A Day in the Life of the Modern San Franciscan
rocket-shoes.com
rocket-shoes.com
Not to say I wasn't mildly amused. But this stuff is over, isn't it? I thought it was cool to be earnest again. I thought having read David Foster Wallace meant we can all stop being so jaded and critical of everyone around us and actually try to learn to live in a modern society while having empathy those around us, even in a big, anonymous city, and genuinely enjoy the trappings of modern culture and technology in a way that mindfully acknowledges the amazing privilege of living where and when we are living.
In that vein, this was my favorite part:
I’ll look at Sutro Tower. I’ll feel lucky to be paying too much money for a very small apartment, because San Francisco is worth it in these tiny little moments.
I'm in Portland, but I love SF. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. Can't people just enjoy that?
I check-in to BART on Foursquare, because everyone needs to know that I’m about to take public transportation. Which is kind of like the equivalent to doing something mundane, like taking a sip of a drink and telling everyone about it. Actually? I’ll probably check into somewhere for this reason later. To be fair: I’ve heard if you check into BART 10 times you get the “Trainspotter” badge. I don’t know why this is important to me. But it is. I need that badge.
I'm not going to pretend like these guys don't exist, but this guy moved to ground zero (the Mission) for goodness sakes. What did he expect?
Hipsters aren't the only subculture in San Francisco.
"Before I go, I pack my black rimmed Ray-Ban eyeglasses and put on my Ray-Ban sunglasses. I then pack my Macbook Pro, iPad, iPhone and Kindle into my Chrome messenger bag."
90% of the email I get in my personal account is from people/startups/companies selling me stuff.
90% of the twitter stream is people pimping their wares (either blog posts or products they endorse).
90% of my facebook wall is filled with inane things.
May be the only way to be successful is to constantly sell yourself and your products.
I haven't viewed the world this way until I started friending and networking with entrepreneurs.
I keep telling myself, there has to be a better way, there has to be..
Don't worry it's not. This is just the echo-chamber path to success, and it's a crowded one. It might be easier to get hipsters to try something new, but it's just that much harder to get them to actually stick with anything. Another path to success is to be in touch with the 99.99% of people that aren't "early adopters" and figure out a way to make a product that they like.
Twitter did the former, Facebook did the latter.
[edit: oops, looks like I'm not the only one...]
There are a great number of greying or almost-greying engineers and other tech types who are part of a generation preceding the current "cool" generation.
This older generation of hackers and engineers got into the industry because the allure of building systems that made society a better place and benefited humanity broadly was a very powerful driver. For years and decades, this passion drove them to build the foundations of what we now know to be modern energy production, electronics, computing, and networking.
Dreams of taking civilization to the stars, of creating limitless energy sources, of using technology to empower oppressed people and bring others out of poverty drove many of this generation forward.
The reality? Masses upon masses of highly indebted hipsters sipping lattes, tweeting about a band they heard called "Shitdripper", on a device thousands of times more powerful than anything available to the NSA a generation ago, bitching about how they can't get a seven figure salary flipping credit default swaps anymore, in a city that, although it once stood for real technological innovation, works hard to churn out hundreds of also-ran photo sharing apps so that said hipsters can post a thousand photos of their purse dog wearing a kermit the frog costume.
Because there was a generation that dreamed of greatness, and the technology they delivered is being used to enable mediocrity.
At least that's my guess.
I myself have been guilty of this but I eventually realized my own hypocrisy and just stopped caring about it. I'm a cool twenty-something techno-hipster - not because I want to be so much as because that's who I am.
The tools and technologies that are already changing the world today, and that will change the world tomorrow, are being worked on by people who might fit the description of San Francisco hipsters. Who do you think works on Twitter? Facebook? Who do you think works on the iPhone? These are products that are already having an impact on society, and it's not just the old guys who are working on them. And as for the "current" generation, what about companies like Square, Heroku, and SimpleGeo? Is that what you call mediocrity? Get off of your high horse.
What's different is that now, because of consumer Internet, "cool people" are getting into computer programming. The old guard of Silicon Valley was very awkward and nerdy -- Bill Gates is the archetype. Today's software entrepreneurs are more like Jack Dorsey -- they dress well, have no trouble getting dates, and people on the street know their companies.
The nerds look at these people and say "This is OUR thing. Get out of here." And resent these new unwanted arrivals.
No, I thought the post was boring, poorly written and just bitter. And that makes it unworthy, in my opinion, of the front page of Hacker News.
This kind of sophomoric crap belongs somewhere on Reddit, not Hacker News.
Haha.
That would have been very well played if it had been intentional, but I somehow doubt that that's the case.
The commenter suggested that hit too close to home. Here's a quick test. Look at the homepage of the guy who wrote the OP and look at his Twitter feed -- it looks pretty much like something you'd expect from someone like the hipster made fun of in the post.
I'm a tech writer. I use Twitter as part of my work, and rarely post personal stuff. And more to the point, I really don't care how other people use Twitter, nor do I find my self-worth in making fun of how they do use Twitter or FourSquare -- even when what I do or don't do on those services differs from them.
I read the post as a genuine description of a normal day for Drew. Not as a bitter or sarcastic post making fun of hipsters, just a description of events in a normal day for Drew. Judging by the rest of the blog I'd call Drew a genuine hipster (unless the whole blog is satire) and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I simply don't understand what people have against them.
This post, accidentially, made my think about the pointlessness of living, but not in a negative way at all. We are born, live our lives and then we die. After we die, nothing, except for some memories in the brains of people you knew, is left. After the people who have the memories die, nothing is left of you and your life except from history.
Granted, a few people change the world in a measurable way, but they're the 0.00001% group of people who do. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being in the group of the 99.99999%.
Life is pointless except from the meaning we get from it. Since the meaning of life is to enjoy it, who's to say that this guy isn't living life correctly?
Instead I got a nasty diatribe against social media addicts who have a fashion sense and like Macs.
Sadface
But I'm curious, how is public transportation in SF? Is it possible to get by without a car or is that a silly pipe dream?
Edit: for context, I'm a Seattleite who has been transplanted to NYC and is now looking to make it back to the West Coast (ideally, Cali!)
The public transportation is pretty good for a city in the USA but pretty bad compared to Europe and really bad compared to Japan. People who like the public transportation in SF usually live near one of the Muni train lines. People who hate the public transportation are usually in a neighborhood where they are stuck taking the bus (which is most of the neighborhoods).
That said, having a car in SF is nice, too. The downside is parking. The upside is being able to just drive over to Safeway for groceries, or drive up to Marin, or throw a surfboard on the roof and go down to Pacifica or Santa Cruz.
You can get most of the way there with Zipcar, but I found that if you regularly want to get out of the city on weekends, Zipcar was not as cost effective as owning a beater automobile.
I just saw your edit. The public transit is not as good (comprehensive) as NYC but is a little better than Seattle.
It's entirely possible to live without a car - very, very much so, but be prepared to pay if that's the case (i.e. neighborhoods well served by transit are expensive, think Manhattan rents... up to $2K for a studio? You bet!).
I'm really not much better off here in NYC though because I live way out on a point in Queens. The nearest public transportation is a bus that's over two miles from where I'm living. The long and short of it is I commute two hours each way every single day.
It's a certain kind of hell I'm not long to suffer.
But I guess my biggest challenge at this point is not only do I not have a car I don't have a license; never bothered and now I regret it. I'm not alone in NYC in this regard. My coworker has lived in NYC all his life and never had a license. He's in his mid-thirties. So I'm trying to figure out if it's practical to attempt the move to SF. Of course there's many things to figure out besides the logistics... but certainly this thread is very helpful in regards to getting around the city.
And re: expensive neighborhoods for transit. I think your numbers are quite a bit off - sure, if you want to live near the main Caltrain station, you are looking at that much. But you can easily find a large 1 bedroom for $1600 within 5 minutes of the light rail or BART for a total transit time to downtown of 10-15 minutes.
Being near BART is going to set you back at least $1700 at the very low end for a studio, $2000 for a 1BR. More for both depending on quality of the place, naturally. You might hack 10% off either of those prices if you pick up a particularly sweet deal.
FWIW, I signed my current place last month, so that's when my knowledge of the current rental market ends. I talked to numerous people including an apartment hunter, all of whom expressed incredulity at how much prices are shifting, even on the order of a couple of months.
General San Franciscan rule: If your neighborhood has parking, it isn't hip.
As far as your history lesson on rail expansion. You have it completely backwards. The bay area had a very extensive rail system 60-70 years ago. One level of the bay bridge was just for trains. Google the Key System for more information. When cars increased in popularity, most of the train and tram system outside of San Francisco went bust, rail corridors were turned into expressways (a great example on the peninsula is Foothill Expressway that runs from Stanford University to Cupertino).
Also, many destinations in the surrounding area are suburban or semi-rural. You need the car when you get there, because where you actually want to go is not usually near the transit station.
For example, it was theoretically possible for me to take public transport from SF to TechShop in Menlo Park, but it involved 2 hours of trains and a very limited bus service or 45 minute walk through an industrial park. Or, I could just drive there in 40 minutes.
envious...
But very entertaining. A somewhat satirical view of my life right now, even though I'm not in SF =(
The basic premise boils down to, I live my life poorly, boo hoo.
Everything the author writes is of their own doing, no one is forcing you to check Twitter and Facebook 100 times a day, no one is forcing you to use foursquare.
This is like a little kid binging on candy all day and then whining about a belly-ache at night.
Just like HN, the comments were more entertaining to me than the original content.