Joe:
To me, the San Francisco examples are more attractive overall simply since their perspective generally seems to take in more of the background rather than just a bunch of fence boards. I like the Doyle for the same reason you do.
My selections for Oakland (Dailey) and Sacramento (Veach) are largely for aesthetics as well, although I was teetering on selecting Tip O'Neill for my Oakland example. There is just something about owning a card of someone named Norris!
Kevin