San Francisco is a fantastic city. You have everything you'd want in a big city but can get away to fantastic natural scenery with a 15 minute drive across the bridge.

Yes, there are a lot of cannabis clubs here. Some will have as many as 60 different strains at a time. You do need a doctors recommendation for medical marijuana to get in, however. Many clubs will actually require you to have a city issued card identifying yourself as a med user. I don't know how easy, if possible, that would be for someone from out of state to get. There are, fortunately, a few other options for getting high end medical marijuana so you wouldn't neccessarily go dry but it wouldn't be the same as Amsterdam where you can just walk into a coffe shop, order a drink and some weed, and just kick back.

As far as quality of the smoke is concerned, the medical marijuana sold here is some of the most potent stuff grown anywhere. As long as you're getting it from a reputable source, and not some guy on the street corner, I would imagine it would be as good, or better, than anything sold in Amsterdam.