I know Tim (he and I worked together at Sun) and like him a great deal -- but I take exception to his labeling of the Bay Area as "racist", especially from a Canadian. Indeed, the only time in my life that I have heard the n-word used in earnest by a white person was while I was living in Canada (Ottawa, 1995). Not only was I gobsmacked to hear it, I seemed to be the only person who was horrified. (This was at a corporate retreat, and there were about 15 people gathered in a circle casually drinking beers.) As bad as that was, I found the attitudes toward indigenous Canadians to be worse: the racism there was broad -- and seemingly accepted in polite society. So while there may be many reasons to prefer living in Canada over the US (and Vancouver over the Bay Area), in my experience the lack of racism in Canada shouldn't be among them...
If you think the definition of racism is about whether people say the n-word, you don't understand what racism is.
How people treat you is way more important than what they call you (even if those words are unacceptable), and the way minorities get treated in the bay area is not particularly stellar...
