Okay so what you're doing is contradicting the objective advantages/benefits of living near the epicenter of a specific industry with a purely anecdotal example of 10+ years experience in jobs from said epicenter, with the expendable income to travel (domestic/international) for in-person meetings, then defining networking to a disingenuously generalization because it reinforces your opinion.
What if I were to tell you that you can make meaningful relationships and connections w/o "brown nosing/servicing" and its easier to do so in the center of a specific industry?
I'm giving you a specific example of why it's not necessary to be in any particular location to work in tech, or network, collaborate, communicate with other tech people.
Directly contradicting your baseless assertion about how you have to be in SF for those reasons.
Literally a specific, physical example and you're talking about 'defining networking to a disingenuously generalization' ...
You are disingenuous.