Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

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"If there's one thing I've learned in life, is to never listen to people moaning about the 'good old days'"

You're just being a reverse curmudgeon. Creativity thrives in an environment of diversity, and San Francisco became a mecca for creative software people because it was already a mecca for artists, hippies and people of all races and creeds, not because it was packed to the gills with iPhone developers in ironic t-shirts. Maybe there's nothing that can be done about it, but I think there's definitely a loss when a place becomes homogenous due to gentrification.

I've only been here since 2008, but even on that limited timeframe it's been pretty damned annoying to see useful places (like hardware stores, markets, dry cleaners, etc.) shut down so that room can be made for yuppie bars and overpriced restaurants. So we replace shops with co-working spaces and bookstores with boutique dealers of objets d'art and we pretend that it's "progress", but we make the neighborhoods less attractive to the people who made the neighborhoods attractive.

In short: if you're giving me a choice, I'll take "stabby" neighborhoods over luxury condos. At least the former gives an artist or a musician a place to squat while earning nothing and doing something truly novel; the latter gives a software engineer a place to live while working for Zynga.

>Creativity thrives in an environment of diversity

I don't know how that assumption would correlate with SV. The Peninsula and the SR237 triangle aren't known for their creative diversity --they were orchards just a few decades back -but those valleys were the primary genesis for the information technology we have today. When the HPs, Fairchildren, NatSemis, Intels, etc. began all the Beatnicks were in SF. The valley was a kind of backwater --well, it was mostly orchards, from what I can tell. Despite that those companies were able to find bright people who brought forth progress and ideas which profoundly affect us today. So, I don't really see the correlation between creative types and the discoveries by the engineers. That's not to say engineers can't enjoy the creative arts as pleasure, but to say they are related directly seems a stretch, to me. It's not a detriment to have creatives, but not sure they were a necessary ingredient.

> I think there's definitely a loss when a place becomes homogenous due to gentrification.

I think the premise is an old canard. Post WWII Tokyo had a choice to make. Change rapidly and modermize and progress or remain chained to its old ways and remain a kind of defeated backwater. They chose the former, and while modern, Tokyo is not "boring" and homogenous. There are thousands of distinct neighborhoods with their own unique character, despite the fast pace of building and modernization.

"I don't know how that assumption would correlate with SV. The Peninsula and the SR237 triangle aren't known for their creative diversity"

It isn't an assumption. There's a lot of literature backing up the association (for a popularization, read Where Good Ideas Come From, by Stephen Pinker).

In any case, for many years the city was a bedroom community for Silicon Valley -- people worked in the valley, and lived in the city for the diversity and culture (which is part of the reason we have Caltrain). San Francisco has always been a draw.

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a read when I have some time. Still, questions linger. Artis live up and down the coast from Santa Cruz down to LA. There are even art towns/communities -I don't see a lot of innovation coming from there. Sure, artwise they may be avant guarde, but proponents of progress (aside from social change) and drivers of innovation, I don't see that. If anything, they seem to tend towards conservatism when it comes to progress.

Now, engineers and scientists might enjoy and even admire artists for their literary imagination, expressiveness, showship, fame, etc. In popular culture, perhaps perpetuated via the products of these same artists, people tend to stereotype engineers as socially inadequate and dull. So that's a bit ironic. Personally, I think it's somewhat incidental. Engineers and scientists have some of the 'artist' in the old Renaissance sense of the word, but they are primarily innovators and not expressive artists.

No, that's not the right history. Caltrain is the remains of the old Southern Pacific commute lines; the SP brought people FROM the peninsula INTO San Francisco to work during the day, and back to their peninsula bedrooms in the evening. After WWII, San Francisco headed downward. By the 1960s and 1970s crime and disorder were so bad that only the very rich could live in San Francisco. Large employers moved their "back offices" to the suburbs, and in-commuting fell. Startups in the 1970s and 1980s had to be in Silicon Valley, because few decent engineers would have dreamed of living in the disgusting city, and they didn't want to commute to it either. Freeway traffic in the 1970s and 1980s was almost entirely INTO the city in the morning, back to the Peninsula in the evening; working in the Valley where one lived made that unnecessary. Only in the last few years has it become common to live in San Francisco and work in Silicon Valley, as San Francisco has recovered and become a vastly better place to live.

I've visited and/or spent significant time in San Francisco since considerably earlier than that.

I've visited and/or spent significant time and/or lived in numerous other communities, large and small, since considerably before that.

Here's a little secret: things change.

Hardware, drug, and book stores have been closing across the country and around the world with consolidation.

High-quality fresh/organic food markets, good cafes, restaurants, museums, and of course, restaurants, have largely increased in number over the same period. Even art-and-creativity friendly places such as the Crucible (in Oakland), Makerspace, and the like have popped up.

Do I miss some of the things that were and now are not? Sure. Do I appreciate some of the things which were not, and now are? You better believe it. Are there still fascinating reminders squirreled away in strange nooks and crannies that remind us of the old times? Yep.

The 1950s - 1970s creative boom occurred in large part because Northern California was an inexpensive place to be. Other parts of the country are now inexpensive (including such near-range locations as California's Central Valley, or even Alameda County -- no need to go back to Ohio, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's part of the dynamic. Art's still got to pay the rent, and if there's not much money in that, it needs to go where the rent is cheap.

And if you didn't think the Hippie culture was ironic, well, brother, do I have a grass bridge to sell you.

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