Philanthropy: All the technology IPOs have minted hundreds of millionaires. Some of that new wealth will go towards philanthropy. East Coast philanthropy goes towards classic institutions like museums, universities, public parks, and symphony halls. I suspect Silicon Valley philanthropy will look different. During my time in San Francisco, I attended a party for Palladium Magazine, which, to the best of my knowledge, is funded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

The Contrast: San Francisco has the prettiest natural surroundings of any city in America. The rolling hills provide glorious views of the water, the parks, and the buildings. But the beauty is juxtaposed with extremes of entrepreneurship and homelessness. The entrepreneurs are freakishly ambitious. They have bold visions for the future and an ecosystem of investors to finance their risky pursuits. The optimism is contrasted with the angriest homeless people of anywhere I know. During my trip, I saw one man smash and destroy a radio, another empty the contents of a garbage bin and throw it over the sidewalk, another smoking weed on the train, another get kicked out of the diner I was eating at, two people pissing on the streets, and two other men yell at me during conversations with friends. When I went downtown to write and workout on Thanksgiving Day, the streets felt like a scene from I Am Legend. My roommate described the streets of San Francisco as "opening the doors to a mental asylum."

The Weather: Officially, San Francisco has a temperate climate. But in normal person terms, San Francisco is always "kinda cold." It's sweater weather 300 days per year. Or, as Mark Twain once said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." It's rarely hot enough to sit outside, and the city's street life takes the brunt. Most restaurants don't have outside seating because it's rarely warm enough to sit outside, especially at night when the streets feel like a hollow, fog-filled wasteland.

Rapid Mobility: Living in San Francisco is like an MBA for people in technology. People move there in their 20s to build their network and learn about the technology industry. Then they move away when they're ready to have kids. Cities as a networking tool is fueled by the end of lifetime employment. Employees can't expect lifetime employment anymore, so they build career stability through strong professional networks that stay with them even as they jump between jobs. Cities like San Francisco are the best place to build a network. Temporary residency brings side effects. The people who don't expect to stay in San Francisco don't seem politically engaged. I feel this intuitively from conversations with friends, but the data shows the opposite. According to the San Francisco Chronicle: "An eye-popping 74.4 percent of registered San Francisco voters cast a ballot in the midterm elections, the highest percentage for a midterm election here in modern history." According to the city's Department of Elections, voter turnout fell its low in 2013 and 2014, when only 29 percent of voters went to the polls. I'm not sure what accounts for the schism between the data and my intuition. I suspect San Francisco homeowners are more politically engaged than the renters or even homeowners who live in other cities.

The Housing: San Francisco has deeply conservative tendencies for such a liberal city. Its housing supply isn't growing fast enough to keep up with rising demand. The median price of a San Francisco home ($1.35 million) has doubled in the past decade, compared with just a 40 percent increase for the rest of America. Rising costs aren't restricted to San Francisco. Between 1970 and 2010, real housing prices in California increased by 385 percent. As Kim-Mai Cutler wrote: "San Francisco had the highest median prices per square foot and had the lowest number of new construction permits per 1,000 units between 1990 and 2013." I dove into the research and discovered that San Francisco has a long history of blocking big developments, such as the Freeway Revolt in the 1960s. Without the protests, the Bay Bridge would be connected to the Golden Gate Bridge via the Embarcadero Freeway, and other freeways would extend to the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods. Say what you want about people who block new modern housing projects, but I believe San Francisco is a better city because these big developments have been blocked in the past.