I didn't want to come off like a hater in my first response, but I feel like your response has given me a little bit of a license to hate, wongsaurus. :)

To me--San Francisco is the American city with the greatest gulf between its imagined importance and its actual contribution to our culture. (Boston is a close second.) I know it's a big financial center but aside from that I'm not sure what it does besides coast off memories of the 60s when it actually was a cultural epicenter. All the hipness moved north to Seattle during the 90s. Basically it's Baltimore-by-the-sea (Baltimore being another quaint, weird city. That's actually managed to have at least one television show shot there for awhile now, starting with Homicide and currently with The Wire.)

And--echoing something else you said--San Francisco is the home of the nation's most aggressive panhandlers. Like, "walking after people demanding money" kind of panhandlers.