The Bay Area is not America. The Bay Area is not America. The Bay Area is not America.
It is a microcosm - unlike any other I know. Many cultures and nationalities - people from all over the world - usually young engineers and their families jostle in Mountain View’s Castro street.
There are restaurants offering cuisines from across the world
- Chinese, Turkish/Greek, Indian, European, Japanese, Thai, etc
- sometimes all within walking distance in a “downtown” street.
This is Mountain View’s Castro street on a wet March morning.
It is a welcoming place. More so - in my experience - than even Bangalore and Pune were for me.
But, it is a very demanding place as well. Smart people from
all over the world are here to work for the tech giants, and
living here means always keeping up with the crazy rat race and
high rents and expenses. 
If there is one adjective which describes White Americans in the Bay Area - it is “polite”.
The geography of Bay Area is not unlike Mumbai - just flipped
- so the “city” is to the north of the suburbs. 
The Dumbarton bridge, Stanford tower and the Stanford radio
telescope dish in Palo Alto - as seen from across the bay in
Coyote Hills. 
The Apple loop building (seen near the center of the image in
the greenery), San Jose highrise buildings, and the Licks
Astronomical Observatory - seen as small white dots near the
highest points of the hills in the background. 
A gloomy wet morning at Coyote Hills looking towards Mountain
View - the giant NASA “Hangar One” and the two weird-lotus
Google buildings can be seen. 
San Francisco and the Bay bridge as seen from San Mateo
Coyote Point park. 
Ships entering the bay and heading to refineries as seen from
Martinez. Some even go all the way inland to Stockton. 
East bay hills - overlooking Fremont and NewArk. 
On a cold November day, birds rest on the El Camino Real (an
arterial road running along the cities of the Bay Area) 