San Francisco
I spent a few days last week in the San Francisco Bay area. For a geek, visiting the legendary Silicon Valley is a pilgrimage.
Paul Graham has a few interesting essays on what might make the magic happen in Silicon Valley. Indeed, when you are there you can feel that some magic is going on but it is incredibly evasive, you can't point at it or describe it but it's there. Someone can cross the whole valley on the 101 or even on El Camino and all what you see is an endless sprawl. The weather is nice but we are still in Suburbia.
When you visit the computer history museum, the power of the valley starts to unfold. As the guide walk you through the landmark artifacts of the computer world he will add "[...] was developed just here down the road.", "[...] not far from here in Stanford." or "[...] and he was here last year and told us a story about this computer.". Some companies have really cool offices (taken from here), people move around with kick scooters and all the big players have offices in the area.
Why they go to the ugly sprawl instead of San Francisco is still a mystery to me. San Francisco is a great city. Being on the peninsula keeps the whole thing compact and compact cities like Montréal are more pedestrian friendly. You can just wander around and stop by an Irish pub or one or the numerous sea food restaurant in the Fisherman's Wharf. There is an endless downtown beach with huge waves but the water is a bit cold so surfers need a wetsuit.
A compact city don't mean that you are always trapped between sky scrapers. The Golden Gate Park offers a peaceful environment that would require more than one day to explore. The city has numerous fairly steep hills and parking a car there must be a challenge, I imagine the balancing feat required to park a motorcycle.
Paul Graham probably score a point when he conjectures that you need great universities to reproduce Silicon Valley. When you walk on the Stanford and Berkeley campuses you feel a majestic excellence. There are Rodin statues and stone arcades all over the place. When you are there, you want to be worthy of this prominence. Even if you are just passing by.