I am currently in Sunnyvale, and it's genuinely astonishing how much less stuff there is down here than in the East Bay / SF. Like, people who are physically within San Jose still refer to San Francisco as "the city" despite San Jose having more people. Of the ~six dance events I'd like to be regularly going to, two are in SF and four are in Oakland, and zero are south of SF. Used to be one, where I met my wife, but it never recovered from Covid.

I'd guess there's more families in Sunnyvale than Oakland (... fact check: Sunnyvale is 20% minors, Oakland is 21%, so this is not true unless you quibble about definitions).

On the other hand Alameda is, from what I can tell, basically an ideal place for raising a family, and a lot of the island seems to lean into that (lots of Halloween decorations, e.g.; Halloween is our only child-focused holiday so this is a good signal of caring about doing things for children). And it's close to the rest of the East Bay, so I'm hoping I can get both the "good for family" and the "things ever happen" properties.