[everly]

Sounds like you're thinking inside of a fairly small bubble. If you picked 10 people, at random, from the 800k residents, I assure you that there would be substantial differences.

Off the top of my head, you might get SF State students, tech bros, Chinatown senior citizens who have never left an 8-block radius and don't speak english, Marina moms, Mission District multi-gen families. I mean, come on.

Maybe if you were only picking from people working at tech cos, but even then my experience does not match yours.

[lolinder]

The point is that no one in practice selects a random sample of the people living near them. Everyone they meet is from some self-selected sub-group—the people who live close to X park, the people who work at Y place, the people who shop at Z store. And the larger the city, the more people there are nearby you who are like you, so your total variety experienced will be smaller unless you're actively going out of your way to go places that you don't normally enjoy.

So while OP may be wrong about a random sample of people in SF, they're probably correct about the people that they know in SF.

In a small town everyone shops at the same store, visits the same parks, works out at the same gym. There's only one library and a few restaurants, so there are fewer opportunities to self-select into smaller groups.

[everly]

I just don't agree (aside from the part about small towns, I guess, but that's not relevant to SF).

If OP can't find differing personalities in a place like SF, it's a skill issue, sorry to say.