Did the Internet really ruin San Francisco?

When a Salon article suggested that the dot-commers had killed everything wacky and wonderful about San Francisco, our mailbox was flooded with reader replies. The debate continues here.

Nov 2, 1999 | Clearly we've touched a nerve. After running Paulina Borsook's How the Internet ruined San Francisco on Thursday, and Carol Lloyd's follow-up piece on Friday, Salon was flooded with letters to the editor. More than 60 letters came in over the first day and a half, and several more came in over the weekend.

The letters fell roughly into three groups. About a third criticized Borsook for disparaging the improvements gentrification had brought to San Francisco, chiding her for misplaced nostalgia. Another third praised her for expressing the sadness and outrage they felt as their neighborhoods were taken over by SUV-driving commuters. The final third agreed that the city had changed for the worse, but argued that it was unfair to blame only the Internet for changes that had been under way for the last couple of decades.

To show the number and the intensity of the responses, we've published a larger than usual selection below. If you've got thoughts of your own, let us know at letters@salon.com -- or better yet, join the Table Talk debate on San Francisco's fate.

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I found this article incredibly ironic. Let's see, the author of a forthcoming book on high-tech culture, writing an article about how the Internet has killed San Francisco, in a San Francisco-based Internet publication. Paulina and Salon, you have met the enemy and they is you!

-- Eric Murray

I might not make all the same cause-and-effect statements as the author, but there's no denying that recent economic changes in the Bay Area are having enormous, rapid effects on all its less-than-fabulously wealthy residents -- and that local press and legislators are almost entirely ignoring this truly ugly, greed-driven transformation.

May I also point out that, in addition to the displacement of real artists and "interesting" "flakes" the author is concerned about, there is a huge displacement of public servants from the very neighborhoods and cities which they have dedicated their lives to improving. I don't mean "improving" by putting up another high-priced eatery -- these are the people who have worked in clinics, schools, social justice organizations and the many non- or low-profit organizations that have created the very unique (and previously remarkably humane) environment that the new young rich have come here to co-opt. Please don't stop discussing this; I know a lot of people whose lives literally depend on it .

-- Eli Coppola
San Francisco

My heart goes out to poor, poor Paulina Borsook. The big bad men with money ruined her Manhattan and now they're ruining her San Francisco. Too bad the world does change. Too bad progress marches on. Too bad it ain't the '50s anymore, huh? Why do these particular types of rants always smack of jealousy of those who have vision and success? I suspect Borsook wishes nothing more than it could be she sitting in a half-million-dollar condo and driving an SUV. Sounds like she's sat on two coasts watching people zoom by on their way up the economic ladder. There's a trite little homily that's most appropriate: "Lead, follow or get out of the way."

-- John Dinkeloo
writing from Wall Street

Even if the Internet ruined San Francisco, it hasn't ruined Oakland. If San Francisco rents are too high, if the bars are too hoity-toity, if the neighbors think your beautiful old car is an eyesore, just move across the bay. You'll find all the poor, the artists, the anarchists and the ethnics. They all moved out before you did, and they won't ask the cops to tow your car.

-- Steve Mooney

I lived in San Francisco from September 1983 to January 1992, and spent much of those nine years reading about and otherwise studying the city and its environs. I've got some bad news for Borsook: San Francisco is going through yet another "iteration" (to use a valley idiom) of an old story.

More than 40 years ago, William Saroyan famously said, "San Francisco now sells what she once gave away for free." In the mid-1970s, a huge battle was waged over closure of the International Hotel by the leftist forces that -- if one is to believe the subtext implicit in Borsook's article -- were at the zenith of their power and influence. Well, they lost; the International Hotel was torn down and hundreds of low-income housing units were destroyed. Some of the same people I saw living on the street every day as a freshman at San Francisco State landed there after having been evicted from that hotel. They are not there anymore; they are most likely dead.

What is happening now is on the same socioeconomic and cultural continuum as what Saroyan noticed in the '50s, the hippies fought against in the '70s and all those "identity" politicos have been screaming about since the '80s. San Francisco is being ruined by forces of greed masquerading as progress, and there's not a helluva lot we can do about this City we love but watch it burn. Unless, of course, the poor decide to vote in a mayor and supervisors who truly represent them.

-- Robert Anderson

Next Page: When the geeks ruined San Francisco, I moved to Paris

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