There is more than one "hacker" tradition in the US. For instance, Caltech near Los Angeles, on the west coast, and MIT, near Boston, on the east coast, have been rivals for a long time. They have different cultures.
As someone native to the Midwest, educated in the Mid-Atlantic, and currently working in the South, it is readily apparent to me that there is no monolithic American culture. I can't stand the Western hippy-dippy nonsense, the Southern obsession with church and football, or any of the idiotic management fads that affect my work culture.
But the San Francisco/Silicon Valley culture has massive amounts of cash pumping through it at the moment, and bits of it are metastasizing elsewhere. As a result, I have seen open-plan offices, complete with ping-pong tables and people wearing shoes with separated toes, in places like Denver and Nashville.
What I really want is to see a company that hires for competence rather than cultural fit, values aptitude over experience, and doesn't try to pretend to be anything more than a place of business--where people go to do work, finish it, and then leave.
I also like the things you like, and I dislike the winters in Wisconsin. It would be very nice if there were a place other than Silicon Valley to enjoy the networking effect, without the cultural trappings that are such a giant turn-off to people elsewhere in the world, and even elsewhere in the US. But if you're looking to get paid, you may just have to suppress your irritation for a while.