San Francisco, and several other American cities, were places for freaks and weirdos in the mid-20th century because of a historical anomaly in which the US federal government deliberately subsidized white, middle-class families into leaving for nearly-created suburbs. This trend began reversing in the 1980s and now land-values in the urban core reflect what is seen in cities all over the rest of the world -- that central areas have higher land and housing costs than the periphery.
It was a great, interesting, trippy twenty to thirty-year period, but it doesn't exist anymore and its loss in the Bay Area was probably accelerated in part because California has such an unusually politicized and unpredictable land-use and development process that has led it to consistently underproduce housing for the last 40 years.
The "young Gods" you speak of tend to have higher incomes not just because of the tech industry. They have higher costs because the elder babyboomer Californians rigged and created a system that is so constricted that only the wealthiest millennials can afford to participate in it.
It was a great, interesting, trippy twenty to thirty-year period, but it doesn't exist anymore and its loss in the Bay Area was probably accelerated in part because California has such an unusually politicized and unpredictable land-use and development process that has led it to consistently underproduce housing for the last 40 years.
http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/hou...
The "young Gods" you speak of tend to have higher incomes not just because of the tech industry. They have higher costs because the elder babyboomer Californians rigged and created a system that is so constricted that only the wealthiest millennials can afford to participate in it.
Look at the differences in housing cost burdens based on year of birth here: http://www.lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/120