150 San Franciscans Explain How Tech Money Changed Their City (sfchronicle.com) 61
DevNull127 writes: In a remarkable odyssey, documentary-maker Cary McClelland interviewed more than 150 San Francisco residents — including a tattoo artist, a longshoreman, a venture capitalist, and a pawnshop owner — to capture the real voices of a changing city, in a kind of oral history of the present. It becomes a magical "documentary without film... panoramic, complex — and surprisingly well-balanced," writes one reader, applauding the book's "dazzling omniscience." Legendary Silicon Valley marketer Regis McKenna speaks fondly of the days when young Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were dropping into his office, and despite the apparent challenges facing San Francisco, many people interviewed remained surprisingly hopeful.
"Idexa, a German-born tattoo artist who'd hitchhiked to the city from Los Angeles as a teenager, says despite the new displacements happening today, 'It's also beautiful. There's been a lot of money put into the neighborhood and into the buildings. Buildings that would have fallen apart have been renovated. Oh, it's the end of the world soon. We're not the first generation who thinks that.' It's an almost poetic picture of San Francisco that proves the world isn't as simple — or as discouraging — as it's often made out to be, and the book's passionate purpose seems to spontaneously find its way into the words of each interview subject."
"Until you're standing in front of someone and listening to them with your own ears, you're never going to understand them," says a survivor of one of California's recent wildfires. So Cary McClelland listens — writing in his introduction that his book asks us to hear the city of San Francisco speak in a chorus of voices, with a message for all the other cities. "The goal of the book," he says, "is to reflect people's subjective perspective, their experience — lived, visceral, emotional, intimate. The living-room experience..."
"Idexa, a German-born tattoo artist who'd hitchhiked to the city from Los Angeles as a teenager, says despite the new displacements happening today, 'It's also beautiful. There's been a lot of money put into the neighborhood and into the buildings. Buildings that would have fallen apart have been renovated. Oh, it's the end of the world soon. We're not the first generation who thinks that.' It's an almost poetic picture of San Francisco that proves the world isn't as simple — or as discouraging — as it's often made out to be, and the book's passionate purpose seems to spontaneously find its way into the words of each interview subject."
"Until you're standing in front of someone and listening to them with your own ears, you're never going to understand them," says a survivor of one of California's recent wildfires. So Cary McClelland listens — writing in his introduction that his book asks us to hear the city of San Francisco speak in a chorus of voices, with a message for all the other cities. "The goal of the book," he says, "is to reflect people's subjective perspective, their experience — lived, visceral, emotional, intimate. The living-room experience..."
Shit on a sidewalk! (Score:1)
More shit on the sidewalk?
How quaint.
It's people! (Score:2)
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Shit on the streets beats shit on the internet, but you'll never convince a conserva-troll of that.
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wait a second. are you really saying that shit on the streets in one of the most heavily taxed and expensive cities in the country is acceptable because of someone's political views?
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Not sure about that, they're having a typhoid outbreak. That hasn't happened in nearly 100 years in a western country.
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I have only seen human sidewalk poo in the Tenderloin district and SOMA. It isn't that big of an issue. Dog poo is a bigger and more widespread problem.
The book seems silly and unfocused. Many of the people interviewed don't even live in SF and never have. Regis McKenna was based in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, a world away from the streets of SF. And a longshoreman? The longshoremen left SF 50 years ago when the container ports opened in Oakland. That had absolutely nothing to do with "tech companies".
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East Menlo Park used to have the highest murder rate of the USA. But it was actually just this small subdivision of low income housing bounded by freeways to the Dumbarton bridge. The problem with the dog poo is with the homeless people protesting the lack of sympathy of the new residents to their plight. They get shooed off by people making police complaints so they come back and take a dump.
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San Francisco wasn't ruined by tech.
It follows the downfall of every other liberal city. They embrace those who do not contribute.
The header is blue. (Score:2, Insightful)
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It was some sort of attempt at satire I think (I didn't bother sorting it out).
By the way, just say no to thread-jacking.
Review... we don't need no stinkin' review... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me or is this just an advertisement for a book disguised as a news story?
Re:Review... we don't need no stinkin' review... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, you're missing it completely. The Chronic is owned by the Hearst Corporation (San Francisco has no real newspaper of it's own and hasn't for some time) and has never seen a big real estate deal it doesn't like. The slant of this "review" is just that everyone *loves* our new corporate overlords because Money, and all of those complaints about how you can't actually live in the city if you're not commuting to Google or a coke-addled start-up weasel are *completely* exaggerated, and I'm sure those twenty-something programmers who are complaining that all of their high salaries are just lining their landlords pockets, they just don't Get It.
They couldn't care less if you watch this "documentary".
Change gives, change takes away. (Score:5, Interesting)
And money destroys any place it loves too much.
I remember when San Francisco was a city with nice weather and a blowsy, affordable charm, which made it a Mecca for misfits with oddball ideas but not much money. Gays discharged at the military base in Alameda found their way into the low-rent districts; hippies established communal houses; gurus, mountebanks and self-anointed visionaries set up shop.
Any one of these groups individually were just social deviants, but collectively they brought a creative energy to the city that made it world class. Then one group of visionaries struck gold: the tech entrepreneurs. Worse than gold: a gold rush is limited by the finite supply of gold in the world.
And just like that, it was over. It's not that San Francisco is a bad place, it's just not what it was; it's a facsimile of old San Francisco stretched over a machine built to process vast quantities of money.
The same thing happened to Key West; rich people go there to play at being Bohemian, but the actual Bohemians who serve their drinks have to drive for hours to get home after their shift is done. San Francisco is a peninsula, Key West is an island; neither could expand geographically to accomodate the burgeoning financial enthalpy, and the resulting economic pressure forces out the oddballs that put the place on the map in the first place.
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That's pretty much what happened, though I think it's worth taking a wider view-- the kind of city that you and I both remember was very much a product of it's own odd circumstances-- the suburban fad and the (I think) leaded gasoline generated craziness leading to the "white flight"-- that all opened up cracks on the urban scenes that the oddballs you refer to could flourish in. E.g. we had a New York city that could create punk rock.
So now what we have is a world where the *fad* for suburbia has peake
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Jumped straight from the 'summer of love' to 2005.
Skipped the hippy failure/70s heroin and tech living in San Jose for 50 years before it came to SF.
SF was already unaffordable in 1990. Don't kid yourself, it's always been the home of bankers, trust funders and young gay professionals. Techies are pushing out the low budget trust funders mostly, bartenders have been on BART forever.
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Well, the first time I ever visited was back in the 80s, and yes, even then there was a rising tide of gentrification. But it wasn't yet a flood.
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For an exceedingly myopic value of "first".
It isn't "tech" anymore (Score:1)
Up through the 90s, tech companies made real products, invented entire industries from scratch. With the possible exception of Apple, the current generation of Silicon Valley companies has very little to do with "tech". They are advertising and consumer data companies which incidentally use the web as a delivery mechanism. They coast on the achievements of their predecessors and use infrastructure that they're incapable of improving or creating on their own. The best they can do is make the software rubbish
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With the possible exception of Apple, the current generation of Silicon Valley companies has very little to do with "tech".
What does Apple have to do with tech? I thought they were a in the fashion accessory business.
Re: It isn't "tech" anymore (Score:2)
Before accessories, Apple was in the fashion software business, hosting and promoting boutique software frameworks like smalltalk. Before then, they were a real computer company with the Apple 2, but that was a loooong time ago.
Continual evolution, yet always the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently a wealth of photos and even video of SF from the time of the earthquake and fire became available on the 'web. Despite the devastation, there were signs of great prosperity and an active population forging their way into the future. Since the Gold Rush, San Francisco has attracted the ambitious and the creative people of every generation.
I lived there in 1963 along with Alan Ginsberg and the beats. Long before there were hippies, there were beats. They tended to be adults, educated, cultured, artistic, and they were travelers. They rode the rails, hitchhiked and explored from sea to shining sea.
Coffee houses were unlike your corner Starbucks. They had florescent lights, linoleum floors, Formica tables and even then they looked shabby. Coffee prices were outrageous at more than one dollar (when you could still get coffee for 25 cents in a proper restaurant). But someone would wander in and play guitar or recite poetry for tips. There would be a loud argument about Fidel Castro at the next table, or a scruffy beat with a guitar case covered in stickers from around the world. You went there to be with people who had a broad world view.
I spent much of my time at Cochran's Billiards, 1028 Market St. Hard core players from across the country, just like the movie The Hustler. My fortunes varied from poor to destitute so I walked the city rather than drive or use buses. Many people today never see the city from the sidewalk, the gutter, so to speak. Chinatown, Market street, everywhere it was dirty, noisy, grey and the weather was mild but unfriendly.
But the city was alive. People were on the move, hustling, scheming and dreaming and making things happen. This has been true since the beginning. It's what attracted Mark Twain and it's what attracts some of the most creative people on earth even now.
[Nice reminiscence of Cochran's Billiards: https://forums.azbilliards.com... [azbilliards.com] ]
San Fransisco...a love letter... (Score:2)
I landed with $30...straight went to a Safeway and found a bottle of Popov. Then and now its only $10. Its fine stuff...especially when you filter it through a Brita.
On way to where I stayed those days - somewhere in Fremont - I saw the first big splashy billboard...garden.com Then and now I don't understand their business. I remember the billboard. I thought of PT Barnum...'there's a sucker born
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