Some details:

I'm 21, about to graduate college, and starting work in Cupertino in June. I'll be living with my girlfriend, who will be looking for a job in publishing or journalism.

Everyone who likes NYC or SF says that SF is the place to be, and I don't think I'd mind the commute to Cupertino that much, but my girlfriend and I have never lived in a city and we both much prefer an apartment in a suburban environment. We're not much of partiers, and I won't be living alone, so I don't think we'd find a suburb that boring. But I've heard tales about people who moved out to the bay area and signed a 1-year lease in the suburbs and desperately waited for that lease to end before moving into the city. As far as I know, living in a suburb will probably necessitate buying/leasing a car, and given how uncertain I am about living in suburb/city, I'd rather not get a car and then want to get rid of it within a year if I decide to move into the city. My work provides comfortable shuttles, so I'd prefer to not have a ~1 hr commute, but it's not the end of the world, and, if one of us needs to commute for ~1 hr, it makes more sense for that to be me in a shuttle than my girlfriend driving. It seems very likely that any publishing or journalism jobs for my girlfriend will be in SF or San Jose (which would make suburbs attractive, since we don't know which of the two cities, and it'd really suck to commute from SF to San Jose).

Last summer, I worked in Mountain View, and lived within a 15 minute walk of work, laundry, groceries, Caltrain, and a wide variety of dining options (including Palo Alto via Caltrain in ~30 min if timed right). That was really the ideal situation, but housing was provided to me, and I worry that it will be impossible to find such an ideal location within a reasonable price.