Being from Europe, I can only confirm that people in the Bay Area are in fact, incredibly passive-aggressive. The first few years I must admit that I felt like living on Mars. Even-though I'm coming from a "western" country whose lifestyle and tradition are somewhat similar, the cultural gap was actually much bigger than say, with Indians or Latinos.

At work for example, it took me a rather long time to understand the real meanings of "I'm not sure" which means 'no' or "interesting" which means more or less that what you said is stupid. Not to mention being asked 200-times a day how I am doing or whether I found everything I was looking for at wholefood.

Yep, people in this region have an imperial need to "be nice", at least on the surface and it can feel Orwellian at times if you are not used to it, especially on those days of bad mood. I think in Thailand they call that "sweet mouth, salty butt". But hey, that's also a huge plus, since it prevents a lot of bad vibes and unneeded frictions. I believe it's just a societal organization.

Sometimes I go back to my country for work, and over there people's number one characteristic is distrust and indifference, and I can guarantee you that I feel like a foreigner over there now - well, on normal days, because if I happen to be in a bad mood, I'm kind of showing signs of Tourette syndrome and want to punch everybody.

Overall, I think I'm mixing well in the Bay Area. And more importantly, most of my friends and relatives who share those character traits do tolerate that some foreigners like me don't necessarily think and act the same way. And frankly, wouldn't the world be boring if people were the same everywhere ?

As an Englishman, i have found this whole thread about the cultural differences up and down the west coast somewhat fascinating. What i'm missing is a cross-reference to the European scale of societies.

I live in London, where we don't speak to our neighbours or make eye contact on the tube; would i actually be more comfortable in Seattle than San Francisco? Or would it be over the top, like being in Sweden or something? Or is the variation along a completely different axis?

You'd probably like San Francisco more; I rode Caltrain daily and never had one social interaction onboard. The same wasn't true in Seattle.

As someone who lived his first 22 years in the metro Boston area but has lived in various parts of California for something like 16 years, I'd argue that it is impossible to paint "California" with such a wide brush.

I live in San Diego and it is very different here than in LA or the SF Bay Area (with each of those also being very distinct from each other).

SF Bay Area is also too broad a brush - SF is very different from San Jose, and a number of other regions (Peninsula, Mountain View/Palo Alto, Berkeley, Woodside/Saratoga/Atherton/Los Gatos/Los Altos Hills) all have distinct cultures as well. I'd argue that MV/PA is actually closer to Boston culturally than to SF.

The various parts of CA are, as you say, quite different from one another, but they are all extremely passive-aggressive compared to the North East.

Where aren't people passive aggressive? No where I've ever been.

There are passive-aggressive people everywhere, but it is especially prevalent on the west coast. There’s an old cartoon that sums it up perfectly, comparing New York and LA: the New Yorker is shown to be thinking “I love you, man” but saying “fuck you!”. For the Angelino it's the opposite.