It always cracks me up that people feel like they NEED to live in SF when they come there. I lived in the SF Bay Area for most of my life and NEVER felt the need or desire to live in SF.....at all! There is so much to do in other parts of the Bay Area that are much more affordable, less filthy, and just overall better for your sanity.
If you move to the Bay Area and move to SF without looking at other areas then you have no reason to complain. BART may not be the best thing ever but it is everywhere. People move to SF for the same reason they buy an iPhone. They want to fit in. Go to the East Bay, buy an Android phone, and be different.
While I live in the city and love it, his comment about not being able to make meaningful friendships made me think along the same lines as you did. I think he'd find parts of Oakland or Berkeley to be much more appealing. There's a younger vibe there from the proximity to the university and the lower housing prices that I think would work better for him. You do have to work a bit harder to feel "at the center" of the tech scene (i.e. you're less likely to hear conversations about startups and programming when you're out at dinner and tech meetups are much less convenient), but it's not that much harder. The east bay also has nicer parks, better weather and it's easier to get away on weekends (this past weekend, it took me 90 minutes to get from my home in SF across the Golden Gate Bridge).
Still, I understand the compulsion to live in SF proper. It's like living in Manhattan or the city center of a large European city...illogical in almost every way, but with that "je ne sais quoi" that makes it feel wrong to live anywhere else. It's an alternate reality wherein the pains of living here select out the people that we wouldn't want to spend time with and what's left feels like a community built on kind of shared suffering that gives us a form of pride...we can sleep through anything, tap dance around shit on the sidewalk, find a parking space where there are none, eat food from a random food truck without getting sick and walk everywhere. It's bizarre, dysfunctional and yet oddly compelling.
I was in SF for Google IO a couple years ago and was somewhat fascinated by the fog-mist. Also surprised to find that it shows up almost every day. Seems like a better place to visit than live though. Streetcars are a nice novelty, but I can't imagine commuting on that every day.
Anyone know if there are there any cities in the US/Europe that are as clean and convenient (walk-ability and public transport) as Tokyo?
If you move to the Bay Area and move to SF without looking at other areas then you have no reason to complain. BART may not be the best thing ever but it is everywhere. People move to SF for the same reason they buy an iPhone. They want to fit in. Go to the East Bay, buy an Android phone, and be different.