Op-Ed Columnist - Children of the ’70s

I grew up in San Francisco rather than New York, but a lot of this column resonated with me. I was very hesitant to send my kid (almost 5 years old) to the local public school in San Francisco, largely because of my own experience attending these schools in the 70s.

After doing a lot of research (and much convincing from my wife and friends), I have come around to the same conclusion Brooks reached (I'm actually quoting Podhoretz, in the link Brooks references) - "my small city is the same and yet it is not the same, because it is today, in almost every way, better".

There is some loss. San Francisco isn't as open as it used to be, not because it has become less tolerant, but because it has become so expensive. Harvey Milk would have had trouble showing up in SF and finding his calling in life, simply because he never could have afforded the rent. So SF is closed off in some ways.

High Tech is a creative field, and plenty of those folks are still coming here. But there is also a different type of creative person, the kind who is only half aware of what he or she is working on, because it doesn't exist yet... my suspicion is that these people are going somewhere else now. But I'm not 100% sure of that, SF is still a draw. Guess we'll find out in another 30-40 years.

This is a very NYC/big city centric view of this topic, but e.g. the way Dirty Harry resonated with the nation at large in 1971 will indicate how widespread this sense of crime and disorder went. As one of those "children of the '70s" who grew up in a small to medium sized town (45K) I can attest that the author is basically correct.