I constantly offend my roommate by implying that the Bay Area is just like all the other places...

I haven't lived in a huge number of places in the US, but I have lived in enough of them to observe that the differences aren't as big as one would think. In a way, that's not surprising. Geographic mobility, particularly in upper-middle-class occupational categories, means that every place contains people who're from all over. Furthermore, we're all un…