In 1972, I worked on a project at the Center for Research in Management Science (part of University of California, Berkeley) developing an APL-based timesharing system. We rented time on Resource One's SDS-940 to do our development work.
You’ve articulated a common bay area mistake of assuming what you happen to be aware of is a comprehensive list of what exists in the bay area. There are still many common warehouse and workshop communities through the bay. There will eventually be wikipedia articles about them, claiming them to be a nexus of culture in their time. And you will read comments on those articles also bemoaning that there’s no such things anymore. :)
Don’t feel bad, just get out there and be open to what exists. There’s tons yet to discover in the Bay Area and even as we lose spaces we love, others rise.
Edit: and also even if you confine yourself to just hackerspaces (of which there are still several?) then remember that for many of them “barely clinging to life” is pretty much the state some of them have been fine with since their founding and if the pandemic didn’t kill them, they’re probably not likely to die off for real anytime soon.
Name some! I'm in many Meetup communities for various kinds of tech, in touch with people working on several stealth startups, and the only "tech enthusiast" spaces that ever come up in conversation are the struggling one on the peninsula and the chaotic one in the Mission.
