> Someone recently said to me: “I’m tired of drinking in living rooms with overly smart people.”
So stop doing that.
"Tech people" are not even a plurality in the greater bay area, let alone a majority. If all you see is tech people everywhere you go, that's your fault. Maybe take some responsibility for your outcomes, and go more interesting places, instead of deciding a metropolis of millions of people is somehow beneath you...
The bay area is a bit unique though in that the physical space you occupy is covered in signifiers of tech. Virtually every billboard on the 101 and virtually every ad at SFO and San Jose Airport are some AI thing now. As you drive around you see waymos and corporate busses constantly. It is difficult to avoid tech campuses. Housing stock disproportionately targets high paying single people. When you ride the caltrain it is impossible not to overhear people talking about software engineering.
Yes, you can find community among non-tech people. The bay area is large and there are plenty of other people doing other things. SF is filled with cultural spaces. But my experience of the south bay is pretty dire if you want to escape the gaze of tech.
> Virtually every billboard on the 101 and virtually every ad at SFO and San Jose Airport are some AI thing now.
Ads are meaningless drivel. If you let the ads shown on billboards around you affect your life experience and how you define a place, that's absolutely tragic: I don't even know what to say to that.
> It is difficult to avoid tech campuses.
No it isn't, everyone knows where they are.
> Housing stock disproportionately targets high paying single people.
Every urban center in the US is doing that right now.
> When you ride the caltrain it is impossible not to overhear people talking about software engineering.
That must be so difficult to deal with, gosh, I don't know how you managed to survive it.
> But my experience of the south bay is pretty dire if you want to escape the gaze of tech.
I found the opposite problem. I tried to hang out with non-tech people, I spent a lot of time hanging out with non-tech people. The kinds of people who I ended up hanging out with, and I recognized that this might just be a me problem, though I certainly tried to avoid pigeonholeding myself, were not great people. The great non-tech people I met didn't stay very long.
I agree with this. It's a critique you'll hear often from intellectual elites who prefer NYC. But most people, even in the bay area, are people with many interests who don't talk about intellectual things all the time!
"Mid-tier cities" are great too and have rich social fabrics if you look for them as well!
You are not alone, as an outsider who moved 20+ in the last 15yrs, the Bay Area seems to attract a high concentration of awkward and arrogant people. Introverts who focus all their time in computers and careers, so other parts of their lives suffer - dare to point this out, their fragile egos will slash you back, blinding themselves in the process.
So stop doing that.
"Tech people" are not even a plurality in the greater bay area, let alone a majority. If all you see is tech people everywhere you go, that's your fault. Maybe take some responsibility for your outcomes, and go more interesting places, instead of deciding a metropolis of millions of people is somehow beneath you...