There's a few places within a few hours drive. Up 'north' there's
LUNAR and
SARG, both launch on grassy fields (cattle ranch & park, respectively) so flying is limited to the 'green season' (which for this year has basically ended a week or two ago). LUNAR used to have access to Moffet Field for model rocket flying year-round, but Google's increasing use of the field has basically shut that down now, they're in search of a new LPR field but no luck so far. Heading south there's also
TCC, which flies almost every month of the year, with 3-day events in May and October (weather permitting, of course).
All are about 2-2.5 hours drive from San Jose, TCC would obviously be a bit less convenient for folks higher up in the bay.
Both LUNAR and TCC have ~13000-17000' waivers (I forget the exact numbers for each), SARG's field is limited to something like 2000' I think. All 3 groups fly on different weekends (LUNAR 1st Saturday, TCC 3rd Saturday, SARG 4th Saturday), so you can attend them all and the same vendor (
BAR) can usually make it to all of the launches. The 2nd Saturday is used by
ROC in southern CA, which works out well for folks farther south but is too far (IMO, ~7 hours) for Bay Area folks to attend with any regularity. My first time there was for LDRS 35 last year. That said, I do the drive to Black Rock (also ~7 hours for me) every year for
AeroPac's XPRS.