[aubreyz]

I've lived all over the spectrum of "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" to "Venison is the best meat to use for chili." (Guam, Alaska, Florida, DC, and Oregon.) I've lived in the Bay Area since February of this year and nothing beats it for me.

My like list:

The weather. I guess this comes from experiencing temperatures as low as -11 and as high as 102, but my fantasy of finding consistent jacket weather has finally been realized. I actually hate it when the temperature (rarely) climbs above 80.

The outdoors. There's such a glut of hiking/camping opportunities even without bringing Yosemite or Sequoia into it. I can be at the beach with a basket of fish and chips in about half an hour. Mountains (or at least hills) are a constant. Flowers seem to be in perpetual bloom.

The food/farmer's markets. Can't say I'm part of the rampant burrito culture, but I do love the variety of food in SF. I only wish that there could be as much art/culture as there are designer cocktails.

The size. For a big city, San Francisco is incredibly small. I like that I can walk from my favorite fried chicken place in SOMA to my favorite ice cream place in the Mission in a matter of about 40 minutes. Luckily, there are plenty of pockets outside of the parking nightmares and pay-by-the-pound rent to seek refuge (in my case, San Mateo).

Sure, the traffic will make you wish you had a rocket launcher on the roof of your car. And parking is at least a two person job - one to circle the block while the other runs in for the donuts/pizza. It is especially dirty in some places and there are lots of homeless folks but compared to other big cities (NYC and LA, chiefly), I can't really have an issue because there's so much more good than bad.