So honestly, Jeff, what is the attraction of the Bay Area for you? What's in it for any young conservative? Cripes, it can't just be the climate.

Bear in mind my cultural alienation from the West Coast is decades old, but I've been there enough to know it's just not for me. Every time I'm in S.F. it feels like foreign territory. Ditto the LA/San Diego area.

Of course admitting I'm from NJ me to up an avalanche of mockery, but it's home.

The outrageous prices make the idiot moonbats worth it

They believe in free speech, it's just that some speech is more free than others.

Birds of a feather flock together, even dodo birds.

It's fun to watch how totalitarian Communist types and totalitarian Islamofascists are making such great bedfellows - sort of reminds me of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The poor Islamofascists however, who were previously married to the Nazis, as were the Commies, suffered a disastrous end to that perfect Mormon union. But, but at least two out of three still have each other. Now if they can only wait before they try to kill off their lover until after they knock off the free West (taking a lesson from Hitler's premature on the Soviets).

It's great entertainment though especially to ponder how the loony libs on the left coast will have egg all over its face at some much-anticipated point. They really must suffer a form of political autism to not actually get what’s been going on around them in some form or fashion for the past, I don’t know, century?

"We don't carry books by fascists."

Yeah, but I'm sure they have tons of books by socialists, communists, marxists and every stripe of kollectivist kook you can think of.

Redhand - I'm originally from NJ too, so you're not alone.

On the flip side, the restaurants in SF are fantastic.

If only Kerouac were alive!

Beat fascism!

Kerouac would break these little bitches in half

The GF and I were in San Francisco a few years back and went to City Lights, since we’re both sort of beatniks manqués. (Admittedly, she’s a lot better at it than I am.) I’m embarrassed to say we bought a stack of books at the place, a mistake I won’t repeat. City Lights was always a haven for crypto-fascist nitwits, but from the website it sounds a lot more shrilly political than it was five or six years back. Of course, so is everybody else.

Incidentally, that was also our first encounter with California’s draconian anti-smoking laws. How the hell can a bar proclaim that people like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady used to hang out there, and then tell you to step outside for a smoke? Sniveling bunch of Bay Area poseurs.

the strong influence of insurgent thinking is a *good* thing? sounds like something that can get you, *cough* surveilled *cough*, attention.

Brooklynite in Jersey myself.