You just described a lot of cities in the US though
The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.
That's what I miss about Philadelphia. Actually, probably the only thing I miss, because there are a lot of problems in Philly, too. But the indie hacker scene in Philly was amazing. We had a lot of intermingled circles of entrepreneurs, hackers, and artists . If you wanted to get something done and make it a cool, weird thing along the way, you just had to show up at the hackerspace with some parts and beer.
I'm in the DC area now, since I got married 10 years ago. Nothing like that here. Lots of extremely intelligent people, but no desire to Just Make Things. Everyone's got their career plan, retirement plan, home ownership plan. And none of it involves just hanging out and fucking around with a soldering iron.
Philly definitely has more of a creative class than DC, but there’s still things happening in DC.
The only cities in the US with a superior art scene than San Francisco are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and maybe Chicago.
Washington DC, Houston, Marfa, Pittsburg, and Santa Fe lag behind San Francisco.
The other cities all have some sort of semi livable areas for artists, SF has nothing to offer in that regards.
Likewise, people in South Bay lack the sophistication to appreciate anything other than a vanity license plate on a sport car.
The weather though..
I like Pittsburgh (CMU alumni here), but only a few weeks a year.
The weather is bad enough that I consider it basically uninhabitable if you have seasonal depression. South Bay is a cultural wasteland but god damn the weather is 10/10.
The biggest drawback beyond the weather is the coke/steel plants regularly put shit in the air far in excess of EPA guidelines and the water supply is about two steps above Flint in quality.
Overall, PGH is amazing if you can live with the climate - but if you can’t, you can’t.