It will never cease to exist. It's a city CHOCK full of folks from all over the US who decided not to deal with summers and winters akin to Siberia. Mind you, there are very few degrees which separate summer and winter. It's a blazing 55 degrees in the summer and a freezing 48 in the winter. One doesn't EVER need a fur coat or anything more than a heavy sweater in the winter.
There are only TWO seasons, dry during the "summer" and wet during the rainy season. Each lasts about six months. Folks from afar end up missing the four seasons. They go back home but return. Their choice.
Besides, it has baseball, the orange color from the old New York Giants. It might even get back its basketball team as the Golden State Warriors aren't very war-like.
Football? It will never return to the City by the Bay. Property values are just to ridiculously high. Besides, as Joe Montana said: "The 49er owners didn't try very hard to get them back."
Maybe the property tax rates aren't so ungodly high on the Peninsula.
It's the folks from the rest of the USA who make the City so expensive. They KNOW that any home or business here will cost an arm and a leg. They know that.
Also there are jobs.
San Francisco is the banking capital of the west.
Silicon Valley attracts all the folks from across the Pacific. They'll work for MUCH less and do the same amount of work.
People keep waiting for the prices to drop. They won't with a city on a small peninsula, surrounded on three sides by ocean and bays, with jobs, a ton of tourist attactions, sports teams, six/seven bridges spanning the many bays and waterways and a reputation for decent food. It's a small city, only 49 square miles.
People CHOOSE to move to the Left Coast. Their choice. The state wouldn't be so HUGE if it weren't for the Americans who choose to leave hearth and home from un-California.
75 percent of the people that sell out ATT every game are from the south & east bay, if the post game traffic on hwys 80 and 101 are any indication.