Santana Row is in my backyard. It is indeed touristy, expensive, swanky - a place to see and "be seen" by people. It's a shopping area decked out with expensive stores with fancy names. There are six bars here: Straits, Molly Magees, Roux, V-Bar, Blowfish and Sino. They're all within 2 mins of each other. The first three have small dance floors and a $10 cover.
Ratio: It's called Man Jose for a reason. Girls are never alone.
Dress: Guys dress trendy but no suits. Girls dress well.
Crowd: Mostly Large groups. Oldnemesis is right. Girls tend to hang here in large groups (girl-girl or mixed). You will see a lot of guy-only groups and a lot of guys in tow with their girlfriends. Cockblocking is normal.
Demographic: Mostly Asians and whites, with solid minorities of Mexican, Persian, Indian and European girls. Mostly silicon-valley career girls. Few dark skinned men.
Safety: This area's very safe. You'll see a few cops on bicycles.
Overall, this is the technology capital of the west so just like an engineering campus, not many lookers here. Have fun in with the "I just flew in for a conference and am looking for a sexy tour guide" opener.
Nearby Areas:
You can check Castro St. in Mountain View (15 min north) Palo Alto (25 min North), Campbell/Los Gatos (15 mins South) and San Jose Downtown (5 min East). Palo Alto is quieter and has fewer bars, but Stanford U is nearby hence you'll find a qualified lizard or two to share wine with . Campbell has quieter nightlife but I've recently directed my efforts here and the girls are "supposed" to be more open minded. San Jose Downtown is all university students, more meat-market and more grimy compared to the rest of the area. Lot more cops in actual cop cars.
San Francisco:
If you've never been, I recommend heading north to SF (1 hr) - average girl quality is 2 points higher than San Jose and there's a lot more girls per capita. Union Sq. in San Francisco is the central shopping district and will be teeming with honeys on Saturday afternoon. It's right in the middle of town with lots of activity and a nice place to chill. Spend Saturday checking out SF. There are a lot of bars and clubs all over SF that you can hit later at night.
Here's an SF nightlife thread:
http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-2270.html
One last thing, the closing time for almost all bars here is 1:30-2 am. And it's raining a bit here these days.
Anymore questions: feel free to ask.