What are some examples of Bay Area towns? It seems like everyone in my friend circle in tech lives in San Francisco and puts up (or used to) with the long commute.
You also have smaller cities all over the country.
Now, you get into truly small towns in places like New England and there really isn't a lot in the town center and it's unlikely you'll be living walking distance from it.
Last I looked empty lots went for that much.
They have a town vibe only because they have essentially made development outside of office buildings impossible for decades. There is a ton of pent up demand to live there (meaning it's super, super expensive) and there is a lot of traffic and a surprising population density given the development pattern (because there are a LOT of people working there relative to living there). They're really all a contiguous metropolitan region of the Bay Area from SF-SJ-Oakland, the fact that they're separate political entities is at this point a historical relic
I can't tell if you forgot about Ava's, or if you've never actually _been_ to downtown Mountain View, or if you only consider chain supermarkets to count.
“Town” as distinct from “suburb” usually implies standing alone, being surrounded by farmland and not particularly connected to the nearest metro area.
https://www.visithalfmoonbay.org/
Go much further north of the Bay and you can live in Yountville and I think you'll have a 3-star restaurant in your town, which is a level of culture you can't even get in most US megacities. Again not Applebees.