This is a fair question for someone who hasn’t lived in San Francisco for quite some time, and perhaps one that I shouldn’t feel adequately equipped to answer, as I left that dear city owing to a distinct set of frustrations: cost of living, a growing unfriendliness and lack of concern for others, that much of the small and interesting was being pushed out in favor of the bland and expensive. Much of this yes, probably has to do with the dominant shift catering to an industry where you move for the money, regardless of your feelings for a place. San Francisco, when I moved there in the late 90s, was similarly situated. Then, if you wanted to live there, you made it work: you dug in and did so because you loved the place, or more specifically the idea of the place.
And yet: no one can truly live in a  city if they hew to the myopia of a hoped-for landscape, of a history that was and never again will be. Living in the memory of place is not so much living as aping what has come before, and whether part of the myth of the west or Manifest Destiny, San Francisco is most often approached for the history that one make. The rub comes when respect and awareness of precedent meets with a lack of care. And the blank stare is all the more offensive for your passion.

But you do bring up an interesting point, that anyone who comes to a place is, to some extent, looking for something. Me, I felt that it was a place I could get some work done. This was laughed off by a writer I knew in Los Angeles, who found otherwise during his early ’70s tenure. This neatly explains why he moved from SF to Los Angeles, where the question most often posed to a writer (when I lived there, at least) was “television or film?” In Los Angeles you were mostly left alone, whereas in San Francisco, the closeness of the city creates a kind of friction, perhaps the adventure of which you speak. As a native of a city that lacked a definable center, San Francisco was a means unto itself: it was a city sure of itself and its place in history, and what is more attractive to a young person?

It is still possible, this adventure, but even Herb Caen, interviewing a hippie outside the Drogstore (now Magnolia Pub), found that the young men came for the chicks, not for the enlightened atmosphere. Now the Bay Area is as it has been so many times in history, a place to find gold. Without question it has merits beyond its place in the business world, but in an environment where such values become all, the value system itself changes. Cities are not museums, despite our inclinations to make them so. But they are also places of organized chaos, and perhaps the chaos as you knew it has decreased. Jann Wenner picked up on a particular set of values and created a mythos through his magazine, just as ascendant tech companies hope to create a mythos based on monetizing, among other aspects, social concerns.

To speak about what currently counts for adventure, it is the kind that plagues places of great disparity. That there is more of a divide between those who can afford the place (or do so barely) and those who cannot results in crime. It also creates fear. As you might have gathered, I spent considerable time in the Tenderloin, where I saw both unimaginable offenses and acts of incredible grace. Many of my TL-based colleagues thought that tech would change the neighborhood for the better—I didn’t think so. What it would do is create a climate in which those who didn’t know how to properly occupy a city would meet those who were trapped by it. Whether I’m a pessimist remains on the table. The companies that are changing San Francisco can do so in a way that will leave a positive mark in history. They can take a stake in cultural, educational, and social institutions. Or, they can continue to ship their employees out to work, and bring them home to play in a place they take little stake in—until some of them fall in love with the place and force change, because that’s how it works.

I never owned the city, my adopted city, and never claimed ownership—but I couldn’t fault someone when they said it was their city. For something so beautiful, how could you not want to claim it for your own? San Francisco is like that. Forgive me for going on a bit longer than I’d intended.
In my new home, I have been spending so much time on the future present that I haven’t adequately reflected on what I left, and what I still don’t regret leaving. Nothing is fixed, and while the current iteration of San Francisco leaves much to be desired—by both of us, it would seem—I don’t think for a second that it’s so fragile that it will be ruined.