"The one major complaint I continue to hear about SV from my male friends is the severe lack of eligible females there. Being from the east coast and living currently in LA I might find it hard to live in place where I'm surrounded by predominantly male engineers 24/7 who are only talking about tech. I used to work at Cisco and I remember that feeling. It wasn't a good one."
The valley sucks, but San Francisco is loaded with single women. You've just got to make an effort to socialize outside of tech circles (which are skewed male everywhere you go).
Also, it helps to have a level of life sophistication beyond that of the average 20-year-old hacker -- a lot of the single women here are more established, and looking for men who have evolved a bit beyond frat-house antics, or guys who survive exclusively on pizza, meat and beer. A lot of startup guys surround themselves with an entourage of unkempt 20-somethings who have no interests in life outside of computers and heavy drinking; it shouldn't be surprising that women are rare in these environments.
In terms of demographics, SF is certainly not bad - it is evenly split from ages 20 to 27. It starts becoming more male at 30+ (about 10:9 M:F), but, when factoring in that SF has a large male gay population (and significantly smaller lesbian one), it should be about even for heterosexual men/women.
New York is certainly skewed female though, about 12:11 F:M for 20-30.
If you're going to make that kind of comparison, the whole west coast is worse than the east coast. But for the west coast, San Francisco is quite good.
Let me be clearer: there's a lot of personal circumstance in these complaints. I know plenty of guys in the city who have no problems finding or meeting single women (and no, they're not rich, or male models, or anything unreasonable).
There are certainly places in the world where sex ratio is a problem, but if you find yourself in San Francisco and constantly surrounded by male nerds, then you're not doing enough to place yourself in a good situation. When you're working in technology, you have to make a conscious effort to get away from the nerd culture when you're not working. There are lots of women here, but you're not going to find them hanging around the guys at work.
As far as the west coast goes, SF is not bad. But a male in NYC doesn't even have to try, unless you have some sort of bizarre physical deformity. Even if you do have a bizarre physical deformity, there's probably a hipster chick in Williamsburg who would be into that.
But I would like to know where you go in SF where the gender ratio is not a problem. The only place I found that to be true was the marina, which introduces a different set of issues.
I need to party with you, as I'm a total loser in NYC. I checked the census details on the male/female ratio here, and it's not that good. Overall, F > M. But from age 18-40 M > F. After that the number of males decline, which make the overall numbers appear favorable to men. Unless you're into post-menopausal women, it's still tough being a man in NYC.
I must be the only eligible male with a job in NYC who hasn't found a woman or something, and I'm actually considering taking a job in SF (because of the job and the culture).
I don't know if I didn't date because I was too busy, didn't care, or simply didn't know how to meet people in an unfamiliar environment. Probably all of the above.
Timr is right.. I've always struggled to meet women, and I'm now dating a psychologist.. and she tells me psychologists have the same complaint but opposite! (not enough single men!!!) Not sure if the same situation happens in San Francisco but..
This is actually not bad advice at all. There are loads of single japanese chicks at the art schools in SF.
The reason the women in SF claim there are not enough single men is that no woman really wants to date a build release engineer or an underemployed bartender, which are the two main classes of straight men in SF. Pro-tip: they usually pick the bartender.
The valley sucks, but San Francisco is loaded with single women. You've just got to make an effort to socialize outside of tech circles (which are skewed male everywhere you go).
Also, it helps to have a level of life sophistication beyond that of the average 20-year-old hacker -- a lot of the single women here are more established, and looking for men who have evolved a bit beyond frat-house antics, or guys who survive exclusively on pizza, meat and beer. A lot of startup guys surround themselves with an entourage of unkempt 20-somethings who have no interests in life outside of computers and heavy drinking; it shouldn't be surprising that women are rare in these environments.