We are both more isolated and less private than we’ve ever been
February 6, 2024 1:42 AM Subscribe
Though the city has survived a series of local and national recessions in recent decades, San Francisco is said to be in a ‘doom loop’ because so much office space and so many shops have been abandoned since the pandemic. Tech layoffs drove some of the shutdown, but the industry also enabled a mass white-collar withdrawal from the workplace – employees working from home, sometimes leaving the region to work remotely. More than the shrinkage of the population and the emptying out of downtown, the new mood of the city seems to be influenced by a kind of shrinking from human contact. The city remains the densely urban place it always was, but the way people inhabit it is increasingly suburban, looking to avoid strangers and surprises. from In the Shadow of Silicon Valley by Rebecca Solnit [LRB; ungated]
This essay was a really interesting journey. Sort of a eulogy for place, for her place. Thank you.
posted by eirias at 3:26 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
posted by eirias at 3:26 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
I moved out of the Bay Area last year after living there for years. Reading this, I feel heard. The place I moved to was not the same place I left, and it is exactly due to those reasons and specific names she mentioned.
posted by SkinsOfCoconut at 4:18 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
posted by SkinsOfCoconut at 4:18 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
The death of the state is already here; it's just unevenly distributed.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 4:56 AM on February 6 [16 favorites]
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 4:56 AM on February 6 [16 favorites]
I've always had a giant "it's complicated" relationship with San Francisco. It's the biggest city near to where I'm from. My mom has always adored it, my dad (NOT A PEOPLE PERSON, from the country) did not enjoy it, I'm somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, the place can be very beautiful in spots, and it has so much unique stuff you wouldn't find anywhere else. It's the weirdo/hippie capital of Earth, and as a weirdo/hippie, you'd think I'd be more into that.
On the other hand, there's the horrifying amounts of crime and mentally ill people/addicts, etc., bars on the walls all over the place in some areas, crazy drivers, etc., etc. I am usually wigged out to be on the streets of San Francisco and prefer to have as many people around me as possible. I'm a "crazy magnet" already* as is. I'm a suburban person and the amount of paranoia you have to have to be in a city is scary.
* I'm the sort of person who somehow attracts the guy who claims to have a video of Bigfoot. Much like aliens, somehow his video didn't actually have Bigfoot.
I spent the weekend in SF. I had a good time. I stayed in safe areas, I didn't feel particularly wigged out like I do at times for the most part. But literally everywhere you go there are signs saying not to leave anything in your car--and they do mean ANYTHING AT ALL--or else it will be broken into. My friend from south SF is always all, "DON'T EVEN LEAVE A KLEENEX BOX IN THERE" and that is no joke. My cousin's rental car had nothing in it and was still broken into, because the rental car had the ability to lower the back seats to get into the trunk. We had to keep the cars in a divey automated open parking garage because there were no other options and well, there you go. When reporting this at the hotel (and stashing our luggage until we could get it), the front desk clerk said he never feels safe here--I note he lives in the Tenderloin. The rental car place was apparently unfazed and cousin's broken window was the second one that day so far.
Meanwhile, cousin lives so far out in the sticks that they don't even lock cars there. I can't imagine. I'm somewhere in the middle in that in the burbs, I can leave Kleenex boxes, the CupFone, phone cords, etc. in the car but wouldn't leave stuff in a bag in the car in case of burglary either. Someone went around window-smashing in my neighborhood within the last year, but my car was left alone. I am baffled at the entire idea of "if you leave a Kleenex box in the car, someone will break in and steal it." And yet, one of the cars in the garage we were in conspicuously left their Kleenex box in the back of the car. I wondered if it was going to be broken into, but it was gone before I could find out.
Even my mom said she wasn't as into San Francisco as she has been in the past due to the safety issues.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:23 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
On the other hand, there's the horrifying amounts of crime and mentally ill people/addicts, etc., bars on the walls all over the place in some areas, crazy drivers, etc., etc. I am usually wigged out to be on the streets of San Francisco and prefer to have as many people around me as possible. I'm a "crazy magnet" already* as is. I'm a suburban person and the amount of paranoia you have to have to be in a city is scary.
* I'm the sort of person who somehow attracts the guy who claims to have a video of Bigfoot. Much like aliens, somehow his video didn't actually have Bigfoot.
I spent the weekend in SF. I had a good time. I stayed in safe areas, I didn't feel particularly wigged out like I do at times for the most part. But literally everywhere you go there are signs saying not to leave anything in your car--and they do mean ANYTHING AT ALL--or else it will be broken into. My friend from south SF is always all, "DON'T EVEN LEAVE A KLEENEX BOX IN THERE" and that is no joke. My cousin's rental car had nothing in it and was still broken into, because the rental car had the ability to lower the back seats to get into the trunk. We had to keep the cars in a divey automated open parking garage because there were no other options and well, there you go. When reporting this at the hotel (and stashing our luggage until we could get it), the front desk clerk said he never feels safe here--I note he lives in the Tenderloin. The rental car place was apparently unfazed and cousin's broken window was the second one that day so far.
Meanwhile, cousin lives so far out in the sticks that they don't even lock cars there. I can't imagine. I'm somewhere in the middle in that in the burbs, I can leave Kleenex boxes, the CupFone, phone cords, etc. in the car but wouldn't leave stuff in a bag in the car in case of burglary either. Someone went around window-smashing in my neighborhood within the last year, but my car was left alone. I am baffled at the entire idea of "if you leave a Kleenex box in the car, someone will break in and steal it." And yet, one of the cars in the garage we were in conspicuously left their Kleenex box in the back of the car. I wondered if it was going to be broken into, but it was gone before I could find out.
Even my mom said she wasn't as into San Francisco as she has been in the past due to the safety issues.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:23 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
the amount of paranoia you have to have to be in a city is scary
I've lived in cities - including SF - for my entire adult life, and this is a weird take. You don't have to be paranoid. You merely need to be aware of your surrounding. You can't just sleepwalk through the day. I honestly feel safer in densely populated areas because there are always, like, people around.
But literally everywhere you go there are signs saying not to leave anything in your car--and they do mean ANYTHING AT ALL--or else it will be broken into.
Yup. That's living in a city. And, frankly, it is good practice. Being a touring musician taught me that.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:34 AM on February 6 [42 favorites]
I've lived in cities - including SF - for my entire adult life, and this is a weird take. You don't have to be paranoid. You merely need to be aware of your surrounding. You can't just sleepwalk through the day. I honestly feel safer in densely populated areas because there are always, like, people around.
But literally everywhere you go there are signs saying not to leave anything in your car--and they do mean ANYTHING AT ALL--or else it will be broken into.
Yup. That's living in a city. And, frankly, it is good practice. Being a touring musician taught me that.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:34 AM on February 6 [42 favorites]
If you're used to not really needing to dial in your situational awareness antennae, it probably feels like paranoia. Certainly when I visit my relatives in their quiet suburbs I seem paranoid, with my reflexive locking of doors and unease around things like, say, sleeping with the ground floor windows all open.
That said I've lived in large cities all of my adult life (NYC and then Chicago) and have felt entirely at ease in places all along the urban spectrum from Detroit to Istanbul. And when I went to San Francisco last year I was like, ohhh, this is a bad scene, this place is in a bad way.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:13 AM on February 6 [25 favorites]
That said I've lived in large cities all of my adult life (NYC and then Chicago) and have felt entirely at ease in places all along the urban spectrum from Detroit to Istanbul. And when I went to San Francisco last year I was like, ohhh, this is a bad scene, this place is in a bad way.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:13 AM on February 6 [25 favorites]
Yep, that checks.
Or ageism goes in both directions
posted by MonsieurPEB at 7:27 AM on February 6 [15 favorites]
Or ageism goes in both directions
posted by MonsieurPEB at 7:27 AM on February 6 [15 favorites]
I’ve lived in 5 big to medium size American cities - Houston, New York, LA, Kansas City, and San Diego- and have driven in four of them. You can leave a Kleenex box in your car. The rate of car break ins in the Bay Area is astonishing, I have a lot of friends there and it’s a yearly occurrence if you park on the street. It’s not normal by any stretch of the imagination.
posted by q*ben at 7:28 AM on February 6 [10 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 7:28 AM on February 6 [10 favorites]
That was a very interesting article. I've grown so fatigued by the tech industry and SF's place in our zeitgeist that much of it rang true. Having grown up in midwest suburbia, I've since had the opportunity to live in places from small rural college towns to an apartment a few blocks off Times Square. Somehow through all this I've never been the victim of property or physical crime. I really enjoyed SF when I last visited some twenty years ago, but I couldn't imagine going there today. I think my head would explode.
posted by slogger at 7:35 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
posted by slogger at 7:35 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
> the amount of paranoia you have to have to be in a city is scary
I've lived in cities - including SF - for my entire adult life, and this is a weird take. You don't have to be paranoid. You merely need to be aware of your surrounding. You can't just sleepwalk through the day. I honestly feel safer in densely populated areas because there are always, like, people around.
....I grew up in a small CT town, which had a weirdly concentrated inner city. (Long story involving shady business practices conducted by a nearby farmer.) Anyway - in college I moved to New York, as was my lifelong dream. Save for one mugging when I was 19, I stayed largely crime free.
About midway through college I went to visit a friend in Ireland, and spent a little time wandering around Dublin on my own. I may have blundered into a couple of dicey spots, but wandered back out without incident, after realizing I'd taken a wrong turn. I never felt worried, merely sheepish that "whoops, probably no cafes in this part of town."
A couple years after college, I moved to a neighborhood on the Lower East Side; and I noticed when I first moved there that I had my head on a swivel for the first couple weeks - I took a closer look at the neighborhood I was in, and realized that it didn't really look all that different from those parts of Dublin I'd been to. Why was I so paranoid? I realized with a start - it was because the people in my new neighborhood were a different color skin than I, that was all.
And then I took an even closer look and realized that the people who lived in my block were actually looking out for me. Ignacio, the guy who ran the dollar store next to me, always said hello when he saw me on the street, and would chat sometimes when I came in. The doctor who opened a clinic on the block would hang out in the coffee shop on the corner specifically so people could come ask him for free medical advice. The coffee shop turned into a bar at night and would regularly send his employees to walk people home on the block if they'd had a little too much to drink.
But then within about five years the block started "cleaning up". Ignacio had to close his dollar store, and some up-and-coming chef bought the building and turned it into a restaurant. The coffeeshop that was also a bar turned just into a bar. The mom-and-pop hardware store around the corner closed and a guy opened a custom sneaker shop instead. Lots of super-fancy restaurants started popping up in the surrounding neighbohood. I finally got priced out in 2006.
I honestly felt safer when I moved into the neighborhood than I did when I moved out. When I moved in, it was all a lot of locals keeping eyes on the block, but when I moved out, it was all visiting tourists and foodies who were focused on trying to find cute boutiques and vibey places and barely paid attention to you unless they wanted something.
....Interestingly, it was also about the same kind of neighborhood I was in that one time I was mugged (which was on 10th Street right by 5th Avenue, around the corner from my dorm).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:38 AM on February 6 [23 favorites]
I've lived in cities - including SF - for my entire adult life, and this is a weird take. You don't have to be paranoid. You merely need to be aware of your surrounding. You can't just sleepwalk through the day. I honestly feel safer in densely populated areas because there are always, like, people around.
....I grew up in a small CT town, which had a weirdly concentrated inner city. (Long story involving shady business practices conducted by a nearby farmer.) Anyway - in college I moved to New York, as was my lifelong dream. Save for one mugging when I was 19, I stayed largely crime free.
About midway through college I went to visit a friend in Ireland, and spent a little time wandering around Dublin on my own. I may have blundered into a couple of dicey spots, but wandered back out without incident, after realizing I'd taken a wrong turn. I never felt worried, merely sheepish that "whoops, probably no cafes in this part of town."
A couple years after college, I moved to a neighborhood on the Lower East Side; and I noticed when I first moved there that I had my head on a swivel for the first couple weeks - I took a closer look at the neighborhood I was in, and realized that it didn't really look all that different from those parts of Dublin I'd been to. Why was I so paranoid? I realized with a start - it was because the people in my new neighborhood were a different color skin than I, that was all.
And then I took an even closer look and realized that the people who lived in my block were actually looking out for me. Ignacio, the guy who ran the dollar store next to me, always said hello when he saw me on the street, and would chat sometimes when I came in. The doctor who opened a clinic on the block would hang out in the coffee shop on the corner specifically so people could come ask him for free medical advice. The coffee shop turned into a bar at night and would regularly send his employees to walk people home on the block if they'd had a little too much to drink.
But then within about five years the block started "cleaning up". Ignacio had to close his dollar store, and some up-and-coming chef bought the building and turned it into a restaurant. The coffeeshop that was also a bar turned just into a bar. The mom-and-pop hardware store around the corner closed and a guy opened a custom sneaker shop instead. Lots of super-fancy restaurants started popping up in the surrounding neighbohood. I finally got priced out in 2006.
I honestly felt safer when I moved into the neighborhood than I did when I moved out. When I moved in, it was all a lot of locals keeping eyes on the block, but when I moved out, it was all visiting tourists and foodies who were focused on trying to find cute boutiques and vibey places and barely paid attention to you unless they wanted something.
....Interestingly, it was also about the same kind of neighborhood I was in that one time I was mugged (which was on 10th Street right by 5th Avenue, around the corner from my dorm).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:38 AM on February 6 [23 favorites]
I was born in NYC and lived through the crime years and I think SF crime and atmosphere is not the same. I remember stepping over passed out addicts on my way to school in 1980s Brooklyn but it was a neighborhood full of community and I knew all the shop owners on my block. In SF, I see a lot of broken systems and hopelessness. The petty theft is really high in SF - more so than I remember in Brooklyn back in the day. High crime across the cities is not the same. Currently, I feel very safe parking our high end car in NYC with tons of equipment and clothes in the backseat without fear of theft. There is a high fear of having rats and mice getting under the car and chewing the wires.
posted by ichimunki at 7:43 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
posted by ichimunki at 7:43 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
There's a lot of really vibrant community is the bay area in my experience. It's just intensely private because there are so many profoundly lonely tech workers moving there, and these communities have had a really bad experience with them.
posted by constraint at 7:47 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
posted by constraint at 7:47 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
I thought it was kind of a weird article. Empty office space is endemic across the entire US, because NIMBYs shot down housing in the SF area for the past 50 years in favor of offices where the people leave at 5:00. That was a choice made by the governments, partially due to CA's tax law Prop 13 but also because business taxes are higher, so property tax for housing can be lower.
SF itself is becoming a wealthy suburban enclave, not a major city, nor a crime haven Republicans say it is. I guess they are embarrassed they can't build a wealthy suburban enclave as well as Californians can. The actual amount of poverty and the diversity in SF is falling dramatically.
The 'car break-in' thing is actually a factor in the changes in SF. Only about 50% of people in SF even own a car, only slightly higher than the percent who own a home there.
Wealthy people don't experience much physical crime personally, so they get really pissed about property crime. Stats say more cars are reported broken into in cities like Dallas, Chicago, Miami, LA, etc, so if SF is worse, then you have to decide if SF is worse at reporting break-ins than other cities and then why that would be.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on February 6 [25 favorites]
SF itself is becoming a wealthy suburban enclave, not a major city, nor a crime haven Republicans say it is. I guess they are embarrassed they can't build a wealthy suburban enclave as well as Californians can. The actual amount of poverty and the diversity in SF is falling dramatically.
The 'car break-in' thing is actually a factor in the changes in SF. Only about 50% of people in SF even own a car, only slightly higher than the percent who own a home there.
Wealthy people don't experience much physical crime personally, so they get really pissed about property crime. Stats say more cars are reported broken into in cities like Dallas, Chicago, Miami, LA, etc, so if SF is worse, then you have to decide if SF is worse at reporting break-ins than other cities and then why that would be.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on February 6 [25 favorites]
San Francisco is a demonstration of what lack of will looks like at two very different points - a lack of will by by government and the citizenry to deal with criminals and the homeless, and a lack of will by commercial mortgage holders* to permit office and retail rents to fall to market-clearing levels. If and when this
*It's not really a landlord problem anymore, other than post-foreclosure landlords. Non-post-foreclosure landlords of office buildings in SF are quite rationally holding out for higher rents, since leases at market clearing rents guarantee they will default their mortgages, and holding out at least provides a small chance of getting back into the money.
posted by MattD at 7:57 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
*It's not really a landlord problem anymore, other than post-foreclosure landlords. Non-post-foreclosure landlords of office buildings in SF are quite rationally holding out for higher rents, since leases at market clearing rents guarantee they will default their mortgages, and holding out at least provides a small chance of getting back into the money.
posted by MattD at 7:57 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
Tell Me No Lies is on point.
> Younger people's constant contact with their friends is far beyond anything we experienced growing up.
I have a veritable hoard of teenagers in my house, and all of them probably spend more time with their friends than I did when I was in high school, by an order of magnitude. There are days that one of my daughters will live stream to her best friend, literally all day, just chatting and moving about their normal activities. My son is on Discord with his close friends every night (even though he spent all day with them at school), and they engage at a level that I can't really comprehend.
They are in a tribe.
posted by discardme at 8:23 AM on February 6 [17 favorites]
> Younger people's constant contact with their friends is far beyond anything we experienced growing up.
I have a veritable hoard of teenagers in my house, and all of them probably spend more time with their friends than I did when I was in high school, by an order of magnitude. There are days that one of my daughters will live stream to her best friend, literally all day, just chatting and moving about their normal activities. My son is on Discord with his close friends every night (even though he spent all day with them at school), and they engage at a level that I can't really comprehend.
They are in a tribe.
posted by discardme at 8:23 AM on February 6 [17 favorites]
The_Vegetables that’s a good point. I’d point out that the cities with higher levels of auto crime likely have more cars per capita as they are more sprawling and have poorer public transit systems. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the break ins are in poorer neighborhoods, and that more wealthy people are parking in secured parking areas. The property crime in the Bay Area is more obvious to me because it’s in wealthier neighborhoods. I disagree that this means that the problem is insignificant, or that the situation in San Francisco is in any way normal or acceptable at the moment.
posted by q*ben at 8:32 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
posted by q*ben at 8:32 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
The reactions here are very weird to see, as someone who moved to SF a few years ago and loves it more than anywhere I've lived before! And it's not like I live in the semi-suburban western half of the city, I'm in the Mission and two blocks from a subway stop. I have never felt unsafe or like I needed to be hyper vigilant here, even at night, mostly due to the "eyes on the street" thing. As for car break-ins, they're really mostly happening in tourist spots (Alamo Square, Fisherman's Wharf), not even in wealthy residential areas.
However, I do see what the author of the article is talking about happen in real time--the Mission is gentrifying, rents are going up, and unique weird neighborhood stores are getting replaced or just sitting vacant because the gentrifiers don't engage with the community or patronize the local businesses. Just around the corner from me, a bar that had been open for ~40 years closed last month. It wasn't the best or worth going out of your way for but it was a neighborhood spot where you could always get a seat at the bar and meet a fascinating stranger.
I think this effect is most apparent at my local Safeway, which is definitely in its own 'doom loop'. The store started understaffing and locking some valuables up, which made it unpleasant to go there. That, combined with the pandemic, led to a surge in Instacart shoppers and a decline in people doing their everyday shopping, which in turn makes the store feel worse to go in, and so on and so forth so that now it feels mildly apocalyptic in there.
posted by Maecenas at 8:35 AM on February 6 [12 favorites]
However, I do see what the author of the article is talking about happen in real time--the Mission is gentrifying, rents are going up, and unique weird neighborhood stores are getting replaced or just sitting vacant because the gentrifiers don't engage with the community or patronize the local businesses. Just around the corner from me, a bar that had been open for ~40 years closed last month. It wasn't the best or worth going out of your way for but it was a neighborhood spot where you could always get a seat at the bar and meet a fascinating stranger.
I think this effect is most apparent at my local Safeway, which is definitely in its own 'doom loop'. The store started understaffing and locking some valuables up, which made it unpleasant to go there. That, combined with the pandemic, led to a surge in Instacart shoppers and a decline in people doing their everyday shopping, which in turn makes the store feel worse to go in, and so on and so forth so that now it feels mildly apocalyptic in there.
posted by Maecenas at 8:35 AM on February 6 [12 favorites]
Some of the comments here talking about crime make me wonder if people bothered to RTFA. It says:
Levels of violent crime are actually lower in San Francisco than in many American cities. Theft is a bigger problem, but like homelessness it has been exacerbated by the tech boom, which brought an influx of well-paid workers and a steep rise in housing prices over the past three decades, as well as by nationwide economic shifts and cuts in social services since the 1980s. Still, a video of an impoverished-looking Black guy in a San Francisco drugstore stuffing a trash bag full of goods and wheeling it away on his bicycle became an online sensation in 2021. The closures of several downtown chain stores were blamed by their parent corporations on theft, but when journalists looked into the stories, they found that in most cases outlets were closed because of low revenue and other more mundane problems.
And there is more in the article about how the pearl clutching over visible poor people makes one blind to the actual structures creating this dystopia. Worth reading the whole thing.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:36 AM on February 6 [30 favorites]
Levels of violent crime are actually lower in San Francisco than in many American cities. Theft is a bigger problem, but like homelessness it has been exacerbated by the tech boom, which brought an influx of well-paid workers and a steep rise in housing prices over the past three decades, as well as by nationwide economic shifts and cuts in social services since the 1980s. Still, a video of an impoverished-looking Black guy in a San Francisco drugstore stuffing a trash bag full of goods and wheeling it away on his bicycle became an online sensation in 2021. The closures of several downtown chain stores were blamed by their parent corporations on theft, but when journalists looked into the stories, they found that in most cases outlets were closed because of low revenue and other more mundane problems.
And there is more in the article about how the pearl clutching over visible poor people makes one blind to the actual structures creating this dystopia. Worth reading the whole thing.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:36 AM on February 6 [30 favorites]
I've read a couple times in this thread that you don't need to be paranoid in the city, followed by an alternative that is just a way to rephrase being paranoid in the city as a necessity, with an anecdote to follow demonstrating the paranoia.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:38 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:38 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
That said I've lived in large cities all of my adult life (NYC and then Chicago) and have felt entirely at ease
Same. You know where I feel constantly paranoid and not at ease? The deep south city where I grew up where I had to keep myself constantly in check because letting certain people in to see the real me put me in danger.
I'd rather someone break into my car (which is left unlocked, because windows are expensive to replace) and steal the coins out of my cupholder than, for example, be around the people who busted the windows and slashed the tires of the kid at my school who had the temerity to put a "my Darwin shark ate your Jesus fish" sticker on his car.
Also, life pro tip, best way not to be a victim of property crime? Be poor lol.
posted by phunniemee at 8:42 AM on February 6 [12 favorites]
Same. You know where I feel constantly paranoid and not at ease? The deep south city where I grew up where I had to keep myself constantly in check because letting certain people in to see the real me put me in danger.
I'd rather someone break into my car (which is left unlocked, because windows are expensive to replace) and steal the coins out of my cupholder than, for example, be around the people who busted the windows and slashed the tires of the kid at my school who had the temerity to put a "my Darwin shark ate your Jesus fish" sticker on his car.
Also, life pro tip, best way not to be a victim of property crime? Be poor lol.
posted by phunniemee at 8:42 AM on February 6 [12 favorites]
I've read a couple times in this thread that you don't need to be paranoid in the city, followed by an alternative that is just a way to rephrase being paranoid in the city as a necessity, with an anecdote to follow demonstrating the paranoia.
Hm see I see a bunch of people saying that "situational awareness" isn't the same thing as "paranoia," which suggests an unjustified anxiety and sense of personal persecution. And then following that by illustrating how situational awareness works. People in the suburbs also have situational awareness, it just manifests differently and usually is indistinguishable from driving correctly, because they're never out of their cars.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:44 AM on February 6 [11 favorites]
Hm see I see a bunch of people saying that "situational awareness" isn't the same thing as "paranoia," which suggests an unjustified anxiety and sense of personal persecution. And then following that by illustrating how situational awareness works. People in the suburbs also have situational awareness, it just manifests differently and usually is indistinguishable from driving correctly, because they're never out of their cars.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:44 AM on February 6 [11 favorites]
You can look at SF's historical crime stats here:
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard
Compared to 2019, things are pretty much the same except for auto thefts and a slight bump in burglaries.
the Mission is gentrifying
The Mission has been gentrifying since 1998 and probably before that. Back in the dot com days there were all sorts of protests against startups in the Mission. That ship, as they say, sailed long, long ago.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:47 AM on February 6 [8 favorites]
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard
Compared to 2019, things are pretty much the same except for auto thefts and a slight bump in burglaries.
the Mission is gentrifying
The Mission has been gentrifying since 1998 and probably before that. Back in the dot com days there were all sorts of protests against startups in the Mission. That ship, as they say, sailed long, long ago.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:47 AM on February 6 [8 favorites]
Younger people's constant contact with their friends is far beyond anything we experienced growing up.
I'm the last person to devalue the Internet social life, but it is not actually a complete substitute for connections within your physical community.
posted by praemunire at 8:51 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
I'm the last person to devalue the Internet social life, but it is not actually a complete substitute for connections within your physical community.
posted by praemunire at 8:51 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
I’m getting the sense some people commenting haven’t read the article and are using this thread as platform for continued SF-bashing when literally the article sort of critiques the current conventional obsession of rampant street crime in San Francisco while ignoring the crime of the billionaire class and tech industry that have wholly taken over the city since at least 2010.
In fact, all the things people initially saw as uniquely San Francisco issues like homelessness, scary/sad public drug use, petty crime and bonkers housing costs are now complaints I hear about from relatives in Florida and see complaints about on local subreddits all over the country. San Francisco and the west coast just got to the party 5 to 10 years early (as if often the case), but the rest of the country is catching up. And it’s not because of San Francisco’s liberal and progressive governance we have these problems if my family in central Florida are experiencing the same damn things (if on a smaller level).
posted by flamk at 8:53 AM on February 6 [24 favorites]
In fact, all the things people initially saw as uniquely San Francisco issues like homelessness, scary/sad public drug use, petty crime and bonkers housing costs are now complaints I hear about from relatives in Florida and see complaints about on local subreddits all over the country. San Francisco and the west coast just got to the party 5 to 10 years early (as if often the case), but the rest of the country is catching up. And it’s not because of San Francisco’s liberal and progressive governance we have these problems if my family in central Florida are experiencing the same damn things (if on a smaller level).
posted by flamk at 8:53 AM on February 6 [24 favorites]
where I feel constantly paranoid and not at ease
One of my closest friends lives in a perfectly pleasant little suburb of Vancouver--not hyperwealthy, but not downtrodden, either. I visit there at least a couple of times a year. And, without fail, I feel a twinge of unease if I'm outside when night falls. "The quiet and the dark," my city brain yells, "it reeks of death!"
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
One of my closest friends lives in a perfectly pleasant little suburb of Vancouver--not hyperwealthy, but not downtrodden, either. I visit there at least a couple of times a year. And, without fail, I feel a twinge of unease if I'm outside when night falls. "The quiet and the dark," my city brain yells, "it reeks of death!"
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
> Americans face a social pandemic of loneliness and isolation.
I have a lot of friends. I mean, I don't really feel like I have "a lot" of friends, I feel like I have a baseline number of friends that every adult who wants that amount of company in their lives should have, but I don't. I have, in raw numbers, many more friends than most people have these days. I don't say this to boast but to point out how unusual it is*, and the only reason I can say this is because I have worked tremendously hard (both physically and emotionally) to maintain these friendships over the decades, work I did and continue to do because it's important to me and worth it. But many (most?) people were not raised by parents who were as social as mine were and therefore did not grow up in an environment where friendship was instinctively treated as almost as important as family, so they perhaps do not expect themselves or others to make that sort of effort or place that degree of emphasis upon it.
I'm also old enough to remember life before the internet and before human relationships were largely mediated via screens, so at a fundamental level I crave face-to-face interaction and texting/FaceTime/whatever, while admittedly very useful and beneficial in some ways (my wife and I are currently living in different cities, and this arrangement would be much more difficult without video calling), are all essentially pale shadows of the sorts of human interactions I find most rewarding. I'm not discounting the ability of electronic communication to bring people together, but to me at least it's different and ultimately inferior.
All of this is to say that in certain ways I seem to be an outlier in terms of what I hope for and expect out of and from adult friendships, and even then I only pulled it off because I put a *ton* of effort and will into it. A lot of people do not have the time, energy, drive and/or opportunity to do any of this and the internet has, in various ways, made it so, so easy to...just not do any of it. So lots of people either don't see what friends they do have very often (or at all) and are lonely, or don't make any friends in the first place, and are lonely...but you're never truly alone on the internet, are you?
* at my 50th birthday party last year one of my friends in a circle of friends that doesn't overlap much with the others was saying goodbye to me at the end of the night and literally exclaimed "You have a lot of friends!" in a look and tone of wide-eyed amazement. I mean, shit, I guess I do.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:55 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
I have a lot of friends. I mean, I don't really feel like I have "a lot" of friends, I feel like I have a baseline number of friends that every adult who wants that amount of company in their lives should have, but I don't. I have, in raw numbers, many more friends than most people have these days. I don't say this to boast but to point out how unusual it is*, and the only reason I can say this is because I have worked tremendously hard (both physically and emotionally) to maintain these friendships over the decades, work I did and continue to do because it's important to me and worth it. But many (most?) people were not raised by parents who were as social as mine were and therefore did not grow up in an environment where friendship was instinctively treated as almost as important as family, so they perhaps do not expect themselves or others to make that sort of effort or place that degree of emphasis upon it.
I'm also old enough to remember life before the internet and before human relationships were largely mediated via screens, so at a fundamental level I crave face-to-face interaction and texting/FaceTime/whatever, while admittedly very useful and beneficial in some ways (my wife and I are currently living in different cities, and this arrangement would be much more difficult without video calling), are all essentially pale shadows of the sorts of human interactions I find most rewarding. I'm not discounting the ability of electronic communication to bring people together, but to me at least it's different and ultimately inferior.
All of this is to say that in certain ways I seem to be an outlier in terms of what I hope for and expect out of and from adult friendships, and even then I only pulled it off because I put a *ton* of effort and will into it. A lot of people do not have the time, energy, drive and/or opportunity to do any of this and the internet has, in various ways, made it so, so easy to...just not do any of it. So lots of people either don't see what friends they do have very often (or at all) and are lonely, or don't make any friends in the first place, and are lonely...but you're never truly alone on the internet, are you?
* at my 50th birthday party last year one of my friends in a circle of friends that doesn't overlap much with the others was saying goodbye to me at the end of the night and literally exclaimed "You have a lot of friends!" in a look and tone of wide-eyed amazement. I mean, shit, I guess I do.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:55 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
Hmm, eleven years after Is San Francisco The Brooklyn To Silicon Valley's Unbuilt Manhattan? and the Bay is still no closer to building sufficient housing or smarter transit.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:58 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 8:58 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
I’m getting the sense some people commenting haven’t read the article and are using this thread as platform for continued SF-bashing when literally the article sort of critiques the current conventional wisdom of rampant street crime in San Francisco while ignoring the crime of the billionaire class and tech industry that have wholly taken over the city since at least 2010.
To be clear I experienced none street crime in SF, my sense of bad broken vibes was entirely derived from the white folks with $20K wristwatches scurrying silently from building to car while every restaurant and store was populated exclusively by the doordashers picking up the wristwatch peoples' food/supplies. Streets shouldn't be that empty at 2pm on a beautiful Saturday.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:59 AM on February 6 [18 favorites]
To be clear I experienced none street crime in SF, my sense of bad broken vibes was entirely derived from the white folks with $20K wristwatches scurrying silently from building to car while every restaurant and store was populated exclusively by the doordashers picking up the wristwatch peoples' food/supplies. Streets shouldn't be that empty at 2pm on a beautiful Saturday.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:59 AM on February 6 [18 favorites]
Then criticize that (or billionaires or tech or capitalism) and not a community of 800,000 people, many of whom are the direct casualties of that.
It honestly feels like people love kicking San Francisco out of some misplaced hatred towards capitalism and tech but also out of a vindictive grudge to take the city down a peg or two. It’s gross as fuck.
posted by flamk at 9:06 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
It honestly feels like people love kicking San Francisco out of some misplaced hatred towards capitalism and tech but also out of a vindictive grudge to take the city down a peg or two. It’s gross as fuck.
posted by flamk at 9:06 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]
Yep, that checks. As is traditional the older generation has no conception of what the younger generation is up to. Younger people's constant contact with their friends is far beyond anything we experienced growing up.
It's beyond but it's different and missing some key features. It would be great if it were in tandem with real-world opportunities. The physical world is rich and complex for all your senses/semi-conscious and it's unpredictable in ways that online can't match (could it match? maybe, dunno).
What I notice with the Young People (and I do, like, know some young people) is that they don't have access to the third spaces/public that I did when I was their age and such third spaces as are available are much more heavily surveilled and require much more capital to participate. Moreover the "you've got to live far from your friends in shitty accommodation" thing that used to be confined to the suburbs has now spread to the city.
When I was in my late teens/early twenties, it was very affordable to get a big, run-down house close to the bus, downtown, etc with your friends, and the landlord was probably some local rando who only owned a few properties. You didn't need to pass a credit check for most of these folks. There still are group houses, but not nearly as many and the rent isn't nearly as low per-person. Many, many young people known to me personally live in near-ish suburbs and have to pay to have a car instead of just using the bus and biking, and of course that means commuting into the city every time you want to do anything or see a friend, because your friend lives across the metro. Like, when I was twenty-five, almost no one I knew had a car, because we didn't need them and they were expensive. Now almost all the young people I know have cars, and thus have less disposable income and a huge source of stress in re maintenance, theft, etc.
This has an enormous impact on art and political scenes that the internet/discord/phones/etc don't really compensate for.
~~
Cities and paranoia - if you're used to living in the city, it's not paranoia, it's situational awareness. If you don't live in the city, it's stressful. When I had just moved here, I remember walking back from a friend's potluck (a matter of 3/4 mile) carrying my long-handled pan in my hand and thinking "if anyone messes with me, I will hit them with the pan". Reader, no one messed with me, because I was walking on a safe residential street in the early evening. I would make that same walk today ambling along without a care, because I know the area and have lived here since the year dot.
The deal is that if you want to live in the city, you do need to accept that you need the situational awareness. There's nothing wrong with thinking "it's tiring to visit the city because I need to be aware in extra ways that I don't need every day". The problem starts when you think, "I want all the amenities of the city but don't want to deal with the natural drawbacks that arise when many, many, many strangers interact."
It gets even worse when people think, "I want the amenities of a city but I don't want to pay taxes for social services so that people don't commit crimes of desperation; I'd rather pay for police and surveillance so everyone is miserable".
You should see it here in near south Minneapolis now - our crooked, contemptible mayor has fenced off every median and open space to keep homeless people from camping on them and now has taken to trucking in giant broken concrete chunks to dump on vacant lots. God knows how much we've spent on police and fences - surely enough to house the actually relatively small street-level homeless population.
posted by Frowner at 9:07 AM on February 6 [37 favorites]
It's beyond but it's different and missing some key features. It would be great if it were in tandem with real-world opportunities. The physical world is rich and complex for all your senses/semi-conscious and it's unpredictable in ways that online can't match (could it match? maybe, dunno).
What I notice with the Young People (and I do, like, know some young people) is that they don't have access to the third spaces/public that I did when I was their age and such third spaces as are available are much more heavily surveilled and require much more capital to participate. Moreover the "you've got to live far from your friends in shitty accommodation" thing that used to be confined to the suburbs has now spread to the city.
When I was in my late teens/early twenties, it was very affordable to get a big, run-down house close to the bus, downtown, etc with your friends, and the landlord was probably some local rando who only owned a few properties. You didn't need to pass a credit check for most of these folks. There still are group houses, but not nearly as many and the rent isn't nearly as low per-person. Many, many young people known to me personally live in near-ish suburbs and have to pay to have a car instead of just using the bus and biking, and of course that means commuting into the city every time you want to do anything or see a friend, because your friend lives across the metro. Like, when I was twenty-five, almost no one I knew had a car, because we didn't need them and they were expensive. Now almost all the young people I know have cars, and thus have less disposable income and a huge source of stress in re maintenance, theft, etc.
This has an enormous impact on art and political scenes that the internet/discord/phones/etc don't really compensate for.
~~
Cities and paranoia - if you're used to living in the city, it's not paranoia, it's situational awareness. If you don't live in the city, it's stressful. When I had just moved here, I remember walking back from a friend's potluck (a matter of 3/4 mile) carrying my long-handled pan in my hand and thinking "if anyone messes with me, I will hit them with the pan". Reader, no one messed with me, because I was walking on a safe residential street in the early evening. I would make that same walk today ambling along without a care, because I know the area and have lived here since the year dot.
The deal is that if you want to live in the city, you do need to accept that you need the situational awareness. There's nothing wrong with thinking "it's tiring to visit the city because I need to be aware in extra ways that I don't need every day". The problem starts when you think, "I want all the amenities of the city but don't want to deal with the natural drawbacks that arise when many, many, many strangers interact."
It gets even worse when people think, "I want the amenities of a city but I don't want to pay taxes for social services so that people don't commit crimes of desperation; I'd rather pay for police and surveillance so everyone is miserable".
You should see it here in near south Minneapolis now - our crooked, contemptible mayor has fenced off every median and open space to keep homeless people from camping on them and now has taken to trucking in giant broken concrete chunks to dump on vacant lots. God knows how much we've spent on police and fences - surely enough to house the actually relatively small street-level homeless population.
posted by Frowner at 9:07 AM on February 6 [37 favorites]
I live in one of those places where you can leave your keys in your ignition when you park. I've had my car stolen from once, in the 20 years I lived here; I had a bag of groceries, with a sixpack of microbrew beer on top, in the backseat with the window open.
Someone stole -one- bottle out of my sixpack.
I don't think I would enjoy living in SF.
posted by The otter lady at 9:10 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
Someone stole -one- bottle out of my sixpack.
I don't think I would enjoy living in SF.
posted by The otter lady at 9:10 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
I'd rather someone break into my car (which is left unlocked, because windows are expensive to replace)
Data point: I left my car unlocked (in my mid-sized Midwestern city) last year, and during the night someone took advantage of that fact and did $2200 worth of damage (not counting the cost of towing) to the steering column of my car, apparently thinking that they could hotwire it. Unless you have an antique and/or unusual make/model of car, the window is much cheaper to replace, and you can drive your car to the auto glass place. I have also had my car window broken, twice in Memphis and once in Chicago; two out of those three times, I had a bag with stuff in it in plain sight. Now, I carry a bunch of random, non-valuable crap in the back and bury my luggage under it if I have to leave it in there.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:14 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
Data point: I left my car unlocked (in my mid-sized Midwestern city) last year, and during the night someone took advantage of that fact and did $2200 worth of damage (not counting the cost of towing) to the steering column of my car, apparently thinking that they could hotwire it. Unless you have an antique and/or unusual make/model of car, the window is much cheaper to replace, and you can drive your car to the auto glass place. I have also had my car window broken, twice in Memphis and once in Chicago; two out of those three times, I had a bag with stuff in it in plain sight. Now, I carry a bunch of random, non-valuable crap in the back and bury my luggage under it if I have to leave it in there.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:14 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
(On preview, I want to be clear that this is not directed at you, The otter lady! I think it's fine to say "this is not for me.")
I'm struggling to put words to how grossed out I am by the conflation of car break-ins with actual violence or unsafety. We live in a society! Imagine encountering staggering wealth inequality and thinking the most important thing to talk about is how you can't leave your $5K laptop on your passenger seat in the Tenderloin. Imagine traveling anywhere, not following its cultural norms, experiencing the consequences, and leaving thinking that the city, not your entitlement, is the problem.
Even worse, the ubiquitous story of "a store clerk warned me about car break-ins!!!" Getting a warning is not the same thing as being a victim of a crime. I guess the mere acknowledgement of the inevitable consequences of rampant wealth disparity is enough to make tourists feel like they lived through something. What a thrill.
I've been here for 13 years and I'm planning to leave, but because it's so desperately expensive and we can't afford to have a family here or own any property. I would stay if I could. I have a beautiful community here, and I'm heartbroken that I have to sacrifice my connections with so many queer families so that we can afford to be a queer family ourselves.
I cannot abide transplants like me telling the story of San Francisco like it's happened around us, not because of us; like displacement and disconnection isn't because of us; like the city owed us something and let us down instead of the inverse.
posted by c'mon sea legs at 9:15 AM on February 6 [36 favorites]
I'm struggling to put words to how grossed out I am by the conflation of car break-ins with actual violence or unsafety. We live in a society! Imagine encountering staggering wealth inequality and thinking the most important thing to talk about is how you can't leave your $5K laptop on your passenger seat in the Tenderloin. Imagine traveling anywhere, not following its cultural norms, experiencing the consequences, and leaving thinking that the city, not your entitlement, is the problem.
Even worse, the ubiquitous story of "a store clerk warned me about car break-ins!!!" Getting a warning is not the same thing as being a victim of a crime. I guess the mere acknowledgement of the inevitable consequences of rampant wealth disparity is enough to make tourists feel like they lived through something. What a thrill.
I've been here for 13 years and I'm planning to leave, but because it's so desperately expensive and we can't afford to have a family here or own any property. I would stay if I could. I have a beautiful community here, and I'm heartbroken that I have to sacrifice my connections with so many queer families so that we can afford to be a queer family ourselves.
I cannot abide transplants like me telling the story of San Francisco like it's happened around us, not because of us; like displacement and disconnection isn't because of us; like the city owed us something and let us down instead of the inverse.
posted by c'mon sea legs at 9:15 AM on February 6 [36 favorites]
Then criticize that (or billionaires or tech or capitalism) and not a community of 800,000 people, many of whom are the direct casualties of that.
Honestly since that is what the article is about, I assumed that saying "yes, I also [like the author] experienced some deep bad vibes in SF which I haven't found elsewhere" would, you know, logically follow. But this is Metafilter, so obviously no, only the worst possible interpretation of any comment will ever happen, and of course the assumption is I haven't read the article.
The deal is that if you want to live in the city, you do need to accept that you need the situational awareness. There's nothing wrong with thinking "it's tiring to visit the city because I need to be aware in extra ways that I don't need every day".
Of course it is stressful to adapt to the ways of life in places unlike your home--I just wish people could understand that everyone has things they have to be aware of every day, which would be stressful for folks who aren't used to it.
A suburbanite in the city finds it exhausting to have to keep tabs on their purse or put things in their car trunk. A city kid in the suburbs finds it overwhelming to have to worry constantly about how much gas is in the car because a gas station is 5 miles away. Neither is wrong! Neither means that the unfamiliar place is an unsurvivable hellscape. Just that unfamiliarity is stressful!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:24 AM on February 6 [10 favorites]
Honestly since that is what the article is about, I assumed that saying "yes, I also [like the author] experienced some deep bad vibes in SF which I haven't found elsewhere" would, you know, logically follow. But this is Metafilter, so obviously no, only the worst possible interpretation of any comment will ever happen, and of course the assumption is I haven't read the article.
The deal is that if you want to live in the city, you do need to accept that you need the situational awareness. There's nothing wrong with thinking "it's tiring to visit the city because I need to be aware in extra ways that I don't need every day".
Of course it is stressful to adapt to the ways of life in places unlike your home--I just wish people could understand that everyone has things they have to be aware of every day, which would be stressful for folks who aren't used to it.
A suburbanite in the city finds it exhausting to have to keep tabs on their purse or put things in their car trunk. A city kid in the suburbs finds it overwhelming to have to worry constantly about how much gas is in the car because a gas station is 5 miles away. Neither is wrong! Neither means that the unfamiliar place is an unsurvivable hellscape. Just that unfamiliarity is stressful!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:24 AM on February 6 [10 favorites]
I cannot abide transplants like me telling the story of San Francisco like it's happened around us, not because of us; like displacement and disconnection isn't because of us; like the city owed us something and let us down instead of the inverse.
Amen. I have never heard a transplant say this and it is appreciated. I myself am a transplant, but more of the Solnit variety (I moved here at 18 as a sort of queer refugee at the tail end or maybe even after that sort of transplant stoped being a thing due to costs and cultural changes) than of the modern variety (tech $$$$$).
I’m hardly the most civic or community minded person on the planet and am quite introverted by old San Francisco standards, but damn, the level of gross “this city isn’t meeting MY standards and isn’t the way I think it should be run” attitude among some tech transplants all while being completely asocial/antisocial and absolutely and completely uninterested in the city around them is just heartbreaking. Infuriating is then their sudden interest in taking a city they significantly helped to destroy and chiding it for being broken (the YIMBY and related folks, while I agree with some of their aims are an example of the people I’m talking about here).
posted by flamk at 9:28 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
Amen. I have never heard a transplant say this and it is appreciated. I myself am a transplant, but more of the Solnit variety (I moved here at 18 as a sort of queer refugee at the tail end or maybe even after that sort of transplant stoped being a thing due to costs and cultural changes) than of the modern variety (tech $$$$$).
I’m hardly the most civic or community minded person on the planet and am quite introverted by old San Francisco standards, but damn, the level of gross “this city isn’t meeting MY standards and isn’t the way I think it should be run” attitude among some tech transplants all while being completely asocial/antisocial and absolutely and completely uninterested in the city around them is just heartbreaking. Infuriating is then their sudden interest in taking a city they significantly helped to destroy and chiding it for being broken (the YIMBY and related folks, while I agree with some of their aims are an example of the people I’m talking about here).
posted by flamk at 9:28 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
I cannot abide transplants like me telling the story of San Francisco like it's happened around us, not because of us; like displacement and disconnection isn't because of us; like the city owed us something and let us down instead of the inverse.
The city let everyone down by not building housing when it was needed, which has led to exactly the situation you are experiencing. And especially since you were never a landowner, your culpability in that inaction is almost non-existent. Did you tell people to work remotely? Did you invent the autonomous car? Did you insist that local pharmacies and grocery stores close? You did not! You've just lived your life, as have most people, even those that outbid someone else for a home or apartment.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:29 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
The city let everyone down by not building housing when it was needed, which has led to exactly the situation you are experiencing. And especially since you were never a landowner, your culpability in that inaction is almost non-existent. Did you tell people to work remotely? Did you invent the autonomous car? Did you insist that local pharmacies and grocery stores close? You did not! You've just lived your life, as have most people, even those that outbid someone else for a home or apartment.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:29 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
The article itself covers a lot of ground, from the hellscape of streets overrun by autonomous cars, to the nightmare of farmers being displaced so the ultawealthy can build their own utopia now that they've fled the city they helped to ruin. San Francisco itself just sounds like parts of Philly in the 80's, or any other city living through the rough times they periodically go through as they evolve.
I'm interested in the way this describes how population growth has altered our country.
When i was a teenager in the 70's there were 4 billion people on the earth, now there are 8. What we didn't foresee is that while yes, there are twice as many poor people looking to share resources, there are also twice (or in the US many more multiples of)the number of uber wealthy people sucking away resources, land and wealth and making it inaccessible to the rest of the population.
SF is just currently at the cusp of this change. Seattle is also, as waves of the wealthy, looking to escape climate change, have migrated, displacing essential and service workers in favor of downtown tech bros.
What happens next will be the interesting part, and the idea of Flannery Associates is likely to crop up in more and more places, as these ever growing groups of uber-rich try to insulate themselves from the world that they are, at the same time, ruining with their tech.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:44 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
I'm interested in the way this describes how population growth has altered our country.
When i was a teenager in the 70's there were 4 billion people on the earth, now there are 8. What we didn't foresee is that while yes, there are twice as many poor people looking to share resources, there are also twice (or in the US many more multiples of)the number of uber wealthy people sucking away resources, land and wealth and making it inaccessible to the rest of the population.
SF is just currently at the cusp of this change. Seattle is also, as waves of the wealthy, looking to escape climate change, have migrated, displacing essential and service workers in favor of downtown tech bros.
What happens next will be the interesting part, and the idea of Flannery Associates is likely to crop up in more and more places, as these ever growing groups of uber-rich try to insulate themselves from the world that they are, at the same time, ruining with their tech.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:44 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
> It gets even worse when people think, "I want the amenities of a city but I don't want to pay taxes for social services so that people don't commit crimes of desperation; I'd rather pay for police and surveillance so everyone is miserable".
Yup. Up here in Toronto we'd rather give the cops millions of dollars to beat up protestors and destroy unhoused peoples' belongings than do anything to ensure that people don't have to live in tents in parks in the first place.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:44 AM on February 6 [7 favorites]
Yup. Up here in Toronto we'd rather give the cops millions of dollars to beat up protestors and destroy unhoused peoples' belongings than do anything to ensure that people don't have to live in tents in parks in the first place.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:44 AM on February 6 [7 favorites]
Andrew Callaghan (of All Gas No Brakes) has a recent video on San Francisco. I'm curious what San Franciscans think of it. In his usual style, he manages to get some interesting interviews. (warning: he's not overtly political - in his usual style, he just interviews people and lets them talk - but there is some sensationalism around drugs and crime, and some editorial choices in who he interviews).
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:53 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:53 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
Younger people's constant contact with their friends is far beyond anything we experienced growing up.This seems orthogonal to the point of the article, which is largely about mundane public space and mundane public life, routinely rubbing physical shoulders with physical humans that aren't close friends, with people who are different from you and your friends.
I think this "but the kids hang out with their friends so much" attitude is exactly the "suburban" one the author mentions, very much in line with the avoidance of strangers and surprises.
I don't see any conflict between "the kids hang out with their friends more than I did" and "public city life is a pale shadow of what it used to be." Both can be true.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:54 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
I've lived for 16 years in a town of 60k people 45 minutes to 2 hours (depending on transportation mode and time of day) north of San Francisco. I've lived in the Bay Area since 1995, and, growing up rural, have always tended to sprawl out, landed in Richmond, moved to Marin, and then up here to Sonoma County.
As I've settled into this town, had some gigs learning deeply about transportation and mobility, started a non-profit to help educate about local finance, and in the process started to question my lifestyle choices. And as the town tries to change and get on some more stable fiscal footing, the NIMBYs, emboldened by Prop 13 and various other California policy bullshit, are starting to get pretty vocal, harassing city staff, and generally being unpleasant. And as someone poking my head up, I'm taking some of that heat.
So while my wife and I have said we never want to move again, we're starting to think about "well, where could we move that's growing more sustainably? That's focused on non-car mobility? That has mid-rise multi-unit dwelling that's well enough sound insulated from my neighbors that I can practice my voice?"
I don't actually care about car break-ins. We know that that's a well orchestrated business, and that the SFPD is largely turning a blind-eye to it because it doesn't match their political goals or prejudices, and the answer seems to be to find ways to have a car-free lifestyle.
I do care about housing supply, after all homelessness is a housing problem, but I've got another decade or two in my career, and for all that we talk about remote work, the era of online networking that got me to the Bay Area back in the '90s has been supplanted by in-person. Even in the age of COVID.
So, yeah: My friends in SF largely still love it, still love their neighborhoods, say "well, just avoid the Financial District" (okay, and Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf, but what local goes to those places?). They reveled in Unicorning the Cruise vehicles, and, yeah, bemoan that we've lost the cool alternative bookshops along Valencia, and the various underground theaters that cheap rent out in The Avenues spawned (and as I look back at some of those amazing shows and think about fire exits... uh...).
Even circa 2017, walking down Market with a coworker from Serbia who was commenting about all the visible poverty I've never felt as uneasy as I did seeing an actual mugging on the New York Subway back when I was a kid. Sure, you'll get asked for change in The Tenderloin, and it's uncomfortable seeing the poverty, but let's not let poor people be scary because we want to turn a blind eye to poverty.
So, yeah: If we do move (and, let's face it, it's unlikely that we would), where else are we gonna go? I've got a decade or two left in my career, and despite the move to remote work, the '90s era of networking online that brought me to the Bay Area is over. Meeting people face to face still matters. The South Bay is the same sprawl that we've got up here. Maybe some place BARTable into the city, but are we just avoiding getting involved in life if we do that?
Sure, we could leave the Bay Area, but... world-class cities in the US is basically, what, New York, LA, SF, and... maybe Chicago? Don't they all have pretty much the same issues? People are figuring out that once you pull the lead out of the air, and get over the pro-sprawl propaganda, cities are actually pretty awesome, and we don't have to buy into the racism that gave us sprawl? And that when you start to concentrate the coolness, you either go where the action is, or you go where it's cheap, and for a little while in the '90s SF was both.
I guess I'm kinda over even people with Bay Area cred getting more pages by doing the "pull one from column A and one from column B SF is has become a hellhole" article. Gimme more articles on "fuck the local NIMBYs, let's build some damned housing" instead.
posted by straw at 9:59 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
As I've settled into this town, had some gigs learning deeply about transportation and mobility, started a non-profit to help educate about local finance, and in the process started to question my lifestyle choices. And as the town tries to change and get on some more stable fiscal footing, the NIMBYs, emboldened by Prop 13 and various other California policy bullshit, are starting to get pretty vocal, harassing city staff, and generally being unpleasant. And as someone poking my head up, I'm taking some of that heat.
So while my wife and I have said we never want to move again, we're starting to think about "well, where could we move that's growing more sustainably? That's focused on non-car mobility? That has mid-rise multi-unit dwelling that's well enough sound insulated from my neighbors that I can practice my voice?"
I don't actually care about car break-ins. We know that that's a well orchestrated business, and that the SFPD is largely turning a blind-eye to it because it doesn't match their political goals or prejudices, and the answer seems to be to find ways to have a car-free lifestyle.
I do care about housing supply, after all homelessness is a housing problem, but I've got another decade or two in my career, and for all that we talk about remote work, the era of online networking that got me to the Bay Area back in the '90s has been supplanted by in-person. Even in the age of COVID.
So, yeah: My friends in SF largely still love it, still love their neighborhoods, say "well, just avoid the Financial District" (okay, and Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf, but what local goes to those places?). They reveled in Unicorning the Cruise vehicles, and, yeah, bemoan that we've lost the cool alternative bookshops along Valencia, and the various underground theaters that cheap rent out in The Avenues spawned (and as I look back at some of those amazing shows and think about fire exits... uh...).
Even circa 2017, walking down Market with a coworker from Serbia who was commenting about all the visible poverty I've never felt as uneasy as I did seeing an actual mugging on the New York Subway back when I was a kid. Sure, you'll get asked for change in The Tenderloin, and it's uncomfortable seeing the poverty, but let's not let poor people be scary because we want to turn a blind eye to poverty.
So, yeah: If we do move (and, let's face it, it's unlikely that we would), where else are we gonna go? I've got a decade or two left in my career, and despite the move to remote work, the '90s era of networking online that brought me to the Bay Area is over. Meeting people face to face still matters. The South Bay is the same sprawl that we've got up here. Maybe some place BARTable into the city, but are we just avoiding getting involved in life if we do that?
Sure, we could leave the Bay Area, but... world-class cities in the US is basically, what, New York, LA, SF, and... maybe Chicago? Don't they all have pretty much the same issues? People are figuring out that once you pull the lead out of the air, and get over the pro-sprawl propaganda, cities are actually pretty awesome, and we don't have to buy into the racism that gave us sprawl? And that when you start to concentrate the coolness, you either go where the action is, or you go where it's cheap, and for a little while in the '90s SF was both.
I guess I'm kinda over even people with Bay Area cred getting more pages by doing the "pull one from column A and one from column B SF is has become a hellhole" article. Gimme more articles on "fuck the local NIMBYs, let's build some damned housing" instead.
posted by straw at 9:59 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
Sir John Bagot Glubb claimed the average lifespan of an empire is 250 years.
The United States Semiquincentennial will be in 2026.
I'm not saying I buy his silly statement (which doesn't really suurvive even casual scrutiny). Even if I did, he's talking about an average, not an expiration date.
But goddam, it sure feels on the fucking money, particularly when you watch the giant US experiment in extreme capitalism flopping around and gasping like it is in San Francisco.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:04 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
The United States Semiquincentennial will be in 2026.
I'm not saying I buy his silly statement (which doesn't really suurvive even casual scrutiny). Even if I did, he's talking about an average, not an expiration date.
But goddam, it sure feels on the fucking money, particularly when you watch the giant US experiment in extreme capitalism flopping around and gasping like it is in San Francisco.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:04 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
Is there anywhere in the US that is developing in a sustainable, human-scale, affordable housing, non-car-oriented way? Any city of any size?
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:04 AM on February 6 [8 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:04 AM on February 6 [8 favorites]
I was born in NYC and lived through the crime years and I think SF crime and atmosphere is not the same.
Getting a warning is not the same thing as being a victim of a crime
SF is not a particularly violent or dangerous city (Oakland of course has worse problems in that respect) but it does have a lot of petty theft. I don’t think it’s hard to be realistic on both ends of that.
posted by atoxyl at 10:11 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
Getting a warning is not the same thing as being a victim of a crime
SF is not a particularly violent or dangerous city (Oakland of course has worse problems in that respect) but it does have a lot of petty theft. I don’t think it’s hard to be realistic on both ends of that.
posted by atoxyl at 10:11 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted. Let's avoid generalizations about older generations, this may seem innocuous, but it's actually an ageist microaggression.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:15 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
posted by loup (staff) at 10:15 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
okay, and Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf, but what local goes to those places?
I lived in North Beach, near the corner of Grant and Greenwich, and I absolutely loved going down to Pier 39, mostly to either watch people play DDR, hang out with the sea lions or occasionally get surprised by Bush Man.
And since we're on the topic of things that are gone, I want to pour one out for the Werepad. I was pretty involved with that place in the early 2000s. Did their weekly email for a while, then played a bunch of shows there. Jacques was a character and five halves. I've never seen a place quite like it since.
Also gone, but not forgotten: New York Buffalo Wings (with their amazing San Francisco Burger), Manga Rosa, the Ace hardware store and Curly's, all formerly of North Beach.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:30 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
I lived in North Beach, near the corner of Grant and Greenwich, and I absolutely loved going down to Pier 39, mostly to either watch people play DDR, hang out with the sea lions or occasionally get surprised by Bush Man.
And since we're on the topic of things that are gone, I want to pour one out for the Werepad. I was pretty involved with that place in the early 2000s. Did their weekly email for a while, then played a bunch of shows there. Jacques was a character and five halves. I've never seen a place quite like it since.
Also gone, but not forgotten: New York Buffalo Wings (with their amazing San Francisco Burger), Manga Rosa, the Ace hardware store and Curly's, all formerly of North Beach.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:30 AM on February 6 [6 favorites]
Is there anywhere in the US that is developing in a sustainable, human-scale, affordable housing, non-car-oriented way? Any city of any size?
California has some state-level proposals for social housing.
Unfortunately, one thing I notice in west-coast states is that, when it comes to housing, often cities slow-walk or push back against state level progressive policies. I see this in my native Washington and I have heard similar things about California. Seattle's own social housing ordinance, passed by voters and supported by state and federal officials, is being effectively choked in the cradle by a mayor and city council beholden to real estate interests and the tax-hating chamber of commerce.
Despite the progressive patina, these cities are effectively run by big business and real estate moguls, not to mention wealthy "fuck you got mine" homeowners. Real estate and business lobbyists use homelessness and squalor as cudgels to attack - paradoxically! - progressive housing policy, and apparently this is sufficient to fool a good chunk of the electorate. In the end we get mayors who may pay lip service to liberal ideals in the abstract, but whose main mandate is to keep real estate scarce, precious, and only accessible to the wealthy.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:37 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
California has some state-level proposals for social housing.
Unfortunately, one thing I notice in west-coast states is that, when it comes to housing, often cities slow-walk or push back against state level progressive policies. I see this in my native Washington and I have heard similar things about California. Seattle's own social housing ordinance, passed by voters and supported by state and federal officials, is being effectively choked in the cradle by a mayor and city council beholden to real estate interests and the tax-hating chamber of commerce.
Despite the progressive patina, these cities are effectively run by big business and real estate moguls, not to mention wealthy "fuck you got mine" homeowners. Real estate and business lobbyists use homelessness and squalor as cudgels to attack - paradoxically! - progressive housing policy, and apparently this is sufficient to fool a good chunk of the electorate. In the end we get mayors who may pay lip service to liberal ideals in the abstract, but whose main mandate is to keep real estate scarce, precious, and only accessible to the wealthy.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:37 AM on February 6 [13 favorites]
(Just a personal clarification: I used the word "native" above in the sense of "I live in Washington not California". I am not a Washington native by birth nor am I indigenous to the state.)
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:46 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:46 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
The next phase – of trying to keep customers from sticking around – has arrived. A food industry magazine published a story in April last year with the headline ‘In 2023, San Francisco Coffee Shops Want You to Get the Hell Out. The Vibe Is to Leave. Like Right Now,’ explaining that cafés were removing tables and chairs and focusing exclusively on take-away products, in part because cafés were being used as free office space.
I'm 38 and I feel like I've been watching this slow transition since I was a teenager. Coffee shops used to put out board games and reading material so you'd hang out longer and buy more coffee! Even Starbucks had those Cranium games, and every coffee shop had a couple regulars who'd happily sit there and read for hours. And then when everyone got laptops they installed Wi-Fi and sometimes even printers—so that you would bring your work there and hang out longer and buy more coffee.
I do think the GTFO vibe has been accelerated by the pandemic and the past decade of U.S. politics, too. The longer you hang out doing something other than working in Google Docs, the more likely you are to start ranting. That neighborhood character walks in with a dog-eared paperback and everyone braces themselves, like that cartoon with the guy in a jam band shirt going for the jukebox.
And then especially at chain coffee places, the staff seem so overworked. There's a Starbucks I stop in sometimes where the workers just seem incredibly stressed. They're perfectly nice, but it's clear that every time there's a lull at the counter they're frantically trying to sweep and mop while they can, and at that point customers hanging around with coffee are basically just physical obstacles.
posted by smelendez at 10:51 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
I'm 38 and I feel like I've been watching this slow transition since I was a teenager. Coffee shops used to put out board games and reading material so you'd hang out longer and buy more coffee! Even Starbucks had those Cranium games, and every coffee shop had a couple regulars who'd happily sit there and read for hours. And then when everyone got laptops they installed Wi-Fi and sometimes even printers—so that you would bring your work there and hang out longer and buy more coffee.
I do think the GTFO vibe has been accelerated by the pandemic and the past decade of U.S. politics, too. The longer you hang out doing something other than working in Google Docs, the more likely you are to start ranting. That neighborhood character walks in with a dog-eared paperback and everyone braces themselves, like that cartoon with the guy in a jam band shirt going for the jukebox.
And then especially at chain coffee places, the staff seem so overworked. There's a Starbucks I stop in sometimes where the workers just seem incredibly stressed. They're perfectly nice, but it's clear that every time there's a lull at the counter they're frantically trying to sweep and mop while they can, and at that point customers hanging around with coffee are basically just physical obstacles.
posted by smelendez at 10:51 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
...these cities are effectively run by big business and real estate moguls, not to mention wealthy "fuck you got mine" homeowners.
One of the things I'm very conscious of here in the SF Bay Area is how much it's the "fuck you got mine" homeowners. Sure, you can talk about Prop 13, of course, means that there's no reason to let the poors in. And, yeah, a developer's got loans for a few tens of millions of bucks to put in a new apartment building, but he's up against... I dunno, ya call it one or two hundred neighbors with homes starting at $800k, say averaging a million or million and a half a house, and that developer's outclassed by an order of magnitude of "little guy".
There's some good effort at the state level to overcome this, but most of that is limited to land around major public transit stops and I'm wondering how long it's going to be before a developer buys up enough houses that it's then worth it for them to fund public public transit with the appropriate level of service that they can force the locality to let them build density.
But all of this means that the little local developers can only go so far before they have to sell out to the folks with the resources to actually do stuff.,
Thus: I get the willingness to piss on the mythical big out of town developer, but it's the single family homeowners who have the largest financial incentives in play, and who are most insulated from the consequences of their actions by policy enacted in the '70s, who have made development so complex that only the big conglomerates can play the game.
And they're also the same people whose hobby galleries to sell their painting or photography are getting priced out of retail storefronts, and are telling me that they don't want more development because that's going to drive up rents. Like supply and demand hasn't been demonstrated in real estate.
posted by straw at 11:06 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
One of the things I'm very conscious of here in the SF Bay Area is how much it's the "fuck you got mine" homeowners. Sure, you can talk about Prop 13, of course, means that there's no reason to let the poors in. And, yeah, a developer's got loans for a few tens of millions of bucks to put in a new apartment building, but he's up against... I dunno, ya call it one or two hundred neighbors with homes starting at $800k, say averaging a million or million and a half a house, and that developer's outclassed by an order of magnitude of "little guy".
There's some good effort at the state level to overcome this, but most of that is limited to land around major public transit stops and I'm wondering how long it's going to be before a developer buys up enough houses that it's then worth it for them to fund public public transit with the appropriate level of service that they can force the locality to let them build density.
But all of this means that the little local developers can only go so far before they have to sell out to the folks with the resources to actually do stuff.,
Thus: I get the willingness to piss on the mythical big out of town developer, but it's the single family homeowners who have the largest financial incentives in play, and who are most insulated from the consequences of their actions by policy enacted in the '70s, who have made development so complex that only the big conglomerates can play the game.
And they're also the same people whose hobby galleries to sell their painting or photography are getting priced out of retail storefronts, and are telling me that they don't want more development because that's going to drive up rents. Like supply and demand hasn't been demonstrated in real estate.
posted by straw at 11:06 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
Fascinating essay. I grew up in East Side San Jose and lived in SF from 2008-2013 in my twenties (after going to school for four years across the bay and making regular SF pilgrimages during that time). So much of this rings true to me. The insane wealth, which has always been a problem in SF, has just gotten wilder and the gap has gotten wider until the situation has essentially imploded.
That said: I believe it the city. The bones are there. There is genuine love for the city there, and it’s woven in and out of Solnit’s essay. It’s a grim situation but nothing is constant, and I think if extreme wealth can leave the city, its soul can return.
posted by samthemander at 11:16 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
That said: I believe it the city. The bones are there. There is genuine love for the city there, and it’s woven in and out of Solnit’s essay. It’s a grim situation but nothing is constant, and I think if extreme wealth can leave the city, its soul can return.
posted by samthemander at 11:16 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]
‘In 2023, San Francisco Coffee Shops Want You to Get the Hell Out. The Vibe Is to Leave. Like Right Now,’
So, about 15-20 years back, Starbucks came to the poor (very poor, by U.S. standards), overwhelmingly black neighborhood that I grew up in, where my mom still lived. She was delighted (not so much by Starbucks per se, but by having any functional coffee shop whatsoever in the neighborhood); I went inside and looked around and said, "This is the first Starbucks ever designed to keep people from hanging around." Basically, the only reason it existed was to service the modest traffic on the main road between a wealthy suburb and certain parts of downtown.
It's gone now. Replaced by a Tim Horton's, which my mom was equally delighted by, but has much more of a fast-food take-out approach.
Anyway, they try it out on the minorities first, then they drop it on everyone else.
posted by praemunire at 11:19 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
So, about 15-20 years back, Starbucks came to the poor (very poor, by U.S. standards), overwhelmingly black neighborhood that I grew up in, where my mom still lived. She was delighted (not so much by Starbucks per se, but by having any functional coffee shop whatsoever in the neighborhood); I went inside and looked around and said, "This is the first Starbucks ever designed to keep people from hanging around." Basically, the only reason it existed was to service the modest traffic on the main road between a wealthy suburb and certain parts of downtown.
It's gone now. Replaced by a Tim Horton's, which my mom was equally delighted by, but has much more of a fast-food take-out approach.
Anyway, they try it out on the minorities first, then they drop it on everyone else.
posted by praemunire at 11:19 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
"This is the first Starbucks ever designed to keep people from hanging around."
Gotta push back on this one, I remember a mid-1990s magazine article about those new Starbucks coffee places pointing out the various design aspects that showed Mgmt's desire to keep patrons not-so-comfortable, so they wouldn't hang out and stick around. The specific feature I recall was the chairs; this may have been before they started putting in the big comfortable ones with armrests, and sofas.
Please forgive my derail; let's get back to talking about The City.
posted by Rash at 11:27 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
Gotta push back on this one, I remember a mid-1990s magazine article about those new Starbucks coffee places pointing out the various design aspects that showed Mgmt's desire to keep patrons not-so-comfortable, so they wouldn't hang out and stick around. The specific feature I recall was the chairs; this may have been before they started putting in the big comfortable ones with armrests, and sofas.
Please forgive my derail; let's get back to talking about The City.
posted by Rash at 11:27 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]
> The longer you hang out doing something other than working in Google Docs, the more likely you are to start ranting. That neighborhood character walks in with a dog-eared paperback and everyone braces themselves, like that cartoon with the guy in a jam band shirt going for the jukebox.
So I guess public libraries tried to make themselves more like coffee shops and now coffee shops are more like public libraries.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:33 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
So I guess public libraries tried to make themselves more like coffee shops and now coffee shops are more like public libraries.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:33 AM on February 6 [3 favorites]
The city remains the densely urban place it always was, but the way people inhabit it is increasingly suburban, looking to avoid strangers and surprises.
I've definitely seen this progression in NYC during the nearly quarter of a century that I've lived here.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:41 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
I've definitely seen this progression in NYC during the nearly quarter of a century that I've lived here.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:41 AM on February 6 [5 favorites]
okay but also it is necessary to acknowledge that market street after dark is actually for reals terrifying, in a way that’s more intense each time i’m there. as the ratio between the minimum wage and the cheapest minimally livable housing gets more and more out of whack more and more people are living desperate lives in tents in the tenderloin, and it is totally acceptable to experience terror and a sense of personal risk when around a ton of desperate people.
the bay area always feels like it’s trying to fling everyone off of it — i bet even google employees get that feeling, the one where the cities and the suburbs are all sending you a clear message and that message is “you can’t live here.”
there are two threats to the housed and relatively non-desperate that are implicit in the presence of so many unhoused and desperate people. one is the immediate threat that someone is going to swipe your stuff because, like, we all know that given the choice between swiping some random’s stuff or else starving, we’d all choose to swipe the random’s stuff. but also there’s sort of a “reserve army of the unemployed” vibe to the scene — the presence of people who are just totally fucked due to not being able to afford the ever-escalating king’s-ransom rents is a constant reminder that you better get hired at google and you better do whatever sneaky-reprehensible thing your boss at google wants done and you better do it damned well and you better do it for 80 hours a week every week or else the bay area will fling you off of itself and if you try to hold on then it’ll dump you out on market to slowly die.
the bay area is day by day getting more and more like one of those late 1900s cyberpunk anime where a few rich people live in a quasi-utopian city built on a giant floating disk, with everyone else on the ground living hard lives in its shadow.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:51 AM on February 6 [14 favorites]
the bay area always feels like it’s trying to fling everyone off of it — i bet even google employees get that feeling, the one where the cities and the suburbs are all sending you a clear message and that message is “you can’t live here.”
there are two threats to the housed and relatively non-desperate that are implicit in the presence of so many unhoused and desperate people. one is the immediate threat that someone is going to swipe your stuff because, like, we all know that given the choice between swiping some random’s stuff or else starving, we’d all choose to swipe the random’s stuff. but also there’s sort of a “reserve army of the unemployed” vibe to the scene — the presence of people who are just totally fucked due to not being able to afford the ever-escalating king’s-ransom rents is a constant reminder that you better get hired at google and you better do whatever sneaky-reprehensible thing your boss at google wants done and you better do it damned well and you better do it for 80 hours a week every week or else the bay area will fling you off of itself and if you try to hold on then it’ll dump you out on market to slowly die.
the bay area is day by day getting more and more like one of those late 1900s cyberpunk anime where a few rich people live in a quasi-utopian city built on a giant floating disk, with everyone else on the ground living hard lives in its shadow.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:51 AM on February 6 [14 favorites]
Just wait until after the next earthquake, and the unhoused take over "The Bridge"...
posted by Windopaene at 12:01 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 12:01 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
I have opinions on this piece, but I want to offer a counter narrative to the city that changes too much from the perspective of someone who went back this past year to the city I grew up in and seeing that it hadn't changed at all. It's still cosmopolitan and educated and lively in all the ways as when I left, but all the stores, restaurants, night clubs, and people were the same. It had the same problems, same drivers, the same food and the same...everything. People were still in the same coffee shops debating the same things. I feel like the author of this piece would have loved it, but I found it depressing. It lacked innovation or new ideas or any kind of progress. I like living in a place that is set squarely in 2024 and it was depressing to find myself back in a city set in 1995. Yes, it's different and sometimes alienating, but there is a reason we live in the future.
posted by Toddles at 12:32 PM on February 6 [4 favorites]
posted by Toddles at 12:32 PM on February 6 [4 favorites]
Yes, it's different and sometimes alienating, but there is a reason we live in the future.
Different and alienating to who? Whose future are "we" being forced to live in? The future isn't just some neutral condition like the weather or gravity that we have no say in or no right to question how we got here. Why is this future somehow inviolable?
San Francisco is weird because while it has changed significantly in ways I do not like, it seems as if it's only the things I actually liked that have changed or are slipping away while things I don't have a stake in (homeownership on Telegraph Hill, for example) or don't care about (The Castro frozen in some lame gay 1970s-1990s amber for the benefit of the now elderly homeowners in Eureka Valley and Corona Heights) seem steadfastly in place (even if they, because they have no real life behind them, are a former ghost of themselves like the empty store fronts in The Castro). Why are those pasts protected while other pasts are expendable and "well, that's just progress, cities change!"
posted by flamk at 1:20 PM on February 6 [7 favorites]
Different and alienating to who? Whose future are "we" being forced to live in? The future isn't just some neutral condition like the weather or gravity that we have no say in or no right to question how we got here. Why is this future somehow inviolable?
San Francisco is weird because while it has changed significantly in ways I do not like, it seems as if it's only the things I actually liked that have changed or are slipping away while things I don't have a stake in (homeownership on Telegraph Hill, for example) or don't care about (The Castro frozen in some lame gay 1970s-1990s amber for the benefit of the now elderly homeowners in Eureka Valley and Corona Heights) seem steadfastly in place (even if they, because they have no real life behind them, are a former ghost of themselves like the empty store fronts in The Castro). Why are those pasts protected while other pasts are expendable and "well, that's just progress, cities change!"
posted by flamk at 1:20 PM on February 6 [7 favorites]
I don’t think I’ve really commented before, but given that it talks about the city I now live in, I feel compelled to provide a different perspective to some of the doom loopers here.
I’ve mostly lived in cities with 5-15M people, so San Francisco feels like the smallest one I’ve ever lived in. Parts of the west side feel like suburbs to me; and the actual suburbs feel like, well, deeply uncomfortable. While I’m a transplant, from another country no less, the combination of southeast Asian-ness and queer-ness means that it’s very hard for me to find a home anywhere else. (Maybe other than day, Oakland.)
I live in the Tenderloin, where you’ve no doubt heard ‘don’t go there!’ Or seen the horrible videos on YouTube. It’s a community of mostly immigrants, and some homeless people, yet one that has been left behind by city and state govt (and it has been that case for a long, long time). I appreciate the community I have there: I get to speak my native languages, and I get to meet and talk to people of very diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
I’m tired of some the knee-jerk anti-poor, anti-POC, anti-homeless reactions I get about this place. SF, but also the TL especially. People are people, and people are just trying to live the best way they can. No one chooses to poop on the streets. Or live on one.
The conflation of deep poverty with crime is overblown. As a small Asian woman, I walk around the bad parts and feel relatively safe. The lack of understanding of what the mentally ill (not always homeless), face in this country, is not just an SF-problem.
One of the biggest political fights here right now is: what do we do with all of that? Some people want to put them in jail or involuntary treatment, which is appalling but theoretically would be nice if such facilities even exist (they don’t). Any time there is too much of a ‘but the crime! The tents!’ angle, if you dig deep enough, there’s usually some kind of weird lock em up bent going in.
It’s fine if SF isn’t for you, but it’s very weird that all of the things that are wrong with it (which feel broadly applicable to all N American cities) are things that SF is uniquely known for.
I have some complaints about it for sure (namely that the food isn’t as good as we think it is), but maybe people who don’t like cities shouldn’t spend too much time in one, just as I don’t spend any time at all in a ‘burb if I can help it (SF is already way too small for me).
Look to the corporations (real estate firms, pharmacies, grocery stores) hyping the fake stats about retail theft; consider their wage theft; consider how San Francisco is just such a convenient shorthand for so many things that people don’t like. But at the end of the day, it’s just a city with people trying to get about their lives; sometimes they don’t have toilets, sometimes they don’t have homes, and most of all, we all live in a place with unprecendented income inequality AND lack of housing. I’m a doomer about SF on some things (like the alt-right tech bros now moving into anti-progressive politics), but ‘crime! Can’t leave my stuff in a car!’ feels very detached from my lived reality in the so-called worst bits of it.
posted by skinnylatte at 1:29 PM on February 6 [55 favorites]
I’ve mostly lived in cities with 5-15M people, so San Francisco feels like the smallest one I’ve ever lived in. Parts of the west side feel like suburbs to me; and the actual suburbs feel like, well, deeply uncomfortable. While I’m a transplant, from another country no less, the combination of southeast Asian-ness and queer-ness means that it’s very hard for me to find a home anywhere else. (Maybe other than day, Oakland.)
I live in the Tenderloin, where you’ve no doubt heard ‘don’t go there!’ Or seen the horrible videos on YouTube. It’s a community of mostly immigrants, and some homeless people, yet one that has been left behind by city and state govt (and it has been that case for a long, long time). I appreciate the community I have there: I get to speak my native languages, and I get to meet and talk to people of very diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
I’m tired of some the knee-jerk anti-poor, anti-POC, anti-homeless reactions I get about this place. SF, but also the TL especially. People are people, and people are just trying to live the best way they can. No one chooses to poop on the streets. Or live on one.
The conflation of deep poverty with crime is overblown. As a small Asian woman, I walk around the bad parts and feel relatively safe. The lack of understanding of what the mentally ill (not always homeless), face in this country, is not just an SF-problem.
One of the biggest political fights here right now is: what do we do with all of that? Some people want to put them in jail or involuntary treatment, which is appalling but theoretically would be nice if such facilities even exist (they don’t). Any time there is too much of a ‘but the crime! The tents!’ angle, if you dig deep enough, there’s usually some kind of weird lock em up bent going in.
It’s fine if SF isn’t for you, but it’s very weird that all of the things that are wrong with it (which feel broadly applicable to all N American cities) are things that SF is uniquely known for.
I have some complaints about it for sure (namely that the food isn’t as good as we think it is), but maybe people who don’t like cities shouldn’t spend too much time in one, just as I don’t spend any time at all in a ‘burb if I can help it (SF is already way too small for me).
Look to the corporations (real estate firms, pharmacies, grocery stores) hyping the fake stats about retail theft; consider their wage theft; consider how San Francisco is just such a convenient shorthand for so many things that people don’t like. But at the end of the day, it’s just a city with people trying to get about their lives; sometimes they don’t have toilets, sometimes they don’t have homes, and most of all, we all live in a place with unprecendented income inequality AND lack of housing. I’m a doomer about SF on some things (like the alt-right tech bros now moving into anti-progressive politics), but ‘crime! Can’t leave my stuff in a car!’ feels very detached from my lived reality in the so-called worst bits of it.
posted by skinnylatte at 1:29 PM on February 6 [55 favorites]
There are two notable events in the continuity of the Star Trek universe that were supposed to take place in 2024 (at the time of their respective appearances in the episodes, still decades away): the reunification of Ireland and the Bell Riots, sparked by the herding of unhoused people in San Francisco into the cruelly-euphemistic "Sanctuary" areas. No points for guessing which one is considered vastly more likely to actually happen.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:27 PM on February 6 [5 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:27 PM on February 6 [5 favorites]
Another TL mefite here. I had some things to say but skinnylatte said them better.
Any other SF residents on here getting sick of GrowSF’s absurd political mailers?
posted by hototogisu at 2:56 PM on February 6 [13 favorites]
Any other SF residents on here getting sick of GrowSF’s absurd political mailers?
posted by hototogisu at 2:56 PM on February 6 [13 favorites]
The mailers are like:
dO yOu ThInK jUnKiEs ShOuLd Go To HeLl
like stfu before I go get Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s hammer
posted by hototogisu at 4:06 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
dO yOu ThInK jUnKiEs ShOuLd Go To HeLl
like stfu before I go get Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s hammer
posted by hototogisu at 4:06 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
Been here in SF for 15 years and have lived Glen Park, the Tendernob, Nob Hill, and Pac Heights.
I have and do bike the circumference of SF including Hunter’s Point and The Mission.
There’s a lot of vicarious pearl-clutching upthread and I just don’t know who has time for all that.
SF has problems, that’s for sure, but it’s also awesome and amazing for all the reason you might imagine it to be if you have two brain cells to rub together.
And look, I’m sorry for any loss of personal property and at the same time fuck your car unless you, like, live and depend on it in a way that’s existential as opposed to touristy.
posted by mistersquid at 10:27 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
I have and do bike the circumference of SF including Hunter’s Point and The Mission.
There’s a lot of vicarious pearl-clutching upthread and I just don’t know who has time for all that.
SF has problems, that’s for sure, but it’s also awesome and amazing for all the reason you might imagine it to be if you have two brain cells to rub together.
And look, I’m sorry for any loss of personal property and at the same time fuck your car unless you, like, live and depend on it in a way that’s existential as opposed to touristy.
posted by mistersquid at 10:27 PM on February 6 [3 favorites]
it is necessary to acknowledge that market street after dark is actually for reals terrifying
I actually don't think it's "necessary," thanks! Saying "homeless people are scary and it's capitalism's fault that they're scary" isn't actually that much better than saying "homeless people are scary and it's their own fault for making Bad Personal Choices." You're still making the assumption that people living in precarity are somehow "scarier" or more likely to cause harm to others when this is not necessarily the case.
In my own experience, all the worst harm I've witnessed and experienced in downtown SF was when I was working in the office buildings. Sure, I've had desperate and unkempt people yell at me on the bus a couple times, but I’ve never had any lasting harm as a result of those encounters. Rich tech assholes, on the other hand, have caused me lasting psychological and financial damage on multiple occasions. And all of it happened in broad daylight, inflicted by supposedly respectable citizens.
posted by cultanthropologist at 12:28 AM on February 7 [8 favorites]
I actually don't think it's "necessary," thanks! Saying "homeless people are scary and it's capitalism's fault that they're scary" isn't actually that much better than saying "homeless people are scary and it's their own fault for making Bad Personal Choices." You're still making the assumption that people living in precarity are somehow "scarier" or more likely to cause harm to others when this is not necessarily the case.
In my own experience, all the worst harm I've witnessed and experienced in downtown SF was when I was working in the office buildings. Sure, I've had desperate and unkempt people yell at me on the bus a couple times, but I’ve never had any lasting harm as a result of those encounters. Rich tech assholes, on the other hand, have caused me lasting psychological and financial damage on multiple occasions. And all of it happened in broad daylight, inflicted by supposedly respectable citizens.
posted by cultanthropologist at 12:28 AM on February 7 [8 favorites]
it is necessary to acknowledge that market street after dark is actually for reals terrifying
no, it is necessary to acknowledge that people unaccustomed to seeing a dense concentration of very serious poverty may find it terrifying. Again: unfamiliarity is stressful. It does not mean that the unfamiliar THING is actually frightening.
You're still making the assumption that people living in precarity are somehow "scarier" or more likely to cause harm to others when this is not necessarily the case.
Additionally I think we can all probably agree that large numbers of people left to live in dire poverty and exposure to the elements is like...bad. And to suddenly confront the extent to which our cities and nations permit a truly bad thing to happen to so many people for so long is also potentially terrifying to people unused to considering such things.
A third thing: The last time I was on Market Street after dark a trash can did suddenly explode in flames about 2 feet from my face so that was actually quite startling and potentially dangerous, even though I was otherwise not uncomfortable there. And I think we can also, reasonably, acknowledge that people living in extreme precarity are more likely to resort to desperate (but necessary) things that can create legitimately dangerous conditions for them and everyone around them. (such as starting fires in trash cans for warmth, even though they sometimes contain highly flammable/explosive items.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:15 AM on February 7 [4 favorites]
no, it is necessary to acknowledge that people unaccustomed to seeing a dense concentration of very serious poverty may find it terrifying. Again: unfamiliarity is stressful. It does not mean that the unfamiliar THING is actually frightening.
You're still making the assumption that people living in precarity are somehow "scarier" or more likely to cause harm to others when this is not necessarily the case.
Additionally I think we can all probably agree that large numbers of people left to live in dire poverty and exposure to the elements is like...bad. And to suddenly confront the extent to which our cities and nations permit a truly bad thing to happen to so many people for so long is also potentially terrifying to people unused to considering such things.
A third thing: The last time I was on Market Street after dark a trash can did suddenly explode in flames about 2 feet from my face so that was actually quite startling and potentially dangerous, even though I was otherwise not uncomfortable there. And I think we can also, reasonably, acknowledge that people living in extreme precarity are more likely to resort to desperate (but necessary) things that can create legitimately dangerous conditions for them and everyone around them. (such as starting fires in trash cans for warmth, even though they sometimes contain highly flammable/explosive items.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:15 AM on February 7 [4 favorites]
Thank you for that great comment, skinnylatte. Flagged as fantastic.
posted by kristi at 3:14 PM on February 7 [1 favorite]
posted by kristi at 3:14 PM on February 7 [1 favorite]
I think this article was...fine at best? Not great on some points. Fairly bad/slanderous at others. Solnit at least points to the ultra-wealthy for creating systems that have impoverished SF's city life. I think she is pointing at the way SF feels empty of people/interactions, which I feel as well.
Why aren't there people in SF? It's too expensive for the people who grew/made/still make the city to live in. The rent is too high. By a lot. And...folx who are unhoused are NOT the ones making rent too high. By a lot.
What made SF great can happen again, rent has to drop though.
Even though I think it's not really relevant to the discussion of this article, SF is more dangerous than it was 4 years ago, but so are a lot of the Bay Area cities with encampments. It sucks that Market Street has parts where I can't walk through it anymore.
I don't think that this is central to the discussion unless you start with "Oh yeah, mostly because we pushed people out onto the streets and/or don't pay folx enough." Discussing SF/dangerous streets without Directly addressing rent or peoples ability to pay bills @ low income 1st won't work, ever.
I don't think it's in a doom loop, unless you count rent staying ungodly high and getting higher being a doom loop, in which case, yeah, it is a doom loop.
I keep seeing my favorite shops/spaces shut down. Some a variety of reasons, but ALWAYS, they say "I had a rent hike by like 3x" Places that have been open for decades, sometimes 30 years. Scarlet Sage, my go to herb shop, 30 years, just this week, shutting down. AsiaSF, restaurant, caberat, drag spot, 26 years, this week, announced it's close. Laku, the 30-year-old Japanese handcraft boutique, closed in January this year. All because of rent hikes. Those are the ones I can list in the last month or two. This keeps happening. 2 theaters I know of shut down last year. 3 restaurants.
It'd be great if rent stopped going up.
posted by burntbook at 2:31 AM on February 9 [4 favorites]
Why aren't there people in SF? It's too expensive for the people who grew/made/still make the city to live in. The rent is too high. By a lot. And...folx who are unhoused are NOT the ones making rent too high. By a lot.
What made SF great can happen again, rent has to drop though.
Even though I think it's not really relevant to the discussion of this article, SF is more dangerous than it was 4 years ago, but so are a lot of the Bay Area cities with encampments. It sucks that Market Street has parts where I can't walk through it anymore.
I don't think that this is central to the discussion unless you start with "Oh yeah, mostly because we pushed people out onto the streets and/or don't pay folx enough." Discussing SF/dangerous streets without Directly addressing rent or peoples ability to pay bills @ low income 1st won't work, ever.
I don't think it's in a doom loop, unless you count rent staying ungodly high and getting higher being a doom loop, in which case, yeah, it is a doom loop.
I keep seeing my favorite shops/spaces shut down. Some a variety of reasons, but ALWAYS, they say "I had a rent hike by like 3x" Places that have been open for decades, sometimes 30 years. Scarlet Sage, my go to herb shop, 30 years, just this week, shutting down. AsiaSF, restaurant, caberat, drag spot, 26 years, this week, announced it's close. Laku, the 30-year-old Japanese handcraft boutique, closed in January this year. All because of rent hikes. Those are the ones I can list in the last month or two. This keeps happening. 2 theaters I know of shut down last year. 3 restaurants.
It'd be great if rent stopped going up.
posted by burntbook at 2:31 AM on February 9 [4 favorites]
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posted by LizBoBiz at 3:23 AM on February 6 [9 favorites]