Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
A quick note before you're hit by a backlash of letters from defensive (read: guilty) yups. The worst part of these San Francisco nouveaux riches is their lack of culture or good taste. You would think an influx of money would mean more of art, ballet, culture or civic projects, but there's nothing of the sort. They'd rather spend their money supporting another pre-fabricated neo-1940s swing club.
A year and a half ago Skyline Realty evicted me on a technicality (I paid my rent late -- twice in seven years). I tried to fight it, but I spent my courtroom time reflecting. I was sick of paying $6 for half a sandwich at Harvest Market, tired of feeling guilty for not wanting a Range Rover. For me, San Francisco got the spirit choked out of it when Klubstitute went under, when the Sick and Twisted Players ran out of performance spaces, before the F Market and the condos with a view of the Market Street Safeway.
I'm one of those renters who left the city (I've heard the poor sap who rented my apartment pays double my rent). In fact, I left the country to find another safe, close-knit neighborhood with character. I grabbed my heart and left S.F. with fond memories of a city that will never again be.
-- Gentry Lane
Paris
I was forced into the Internet industry because I needed to do something creative that would actually support me and my loved ones. I was sick of crack addicts sneaking into my building in the Lower Haight and stealing my jeans out of the laundry machine. I was sick of temping for 10 months at a time at law firms where people didn't even greet each other in the hallways, just so I could live in Bali for two months and spend my time in a place where dreams and reality were similar states of mind, where the community collaborated to create beauty.
I wrote part of a play about women travelers that led to my first Web job -- writing a "tax fairy tale" for a computer geek whose day job was tax attorney. He handed me a few Xeroxed sheets of HTML tags and said, "You should learn this; you'll make more money." That was in 1994.
Fast forward to 1999, San Francisco. I spend my time in a place where dreams and reality are similar states of mind, and the community collaborates to create beauty. I have a washer-dryer in my garage in Bernal. I spend hours doing things like creating interactive slide shows with photos the AsiaQuest expedition team transmits from the Silk Road; animating kangaroo characters; brainstorming in boardrooms where dogs run around and babies coo; collaborating with people with whom I talk and drink and rollerblade and cry and river-raft and attend concerts and play Scrabble and laugh; working in an office with puppets, music and masks, ginger plants and Ashanti wooden combs, seashells and plastic frogs and Legos and origami and balloon animals and a JFK Jr. shrine. We sit on the floor. The CEO went to Germany after college with $24 and invites us to Wildlife Conservation Society events. My boss, who almost became an astronaut, takes us out for margaritas when we ship.
My starving artist friends, some of whom would have had no choice but to take a permanent job in a bank or a law firm or insurance company, or who would have moved back home to Iowa City or to somewhere else where they could live cheaply, like Prague, are now making money in San Francisco expressing themselves: designing, coding, writing, directing, coming up with ideas, starting businesses, influencing others.
I am not rich; I haven't had time to fix the dent in my Ford Ranger pick-up; and the one thing I miss is moving through the jungle with the smell of coffee and jasmine in the air and the birds singing from the trees. But with leftover creative energy from work, I have been going home and writing a novel, finally.
It's 75 pages, so far.
-- Shara Karasic
When discussing urban gentrification, I always find it ironic when "progressives" such as Paulina Borsook employ the "there goes the old neighborhood" nostalgia trip, which they routinely castigate conservatives for using in other situations. It is predictable, too, that such arguments so often rely solely on anecdotes and hyperbole for proof.
I suggest that Borsook move to my hometown, Philadelphia. There's not much of that pesky economic vitality she seems to loathe in San Francisco. And I'm sure she'll be happy to know that the gritty realities of city life that she pines for are driving the yuppies (as well as working- and middle-class people) to abandon their townhouses in droves. Interestingly, the lefties here wag their fingers at them for leaving the city. Go figure.
-- John Griffiths
I've lived in San Francisco now for 18 years. For 10 of those years I've worked for a high-tech company in Cupertino, commuting in a vanpool down the now Lexus-
Now in the coffee shops (increasingly Starbucks, not locally owned) the talk is of IPOs, options, SUVs and "bargain" $500,000 homes. Books, art and alternative scenes are not part of their reality. And these new people are very disengaged from city life: They're very white, usually with an MBA, and definitely wanting an urbanized version of Palo Alto. Their idea of diversity is having expensive tequila shots South of Market. They honk and rush through red lights with disdain for the strange, the edgy, the very things that made San Francisco what it was. I believe they will be very happy when the convergence of Carmel and Hong Kong is here. Then they won't have to move out of the city to Marin when their kids need to go to school. The city will then be just like Marin!
-- Tony Hinojosa
I agree it's a shame that so many of San Francisco's unique qualities are being diluted. However, I also think the characteristics of a city are tough to machinate. You can't keep the fairy-tale, bohemian San Francisco forever because the world is in ineluctable flux. So what can we do? We can't command people to care and be engaged. I think the best thing we can do is to make sure San Francisco's population remains diverse and representative by increasing the availability of affordable housing. Let's make sure a wide spectrum of people can afford San Francisco living; that in turn will lead to the continued evolution of the political, artistic and cultural diversity we cherish about San Francisco.
-- Alex Leung
Paulina Borsook's take on San Francisco's demise as being caused by the Internet just doesn't ring true to me. I've lived in the 'burbs here in the Bay Area for most of my 48 years. The high rents, parking and traffic problems have always been problems in the city ever since I became old enough to drive. People have been flocking to California for a very long time for our temperate weather, closeness to the beaches and mountains and often-quoted "laid back" attitude. There are high paying jobs here, a pleasant climate and a ton of other good things happening here. Let's not blame the Internet for everything.
-- Rich McIntosh
Fremont, Calif.
Get Salon in your mailbox!