In new york a bunch of people use those portable rolling type units that sit inside and vent out the window with a big flexible accordion style tube. Always an option if a window banger isn't and much easier/safer to install/uninstall.
True about the AC. But Seattle is slightly cooler year-round, right?
Probably depends where in the Bay Area you're talking about. The microclimates vary a lot. SF or the Santa Cruz mountains is one thing. The middle of Silicon Valley is something else.
I compared average temperatures with a few SV cities and the Seattle average is indeed lower than some. I compared recent years and it’s the opposite. Our all-time record this year (112-116 depending on where measurements were taken) certainly threw some of the averages off. But Seattle summers have been increasingly hot for the better part of a decade and I don’t expect that to trend the opposite way.