Oh, I think Palo Alto qualifies as "the Bay Area." It's in San Mateo County, the next one immediately south from San Francisco. The nine counties that actually touch San Francisco Bay, including San Mateo, are what metropolitan statisticians in any field usually mean by "the Bay Area."
I was born in San Francisco, so I normally would include Palo Alto in my definition. But I wasn’t sure if the OP wanted to restrict parameters in any way.
