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I think you'd like Sacramento. It's actually very similar to Portland, OR in a lot of ways. It's also the only large California city which is probably a good balance between liberal America in its urban core, and rural conservatives in its outskirts. A lot of people from the Bay Area denigrate Sacramento as "cowtown" but I think that's part of it's charm, it has been really becoming more vibrant in the last few years though and its urban center is the leading "farm to fork" capital of America because of all the great and productive farm land all around the Central Valley, and also a leader in fourth wave coffee shops.
Plus, Sacramento is very outdoorsy. Most people I know there go camping every month. It's really easy to escape to the great outdoors, and unlike the Bay Area, where when you try to go hike on the weekends, there are tons of cars jammed up to park into the same parking lot, and shitloads of tourists meandering around the forests taking selfies and being obnoxious asses. In Sacramento, the great outdoors to the Northeast and Southwest of the city is very vast and isolated, you're liable to encounter mountain lions and bears, and they are full of deer.
If you ever come down to Sacramento, I'll show you a good time. We can go shooting at a gun range, and get some solid microbrew and fresh world class grub without paying out of our asses like San Francisco, and unlike Berkeley, there are tons of good looking hunnies around who are friendly and down to earth. Sacramento is way underrated but I tell everybody, it's going to be the next "cool" city, it's about to blow up.
Brew bike in Midtown Sacramento
Coffee shop and alley
The City of Trees, has the most trees per capita in the US
Has the largest Victorian housing stock in California outside of San Francisco, because it was early on the second largest city in California prior to 1900
And the REAL great outdoors within 45 minutes to 2 hours of the city. There are literally endless choices as far as camping, hiking, etc. Plenty of BLM land too where you can bring guns.
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