> As a west coaster, I can't stand Chicago or New York. The weather sucks, the topology is boring, the people are either boring Midwesterners, or crass north easterners. I'm happy the west coast gets more play, though I would probably not want to live in SF.
While the stereotypes exist for a reason (and anybody who's lived in NYC or Chi-town testify to these particular ones), have to disagree with you on the being able to put up with "those" people. It's the west coast that is the outlier here as a (stereotypical) bunch of pansies who can't (again stereotypically) deal with rawness of reality.
There is nothing wrong with the other areas of the US, and Americans are mostly the same, but I find the laid back style of the left west coast just to be the most suited. Well, Californians can take that a bit too far...
My problem is that a lot of people seem to be pretending that the only reason there's so much demand for housing in California is due to the favorable weather/people, when in reality a huge proportion of the people there wouldn't be there if it weren't economically beneficial.
It is nice that the economics and the nice weather coincide. It probably isn't a coincidence either, as tech is primarily limited by human resources.