Working in Manhattan many years later, I expected much the same arriving for the first time, but surprisingly wasn't so. What the hell are they doing wrong there? This article says much.
Manhattan's answer is because of Giuliani's authoritarian mayoral reign. Cleanliness came at a cost of mass arrests and evictions of the homelessness, restrictions on shelters, and stop-and-frisk. Probably not a price that S.F. is willing to pay.
a few years ago? definitely not.
today? possibly. people are getting really fed up
- yes, there's human feces and needles and tent cities in the Tenderloin/SOMA area
- Painted Ladies is an old-ass building, as is much of the residential sprawl around it
- Fishermans Wharf is a textbook tourist trap
- there's a ton of nice forest-y areas (Presidio, Glen Canyon, Stern Grove, etc)
- Sea cliff area is textbook rich person neighbourhood
- Financial district actually looks like a modern metropolis
Picking one facet and ignoring the rest is... cherrypicky.
Didn’t a family just get held up at gunpoint while washing their car near Bernal Heights?
Not cherry picking.
I love the hills. Walk up 10 minutes from tenderloin (worst part of the city) and you are on Russian hill. Almost never see homeless there, just 5 start hotels. (In fact this seems to be true of most areas of the city, walk up any hill and there are almost no homeless, they are for the most part too lazy to do it). From there you can see the bay on one side. Just a beautiful view.
Nearby from Russian hill is the biggest Chinatown in the US. Walk 5 blocks into Chinatown and you are in a different world. 95% Chinese people, no Chinese in the grocery stores and food that I have no idea what it is.
I can have a drink and smoke a joint with some friends in the park and no one cares. Where I live now I would be immediately have the cops called and arrested. Speaking of parks, I love golden gate park. It is huge and on the other side you are at the ocean.
Most of the people I have found to be far friendlier than on the east coast. Maybe I am a bit on the spectrum but people in SF don't care. Or maybe it is some other reason. But when I lived in SF I made friends way more easily. Also went on a lot more dates. For me I would be happier to move back to SF and complain about the rent and the homeless than live on the east coast and commute to my soulless suburban office park.
If that's "diverse" and "beautiful" then I'd hate to think what "monocultural" and "dull" looks like...
This is not accurate. The Sunset, Richmond, Parkside, Presidio, Marina, and many other parts of the city are very clean (or at least not notably dirty for a city). Perhaps the Marina/Presidio could be called tourist areas but the Sunset and Richmond certainly are not.
Richmond is not in SF city.
Presidio is right next to the pier and thus I would consider it a "touristy area".
You're living under a (perhaps bejeweled) rock if you've lived in SF and never seen human shit, someone peeing between some cars, dead animals, homeless literally everywhere, disheveled buildings, trash piles lining the gutters, etc.
I never claimed that these problems don't exist, but the idea that they're part of life in every part of the city is simply false.
Poster you’re replying to isn’t wrong, just as you aren’t.
Also many of the highest ranking schools are in the Sunset, and house prices there are very much on the high side (compared to, say, around Portola)
You're dodging the argument at this point.
The merchant who has been running the shop below my place longer than I have been alive (and I'm OLD by HN standards) put it this way: The Castro is dying.
Maybe there are neighborhoods changing for the better somewhere to balance it out, but I kinda doubt it. The change is real.
Whenever I visit SF I run into someone who looks like an extra from a zombie movie every time, without fail. Sometimes they "violently beg" by lunging at your feet as you walk past. Scream obscenities. Offer stolen goods at red lights. And if you somehow don't see them you can certainly smell them.
Just because we collectively got desensitized doesn't make all this OK.
You mean in exchange for living in a city with high paying tech jobs?
Here’s some enjoyable reading for those with a few minutes to spare: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/early.html
To me the confluence of cultures, like the brackish waters of the bay, are it’s hallmark. The issues around sudden wealth, excess, limited housing, and visionary governance seem to be more about the place than a particular moment.
So according to people voting with their feet: no, San Francisco was not a brilliant place before tech. Or at least it wasn't brilliant enough to attract a net increase in population.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/24/business/a-city-takes-a-b...
But so was San Jose. Apparently the "downtown" was boarded up in many places till the late 90s when it began emerging from a mini-Detroit like state. MacEnary was feverishly trying to resuscitate it, I don't think it was his effort so much as it was tech to the rescue, else it would have been an Albukerke.
In SF in the 1980s, SOMA was one of the cheapest places even in a cheap city like SF... lost of broke creative types living in old warehouse/industrial space that would otherwise be going derelict.
In lower Manhattan whole neighborhoods were in a similar state -- bohemian artists occupying loads of space that nobody else would touch.
And in London plenty of neighborhoods were full of squats. Housing stock had become so worthless that it wasn't even worth the effort to prevent people living there for free.
Now those same neighborhoods are among the most expensive urban areas in the English-speaking world. People are literally spending millions of dollars to live at those exact same street addresses... in some cases even living in the same structures, just instead of a half-derelict warehouse it'll now be all marble countertops and the like.
All of these places have their own stories and unique factors, but it's also very remarkable how similar the trajectories and how extreme the swing has been.
As an example, the city of Reykjavík has 23 representatives in the city council. They are voted proportionally from parties represented distinct views. San Francisco board of supervisors have 11 members, less then half of Reykjavík’s despite having more then 6 times the population. ~And to make it worse, each member is voted on a first past the post system.~ [Edit: Not true as pointed out in a comment]
The San Francisco mayor is voted in a separate election and is not on the board of supervisors. Since this is a position where a lot of political capital is to be gained it is often used as an opportunity for a politician seeking a career, rather then as a passive position willing to let diverse opinions and find consensus among differing views.
None of this is voter’s fault. Rather there is a systemic problem which can only be fixed by the people who are benefiting from the status quo.
That's not actually true, we use RCV to elect supervisors (and the mayor).
This is really key, and should be a bigger topic of discussion in mainstream political philosophy. Governments that purport to be democracies ought to be responsible for aligning policies and outcomes with the preferences of the electorate. It's far too common for people to dismiss literally any problem in an ostensibly democratic jurisdiction as "well that's what the people voted for," as if the only end goal of a government is to pass some bare minimum threshold of being considered a "democracy" and the rest of the responsibility is on the electorate.
Just because we have a black female mayor does not mean the real racism of SF is gone, just as electing Obama did not miraculously cure the US if it’s racism.
I don't agree that they have been "ethnically cleansed." I'm sure economics has forced some out.
I've live in many parts of the country, and this is by far the least racist, and most racially diverse, place I've lived.
Black men in the city would be expected to have a lower life span than black men nationwide, since urban black neighborhood are more prone to drugs and gangs. Have you compared to other big cities, as opposed to just nationwide?
San Francisco also has a disproportionately low amount of black folks living there.
'I will walk through a pile of shit before my money is used for you to shit somewhere else you lazy fuck'
I was attacked by a disturbed man who chased and pulled a (probably fake) gun on me, but no piles of shit whatsoever!
There are few and dwindling public bathrooms to the point where gig workers struggle to find facilities[1] while they're out there doing critical work. Rich NIMBYs believe that bathrooms (and not the sky-high rents they seek) encourage people to become homeless, so they've successfully shut down the emergency facilities opened up during the pandemic[2].
1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/884xyp/gig-workers-have-nowh...
2. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/San-Franc...
Speaking from experience of daily driving through Tenderloin.
FWIW I blame systemic problems not the individuals responsible. But the problem was viscerally apparent to me.
http://www.abcbusinessnews.com/2019/04/behold-the-shit-map-m...
I reported some shit for the city to clean up. They never cleaned it up. It just sat there for weeks decaying. After weeks, there was only a little bit left... probably ended up on someone's shoe.
Early in the pandemic, the city looked worse. Now it looks somewhat cleaner but still depopulated.
There are some tourists but surprisingly many of the people walking around at Bay Area locals. The tourists are still so few that you can recognize them upon seeing them again.