This was a good article, and a lot of it resonates with me, since I did grow up in SF in the 70s and 80s. It occurred to me, reading the article, that Northern

This was a good article, and a lot of it resonates with me, since I did grow up in SF in the 70s and 80s. It occurred to me, reading the article, that Northern Californians may be unusually ill prepared to handle the changes that occurred in the State. People often say to me "well, you grew up here, so you aren't as shocked by the prices", but it actually may be the opposite. Someone who grew up outside SF sees moving here as a choice, a decision to accept the outrageously high real estate prices as the cost of living here. But the truth is, the high prices in SF are just as much of a shock to people who grew up here. Of course, this is a slight of hand, as it actually is just as much of a choice to stay here as it is to move here, but it is more jarring to have to leave your hometown due to a fairly sudden stratospheric rise in housing prices than it is to decide not to move to a place you've never lived (especially if it involves leaving family or lifelong friends behind). Another factor is that the very low prices may have instilled a lack of materialism in California kids that left them, as I said, unusually unprepared for what was to follow. When a school teacher, humanities professor, or social worker can afford a 3 bedroom house in palo alto with a nice sized backyard In that sort of environment, their children will often grow up believing that it wasn't really worth chasing the money, that in fact, you shouldn, that this would be to waste a gift. Yes, you'll still need an income, but why would you sacrifice a life where you enjoy your work and do good, if all that requires is that you live in a modest house in middle class Palo Alto or Noe Valley than a mansion in Pacific Heights or Hillsborough? What none of these people were prepared for is the reality that living in "middle class" Palo Alto (long, long gone) or Noe Valley will be complete off limits, and that a house in the Excelsior may even be just out of reach. One thing that did make me cringe was the old, tired trope that doctors and lawyers are priced out, and that "only techies need apply". Rank and file "techies" were an integral part of the old SF that Dan Duane says he misses - hell, programming was even discussed as path to find the serene focus in "Zen and the article of motorcycle maintenance." Programmers and other techies were types who had renounced the big salaries of corporate law or banking to do something more creative and interesting. This view of tech was alive and well in the late 90s, and shows up in a lot of PG's early essays. C'mon, Dan, the median salary for lawyers and doctors is waaay higher than for your typical "techie".