4 ms·
My experience as a native resident of San Francisco(22 years, but the last few mostly spent out of town for college/work) is that most of the people residing th
by rtf 18y ago
My experience as a native resident of San Francisco(22 years, but the last few mostly spent out of town for college/work) is that most of the people residing there are _tourists_.
That is, people who come there(and many different people do, the turnover is high) also tote along some baggage of what they think the city is about. Vision meets and gradually becomes reality as the newcomers act out their desires, to varying degrees of success. So there is a sort of flow at work. Realization of all the various lifestyles present is a multi-decade process. Plus it changes quickly and incrementally, so as to become nearly unrecognizable. I'm still nowhere near a full comprehension of my hometown.
The broad strokes pg paints in this essay seem more reminiscent of college lifestyle than the character of entire cities. A four-year college is able to concentrate those kinds of ambitions precisely: everyone is at roughly the same few stages of life and so can quickly find common ground.
But in a city, things quickly collide.
- bkovitz 18y agoIndeed, I moved to San Francisco last year, planning to leave in a few months after completing a contract job, to go on to a Ph.D. That is, I intended to be a tourist. But I loved the city so much, I deferred my admission one year. "You should live better." Hmm, I have to think about that. Indeed, my time in SF has been the best living I have ever done. The city has "spoken" to me, and it has resonated. Now I'm deciding if I really want to leave for a Ph.D., or just spend the rest of my life drinking up this wonderful San Francisco vibe.
- ardit33 18y agoSF was created during the madness of Gold Rush, and it changed over nite. Then it got raised twice to the ground, and got rebuild again. The Japanese got kicked out, and the Chinese and African Americans moved in.... etc. etc. Than the 60s and the hippes came, then the 90s and the dot commers came. SF has always been a city in a huge flux, as a place of great opportunities, and attracted many people with the "gold rush' mentality Your grandparents propably were some of these people that came to SF for these opporunities.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]