Why So Many Musicians Are Leaving San Francisco for L.A. | Hacker News Reader

Why So Many Musicians Are Leaving San Francisco for L.A.

pitchfork.com

San Francisco is fast becoming the most boring "big" city in America. Take a look at the boring office-park culture that SV is famous for; that is the future of SF. This change is inevitable as rents increase and the only people who can afford to live there are white and Asian males between 20-35 who work in tech. (I mean no offense by this comment. I fit into this demographic, but I will admit that as group overall middle class tech workers are culturally homogenous and thus incredibly bland.)

This change is inevitable as rents increase

It's not inevitable; rather, it's because of a series of political choices. Steel and elevators are very old technologies and as such it's quite simple to increase the supply of dwellings on a given quantity of land. San Francisco's development rules mostly prohibit anyone from doing so, however, per Matt Yglesias's book The Rent Is Too Damn High (And What To Do About It) (see http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&l...).

In the face of constant supply and rising demand prices increases. Want to change that dynamic? Increase supply by building new stuff.

I'm not so sure that a standard market approach to increasing supply really drives down or even stabilizes housing prices.

I've been present at some significant housing supply buildouts in a few areas, and each time, my observation was that the price of new housing was somewhat above market rates... since it's brand new (and often "luxury" condos/apartments). Plus building costs for new stuff is financed in unamortized $RECENT_YEAR dollars rather than amortized $DECADES_PAST dollars.

For land-constrained places like San Francisco, where the only way to increase supply is up, this dynamic is probably more true, since however old the tech is, it's a lot more capital intensive than stick framing.

Where I have observed a decrease in price, it's never been because of supply increase. It's places like Detroit where demand drops, either because of economic stagnation/collapse, or where there's health/property hazards.

This isn't to say they shouldn't build out/up in SF, just that I'm pretty sure that introducing rents musicians can afford is not going be as simple as changing development rules and letting private developers go at it.

In DC, average rents decreased by 2% last year, largely because of increased supply[1], so it is possible. Somewhere like SF, it's likely that demand would increase faster than supply could so prices would continue to go up, but at least the increase in supply would slow down the price increase.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/washington-faces-ap...

The cited article on DC does give some new construction numbers and credit that as part of the trajectory. However, there's also this bit:

"Job growth in the region, which is heavily focused on the government, has been too weak to support the construction, said Greg Leisch, chief executive officer of Delta Associates. Federal contracting has declined by $7 billion in the last two years and the spending cuts known as sequestration have limited employment and demand for rentals, he said.

“The supply would have been consistent with Washington’s job performance had the federal government not shrunk,”

In other words, despite the increased supply, had the fundamentals of the local economic activity stayed the same, they would have only matched demand at best, and prices probably would have stayed stable/increasing.

It looks to me like this at least as much another example of a price reduction from a demand drop as it is a price reduction from increased supply, if not more.

you sound like a terribly jaded person. sf is teeming with culture, sights, sounds, and food spots that would take years to scratch the surface. i'm from ottawa, canada, you don't know boring big city at all bud

I know Ty. Both him and my friend Peter (his roommate then, not sure if they are still living together) moved there more than a year ago, and they both are from the LA area. Mikal Cronin, who started playing with Ty a while back, was also from there.

Some of it was money related, but most musicians I know live in Oakland anyway. Ty is so busy he's not really home that often anyways. I do think a garage is probably a step up. I know they couldn't play loud in their apartment in the inner richmond.

"Seemingly overnight, [San Francisco] has filled up with phone-scrolling, blank-faced wanderers (particularly in my neighborhood). I prefer a taco to a vintage glasses store any day."

I guess all those people I follow on Tumblr aren't real artists :-(

Key point of the article is that many artists can't afford SF anymore.

It is sad how SF is becoming a monoculture and it seemed to happen so quickly. I moved here only 4 years ago and when I was first here it was flush with weirdness, but now, that weirdness that made SF so fun and free minded, is all but gone.

TL;DR San Francisco is too expensive at the moment and you get more garage space in LA's cultural desert. And lots of bands move there and it's warmer.

EDIT for clarification - I don't think it's a cultural desert: I think the article says this

I'm glad to know I'm living in a cultural desert. Looking at both the bands and the visual artists out here, we must have different usages of the word "desert" :)

Maybe he means it's a desert with culture. At least from my experience going to school down there, "desert" is pretty accurate for the climate/environment in LA.

You're correct when it comes to some parts of the greater Los Angeles area; beyond the foothills that surround it and The Valley, but that's just because the city by that definition goes on forever.

Los Angeles proper; downtown and the surrounding areas, have a great climate because of the onshore breeze that comes in through Santa Monica. The indigenous foliage (what's left of it) there and up into the foothills is quite varied, and with everything the inhabitants have planted over the years, can be quite dense in some areas (largely supported by water from elsewhere in the state).

The extended areas as well, Angeles National Forest and the San Gabriel Mountains, can be comparable in density and recreation to forests across the nation.

Well it's the musician who called it a creative desert.

He'll learn soon enough that it's the desert where 90% of America's culture comes from. It's hard to understand without living there.

I don't get how LA has this reputation for being a cultural desert. I live in the Bay Area and go down to LA several times a year to work on films, and I find it has a very vibrant cultural scene. If it wasn't for family ties I'd have moved down there years ago.

> I don't get how LA has this reputation for being a cultural desert

los angeles obviously isn't a cultural desert. it's the 2nd largest city in the US, the largest city in the most populous state, and the metro area is absolutely massive. if it's art, food, language, or entertainment that exists in the world, there's a high probability you can find it in LA. people just think they know the city from driving through it on a freeway 2 or 3 times, or going to one part of the city once.

there's also a lot of immature hatred in a lot of bay area people for LA because LA is bigger than SF and takes up a lot of global popular mindshare that they feel should be directed toward the bay.

also, by putting something down, people feel more sophisticated/superior to something they feel maybe doesn't deserve the attention it's getting. basic human psychology.

What's there in this story to decorticate that makes it HN worthy?

John Dwyer is talking about gentrification by his old house around Valencia and 17th, aka mission gentrification central. Of which, he recently criticized "techies" for leading.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2014/01/here_is_what_the...

If he spent a little while educating himself before making such comments in public, he'd know that the real problem is draconian zoning laws and NIMBYs.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-ebook/dp/B0078X...

In a nutshell:

San Francisco has long been filling up with noobs...but now we face the most dangerous, the most egregious and blandest of them all...people with lots of money.

NOBODY can square-up a joint like rich people.

As I wrote in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067752 and elsewhere, the solution to rising prices (which is another way of saying "gentrification") is to increase supply.

Or to decrease demand, but that seems unlikely to happen in SF in the near term.

Anything to do with gentrification?

edit: I couldn't figure out why I was a little confused reading this, but it's because there is no one coherent answer in this article.

edit: I asked because the article doesn't answer that, aside from a small sampling. And the phase before this seems to be from only a couple of years ago ("Aaron Leitko wrote a 2011 Pitchfork feature about it called 'Positive Destruction'.") I don't know SF, but I've seen gentrification up close a few times in larger US cities, it usually takes longer. Hence my question.

Try reading the article for once, and you just might be able to answer your own question.

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