Hey im originally from georgia, then missouri, been in cali for 16 yrs now, I live in berkeley.
norcal: the bad : San francisco is dirty, smells like pee in alot of it, tons of homeless people, its great to go party there but i hated living there. rent is insane. your not gonna get much more than a studio for less than 1500 unless your in a hood, and the difference between a hood and not hood can be like 2 blocks, or 2 streets distance. Roads are HORRIBLE, my cars lowered on race suspension and i avoid driving there like the plauge. its prolly the dirtiest city i have ever seen. there are alot of gay ppl here, which is fine but at a certain point its like ok your gay, i dont care one way or the other so shut up. Outside of SF you got daly city, south san francisco, san mateo all on the penninsula, you better not have a problem with asians, especially filipinos if you wanna live anywhere on the penninsula including SF which has hella chinese as well. SF is really mixed like you have never seen in the midwest, this is bad for alot of ppl, but its why i moved here //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif. Berkeley and Oakland are bordering cities to each other and just over the bridge (10 minutes away) from sf with no traffic which never happens. Berkeley is NOT FULL OF HIPPIES its full of young succulent asian girls who go to the college, homeless people, rich ex-hippie, now affluent volvo drivers and houses here are 500k and up for condos, anything with a garage and not in the hood, and i mean kids on bikes shooting at each other at 3:30 in the afternoon hood right here in berkeley, start at 750k. Oakland is huge, really spread out, there are some parts that are bad and some really nice, cheaper than SF or Berkeley, has a bad rep but i feel safer in oakland than SF, dont let that gay shit fool you, you can very easily get yourself into some serious shit in the wrong place in sf.
the good : all those filipino and chinese and latin girls, its like baskin robbins for ***** here and nows when you start to appreciate all the gay dudes that scare away the ********** straight guys, more ***** for you man! Clubs and parties, food man food!!!!! my wife and i eat a dif country every night, indian food, japanese, thai, steak, italian, chinese, whatever. Jobs are cool, I have worn jeans to work my whole life and i make 6 figures, im mixed seminole indian (Mikasuki florida band) and have had both ears pierced since i was 13, like a indian bat mitsfa i guess, and no-one gives a shit about that here. Weather is great but not like sunny socal, its foggy alot, not too cold or hot usually though. you can drive 1 hr from here and be in mountains, ocean (cold and stinky up here though) farm land, wilderness whatever. People are cool here not that fake or anything and generally speaking in shape, you dont notice this until you go to burbs and realize thats where all the fat ****s are. or go back to midwest and are like holly shit, everyones fat here. its alot easier to live a heathly life when your general society is geared toward it, a grown man trying to stay fit in philly has a snow balls chance in hell.
SOCAL - san diego is really nice and i like it, if i ever moved from here i would go there, LA is not to my liking at all due to also dirty, i was really annoyed by the people there as well, but i used to dj and most of them were club ppl so take that with a grain of salt. thats all i can say and is from just visiting so may not be the best opinions.
good luck
WHy would u move to frisco? its pretty expensive to live over there.