... The "Bay Area" may help sustain SV, but San Francisco proper is a pretty small part of that -- it is a hub of night-life/clubs, an overly pretentious literature and arts scene, and a completely dysfunctional city government. SF is a fun place to live for people of a certain age, but as the better known city in a large metropolitan region it gets far more credit than it deserves for the "atmos" that gives the region its flavor.
San Jose's population in 1940 was 69,000. SF's was 635,000.
SF may have dominated the bay area for quote a while, but none of the seminal events that can be pointed to as the seeds of what became silicon valley have a very direct link to what you and everyone else seems to consider the San Francisco "culture." The marine geography that makes San Francisco a great anchorage and led to a strong naval presence in the area probably had a bigger impact on silicon valley than anything you can point to an as a uniquely "San Francisco" impact on the valley.
* iskoot * slideshare * rapleaf * wikia * ubisoft * google * gogrids * pivotallabs * technorati * dropbox * justin.tv * engineyard * heroku * socialcast * heyzap * yammer * sauce labs * shopittome * zenddesk * gigaom * twilio * bigtent * topsy * scribd * quantcast * cnet * lolapps * videoegg * snapfish * instructables * currenttv * vark * Sega * Dolby Research Labs * zipcar * kink.com
It feels rather hublike to me. That is just a small subset of the tech companies in my neighborhod that I happen to know about.