San Francisco Streets with Andrew Callaghan [video]
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For one, he is still extremely recognizable. And two, he is still wearing the same type of (rather iconic at this point) suits and outfits that made him recognizable in the first place.
Speaking of which, I'm surprised I haven't seen any mention of it. What became of that?
Probably 0% the above, and 90% changing his look because he got too well-known. His thing is doing more candid interviews, not being recognized as a famous person helps the interview subject relax more.
I’ve always felt that the increase in crime was a direct result of the fucking rent. Its been empty for a minute now, it reminds me of disneyland in the sense that people all go in to shop and work but leave back home at night, leaving a ghost town. So it’s community got weak, lost the electorate to protect itself.
I do get frustrated by outsiders making fun of us. Its a complex problem that you can’t solve with a gun like some other commenters are suggesting. Try saving a life for once and then get back to me on how to make my city less miserable. I also get frustrated by the outsider voyeurism that comes with suffering.
I like how another commenter put it. Its as if we took a really painful fall off a cliff, alone. The only way out is to slowly crawl back up.
Re: tech - it def disrupted the fabric of the city. As quickly as it came (gentrification, raising rents) and as quickly as it left (residents losing adjacent jobs), it's been bad for the people who had to live through it without high paying tech jobs.
I liked that Andrew touched on the opioid epidemic and how it's spiraled. Heavy policing historically disenfranchised poor minorities so that's not the way to go. Progressive policies were tried and the people pushed back.
I wish there was a single solution. It feels like we fell off a cliff and the only way up is to crawl back up.
> The role of tech is no different than any other industry.
I agree with this. Doesn’t mean industry shares no blame.
The solution to a lot of problems here are more high density housing. The way you get that is taxes and eminent domain to tear down and rebuild. But that will weaken current SF residents political power, so they fight against it. Pushing labor out of the city removes their power to affect change.
The only point I'd bring up about the tech industry is the SF residents putting up these barriers are often old time tech folks that "made it".
I think Seattle has some of the same issues, but at least seams to be handling things a lot better.
Can we try not making it illegal to build densely on the property you own first? The government doesn’t need to do anything; no tax breaks or incentives. It just needs to stop taking the opinion that any amount of profit taken by a real estate developer is necessarily immoral.
The municipality controls housing and homeless policy. The state controls the mental healthcare system. The feds allowed the opium epidemic.
If we want to focus on solutions, talking about the tech industry is a distraction.
>A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the East Coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’d, up 41 percent from last year. “It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”
>I shook my head.
>“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”
I found it notable that no one in the Reddit discussion <https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/13dvrjs/san_franci...> mentioned the Fallout comparison despite the fact that, well, this is Reddit. I think it hit too hard.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t take it at face value. There’s no reason to believe these are “normal city problems”.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1149748975/a-full-guide-to-th...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD8g_ZfcrEo&t=80s&ab_channel...
Places like Vienna are more functional because they have governments that are working for the people rather than corporate interests. They have centuries of real social development, rather than what the us has which is only economic development.
I think most people in america don't really understand the concept of society. They see the state as a mechanism to keep just enough peace to enable money to be made, and to fight wars. They don't see it as a tool to craft a society that benefits the main thrust of it's people. Despite all the lofty ideals and language in our founding documents it's never been that type of endeavor.
Uber eats and Doordash have had a particularly negative impact, not just that stolen car in the video. Restaurants are strangled and Uber both raises all prices and cuts into margins when the order load doesn’t scale. Even the original Little Star on divisadero is now closing due to Uber gouging. Combine with the fact that the drivers are out-of-town unsafe drivers and block roads everywhere, makes the suburbs look more appealing.
And yet there are people in denial about just how dead downtown SF is. This /r/sanfrancisco post is unintentionally hilarious. <https://np.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/11z2cz5/americ...> I think they think that "People leaving SF" = "Trump wins", or something.
On the other hand, criminal justice in the US is anything but. Voters have decided — I think correctly! — that mere theft and drug use don't warrant the kind of punitive, criminogenic long-term caging and low-grade torture that constitutes our penal system, but there is simultaneously little appetite for improving conditions or exploring alternative rehabilitation so that those going down this road can be firmly turned around or given better choices. So the current situation is that our society, given two bad options, is experimenting with accepting a somewhat elevated crime rate in the interest of reducing over-incarceration and the mass human suffering it creates.
Ultimately my feeling is that you pay for everything one way or another. The stolen laptop and broken window are coming out of the extra money made selling a home in an area with artificially constrained housing supply. People save on property taxes but spend more on Ubers to avoid the train full of poor and needy people who have been screwed by the same system. IMO creating a spectrum of options, rather than the constant debate between extremes, would let people narrow in more strongly on the best balance.