You wont find a more “wretched hive of scum and villainy” than San Francisco though.
If it weren’t for all the publicly naked homosexuals, homeless heroin junkies, flagrantly abusive and aggressive panhandlers, obnoxious liberals, and self-important hipsters, I would LOVE to live in San Francisco.
I lived in downtown SF for a year in 2007-2008. I would assess it as follows:
1) The homeless are everywhere - even downtown - and have a significant negative impact on the city's quality of life. They are the single worst problem in SF by far. City government deliberately encourages homelessness in an attempt to shake down businesses for more contributions and tax dollars.
2) Weird gay behavior is much more visible on TV than on the streets. Gays/lesbians and their behavior really had no impact on downtown's quality of life one way or the other.
3) Obnoxious liberals know they don't have much of an audience in the Financial District - they confine much of that to City Hall, with an occasional protest on Market Street.
4) Despite the large Asian population, most Asian restaurants in the downtown area cater to tourists and prepare "American Chinese" food - and not very well.
5) The rank-and-file SFPD is still pretty effective at breaking up disruptions to traffic and commerce, downtown at least.
5) San Francisco looks good from a distance and smells bad up close. A potent cocktail of urine and fishy seawater. Like my former CEO used to say, "It's the most beautiful city in the world - from ten feet above the ground on up." (He lived in SoCal...)
6) It is a cold, damp, and foggy city much of the time. The climate has more in common with Seattle than Los Angeles, which I think surprises a lot of those young hipsters who move there after college. It ain't Baywatch, that's for sure..
7) Food, groceries, gasoline, and everything else are considerably more expensive than in the surrounding suburbs.
8) Aside from being able to walk to work and to AT&T Park for Giants games, I didn't get much benefit out of actually living in San Francisco. My peers all took BART home to the East Bay after work, and the nightlife in my immediate neighborhood was no great. Despite the commute, my previous life in the suburbs was better.
To sum up - San Francisco still a pretty good place to visit, especially if you have never been. Parts of the city are visually astounding. But it's certainly not worth paying the extra price to live there. In fact, I've yet to visit a US urban area that is worth the price premium.