So we have been doing some exploring after another investor in the midwest told us to just move to the valley for the networking alone. he may be right.
after a few visits, i can say that living in SF, and playing in SF is just fine without a car. SF will be expensive like living in the loop in Chicago, or in some parts of Manhattan, heck thats what you pay for being in the center of it. If you are coming from the suburbs you are in for a shock if you move to SF.
if you live out of SF, you will want a car/ or even better a moped or bike. public transportation is nice, but it adds up and is time consuming waiting for stuff. what i love about it is it runs late, so a night out can be had without driving into SF.
right now in MKE i am paying $770 a month as part of a 2 bedroom that is $1540 a month. For that we have 2 bedrooms, 1800sqft, a backyard, and a garage. In the valley i expect to have much less, but it still seems like i can get a 2 bedroom for ~1500-~1800 a month, or a 3 bedroom for 2100-3000 a month. i think rent is actually fairly reasonable considering the average median incomes and the number of people with degrees.
starbucks internet will cost you $40 a month, where in MKE i get cafe wifi all over the city for $22 a month. i might have to give in and get Att uverse internet in the valley so we can roam into a starbucks for free.
As far as food goes, i found that palo alto, and just outside of san jose are craazy expensive. in MKE a quiznos sandwich and drink might cost you 8$ but in that area, we paid $12-$13 50% more. I found food in SF cheaper. I do not know about the grocery stores, but its pretty hard to meet people for lunch and or coffee in your home, so I think Food may have its larges sticker shock.
as for location, we found that 90% of the events that we want to go to are in the sunnyvale, palo alto, and north/west san jose area. so it makes more sense for us to live there, well unless we are going to date...... there seems to be a lot of lovely ladies in Downtown SF on a daily basis, in fact most of them will smile back. It's kinda rare for a city to have that quality. So I would rank SF very high on women being approachable there.
Our plan for our 4 guys (1 of which is married) is to get a 2 bedroom with a great couch for the 3rd guy, and a when the married guy is in town, he can have a hidden mattress or an inflatable one. When it makes sense, we will get 1 more apartment come fall 08 or something.