Am I the only one who is instinctively skeptical about any discussion of "adulthood", "responsibility", and "maturity"? Although some aspects of adulthood are obviously good (paying your bills on time), these words often seem to also mean "willingness to conform".
I recently moved from San Francisco to South Carolina. San Francisco is often derided as a city of eternal adolescence, whose residents still live with multiple roommates, party at odd hours, switch jobs often, don't think too much about the distant future, and disvalue stability. In contrast, traditional adulthood is alive and well in South Carolina. There's a counterculture, but overall SC is much closer to Leave It To Beaver.
SC has some merits, but personally I'd take SF over SC any day of the week. It is more fun, and it's also contributing much more to technological and cultural advancement, the creation of wealth, and the economy overall.
The lifestyle you describe in San Francisco is unsustainable over the long run for most people. This is one reason why that lifestyle is considered to be more adolescent: it is not realistic for the average middle class person to maintain that lifestyle while having a family and eventually retiring comfortably.
San Francisco the city is eternally adolescent, but the people there are not. There are few long-term residents, and most people who move into the city will eventually move out because it is outrageously expensive (and it's not a great environment for kids: it's very dirty, not particularly safe, the public schools are generally terrible, etc.). That six figure salary is not doing you much good when your small and cramped house is well over $1M, you're paying $1500/month in daycare, you eventually are paying $25k+/year for private schools (not college), and you're hit by high income taxes before you even start making all those payments.
South Carolina is a place where people are less constrained financially. If you want to settle down with a family and a house, you can probably afford to do so if you're middle class and up. You could also probably afford to party all the time. What's interesting to me is that in the presence of choice we see people tend towards the former rather than the latter.
As someone born and raised in the South and now an SF resident, you will find that the South is often very structured and conservative. SF != South, by almost any measure.
That said, you're comparing apples to oranges, somewhat, too. A small-to-mid-sized metro area compared to SF is very different. I think the characteristics you listed to describe SF are popular in NYC, as well.
I recently moved from San Francisco to South Carolina. San Francisco is often derided as a city of eternal adolescence, whose residents still live with multiple roommates, party at odd hours, switch jobs often, don't think too much about the distant future, and disvalue stability. In contrast, traditional adulthood is alive and well in South Carolina. There's a counterculture, but overall SC is much closer to Leave It To Beaver.
SC has some merits, but personally I'd take SF over SC any day of the week. It is more fun, and it's also contributing much more to technological and cultural advancement, the creation of wealth, and the economy overall.