45 ms·

America’s Havana: Thousands Say “Ciao” to San Francisco

76 points by jseliger 7y ago

jdhn 7y ago
>Oracle, for example, has moved its yearly conference to Las Vegas. This is kind of a bad example to show that San Francisco is losing its place as the US's premier tech city, as Vegas is a huge conference city and already hosts tech oriented conferences like CES and Defcon.
- derision 7y ago
  I think it actually is a good example, I think your argument would make sense if they were moving to a new growing location, but the fact that they're moving to a place they could have moved all along exactly shows that now there is some incentive that didn't exist before
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Not really. They just outgrew the conference space in SF. They don't fit in Moscone anymore.
  - jdhn 7y ago
    I think that the Schwab example is much better, as they could stay if they wanted (they have the money), but decided to leave anyways.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
The property values and city taxes probably keep going up, so the powers that be and the NIMBY donors won't care about any of the little people problems. So in economic techtopia, will it be decline be a myspace, or a facebook?
tjr225 7y ago
A milquetoast hit piece of a beautiful city. We’re all aware of SFs problems, not sure why this article is worth even a glance.
- refurb 7y ago
  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated her in a tweet, saying, “I look forward to working with you to continue San Francisco’s proud tradition of standing as a guiding light for progress across America.” Are you disagreeing with Nancy then? Since the 60's SF has had a continuous (60 years!) progressive rule and this is what we end up with. Looking at the major problems in SF, I see a direct link to SF government policies: Crime - stop locking people up! Homelessness - we just need to spend more money! Schooling - we just need more money! Housing - unless it's subsidized, we'll block it every time
  - tjr225 7y ago
    The problems are amplified multifold in conservative and centrist cities throughout the US south and Midwest. Perhaps with less homelessness but of course you don’t fucking freeze or melt to death in San Francisco because the weather is so mild. Go hang out on the east side of Kansas City and tell me SF has real problems. Forget Havana, these places look like Baghdad. I once got locked out of my house and my wife couldn’t get me my keys because some teenagers shot a bunch of holes in the library she worked at. Add on to this that you might make about 70k year there tops and the charm starts to free fall. It’s actually pretty funny because there’s no way you would ever spend any time in a truly violent neighborhood. San Francisco(sans Oakland) pales in comparison to an actual scary place. Even if you chose a nicer conservative town such as Omaha, find me more than a handful of educated engineers who would be willing to relocate there. They don’t exist, by in large, because Omaha is devoid of culture, interest, or beauty. I’d take SF any day, even with the needles and human shit. But of course I’m not brainwashed by political hit pieces- regardless of whatever Nanci(sp?) Pelosi or whatever Peter Thiele thinks.
- dajohnson89 7y ago
  SF's problems are serious enough to warrant discussion. That being said, there is a growing narrative on the right of how the urban (read:liberal) centers are failing. This article is one of many such hit pieces.
droopyEyelids 7y ago
Analyzing the demographic flux of a metropolitan area can be really interesting. That is not what this article is about.
Proven 7y ago
Well done, big government progressives!
voz_ 7y ago
Really a disgusting city.
ransom1538 7y ago
I spent 15 years in SF. Experience: Paying $4100 for a 2 bedroom, being assaulted on the muni multiple times, trying to explain to my parents why needles litter the sidewalk, going through a detective witness interview (after my neighbor was violently attacked and had her home ransacked). I was willing to stay. I love SF. Once I realized things would only get worse, I left :(
- 101404 7y ago
  How can a city with so much income and smart inhabitants become such a #$*@&? What happened?
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Huge wealth disparity.
  - dpoochieni 7y ago
    Good intentions, bad government, as usual... Sadly... as usual
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Not enough of a balance in local politics? Republicans and Democrats are both shitty sides of the same coin, so there's a reason they're 50/50 in most stable places.
  - testfoobar 7y ago
    See where some of the money goes yourself: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/san-francisco/ https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/san-francisc...
  - Lammy 7y ago
    Things make more sense when you take a look at the post-WW2 black population growth in the Bay Area compared to the rise in interest in "local control" growth policy and the timing of some famous "Progressive" votes like the Freeway Revolts: https://i.imgur.com/6F0gP4l.png https://i.imgur.com/6F0gP4l.png I certainly can't speak to _intentions_, but I can observe the result of how basically every decision taken since the '60s has worked to maintain the segregation that used to be legal at the time: http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
Lammy 7y ago
> Even the sights and sounds of the city suggest a certain derangement. When the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was first built in the 1970s, its designers failed to understand the acoustics between wheel, track, and tunnel. Since the nineteenth century, competent railroad engineers have known that a tapered, flanged wheel will handle turns better and generate less noise. For some reason, BART designers ignored this design in favor of a cylindrical wheel with a straight edge. The "some reason" was to withstand the crosswinds on the Golden Gate Bridge. We only use the top of the bridge's two possible decks, and the bottom deck was slated to carry the BART Marin line: https://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg
- refurb 7y ago
  OK, but freight trains use the normal wheels everywhere else in America, including very windy places.
  - ashtonkem 7y ago
    Freight trains are much heavier on the same gauge. The weight limit for a BART train loaded is 55 tons. Compare that to a freight car which weighs 30 tons empty, but can carry up to 100 tons worth of stuff inside it.
    - refurb 7y ago
      OK, but I assume those trains are sometimes moved around empty?
      - ashtonkem 7y ago
        Ideally no. But a lot of them are also flat beds and cattle cars that’ll let air through them when totally empty. I’m assuming that wind is taken in as a factor when deciding what stock to send where though.
        refurb 7y ago
enoreyes 7y ago
It feels a bit misleading to immediately attack Boudin for his work in Venezuela. He was a translator there between undergrad and law school. His leftist background is certainly quite interesting but I felt that the early attempt to attack his character by associating him with Chavez comes across as a bit of a stretch that I think hurts the credibility of the author.
- bosswipe 7y ago
  Yea that was my hint that this is just an ideological rant.
  - trowawee 7y ago
    I was curious what the City Journal was, so I looked it and the Manhattan Institute up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy.... Worthwhile reading for anyone wondering where the original piece is coming from. Personally, looking over their history, I think their interest in publishing a piece like this is likely rooted in ideological issues rather than actually looking at anything meaningful. (I also think they've been wrong about...very nearly everything they've ever offered a position on, so I'm skeptical about this claim that SF is on the brink of tipping over into a Mad Max set.)
    - refurb 7y ago
      Care to list everything they take a position on and been wrong about? That's quite a claim.
- refurb 7y ago
  You can read the article he wrote called "Chavez for Life" https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/
jedberg 7y ago
Most of these complaints aren't really city issues. BART isn't run by the city. PG&E provides power to 1/2 of the state. The housing issue is one that the Mayor has some control over. But not a lot. There are too many landowning moneyed interests to get anything done with zoning. Even the non-moneyed interests work against themselves by supporting policies that actually hurt the poor. Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime. Those folks really have nowhere to go, so they could be arrested, then released back to the streets, and now they can't get a job because they have a record. SF needs to make major strides in up-zoning the entire city. That alone would solve a lot of the problems. Then they can start worrying about petty crime with all that extra tax money they would have. SF isn't even the biggest city in the Bay Area (San Jose is) so if anyone is going to push on PG&E it should be a multi-county effort, not just rest on SF.
- starik36 7y ago
  > Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime Right now, ok, maybe an argument could be made for it. But petty crime wasn't being prosecuted before CV either. CVS Pharmacy downtown was keeping many products in the back (as opposed to the shelves) because police don't do anything about thieves that were stealing stuff in broad daylight. You literally had to ask the cashier to go and look for some items.
Pfhreak 7y ago
This piece seems to be a political hit piece on SF. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of critical analyses on the failures of both the city and the citizens of SF, but this is not that. This appears to be someone who is mostly interested in just complaining. (And with a clickbait headline that isn't backed up in the article.)
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Yes, you could feel the seething behind the words. Still tended to agree with it. One nitpick, Chavez is a favorite punching bag for the right. Most don’t seem to know Vz was pillaged for decades by corrupt capitalists before that. If you ever wondered why folks choose communism when it’s never worked at scale this is why. After the experience you’d probably rather watch the world burn as well.
gorgoiler 7y ago
The article brings up BART wheel/rail noise, which is an interesting window into SF’s unique and some might say self inflicted issues. It’s my understanding BARTs screech comes from statutorily over-powered brakes grinding flats into the wheels. The power rating didn’t take into account the fact that BART is both an all weather outside and an underground (dry) system. On wet outdoor tracks the indoors-only power brakes lock up and wear the wheels flat. In turn these flats grind periodic indents in the tracks, and the whole thing has a feedback loop which ends up in the entire track being corrugated and no wheel ever being truly circular. Solid axles (no differentials) don’t help either. Screeching and howling ensues to a level that is damaging to the hearing of passengers and staff alike.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  The flat wheel thing is a mistake that was made what, 60 years ago. Everyone involved is dead. They've been finally working on fixing it. Yeah BART could be a better built systems if only people long dead had made better choices.
necubi 7y ago
This is a weak rant that has little business being on HN. Just a bunch of random complaints that poorly reflects the totality of SF. Some hits are totally misplaced, like this one: > But the culmination of local incompetence and misplaced priorities has to be the blackouts and fires. The monopoly utility, PG&E, began rolling blackouts this past autumn to prevent sparks in dry and windy weather. Millions went without power for days. What on earth does this have to do with SF? PG&E is a state-wide utility over which SF has no particular authority, and SF wasn't even affected by the rolling blackouts. Certainly SF has problems with property crime, homelessness, housing costs, and NIMBYs. But clearly people still love living here, as evidenced by the continual inflow of people to the city and the region. Articles like that this attempt to paint it as a wasteland feel completely out of touch with the actual reality of living here.
- notyourwork 7y ago
  Having lived there for 3 years in downtown and recently moved away I couldn’t be happier. For how much tax Californian residents pay, San Francisco is a disgrace of a city.
- bhupy 7y ago
  > Certainly SF has problems with property crime, homelessness, housing costs, and NIMBYs. But clearly people still love living here, as evidenced by the continual inflow of people to the city and the region. Articles like that this attempt to paint it as a wasteland feel completely out of touch with the actual reality of living here. San Francisco, objectively, has a net-outflow. This is not a normative statement. https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/bay-area-exodus-fleeing-moving-cost-census-13778557.php https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/bay-a...
  - GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
    2500 people left over 8 years. While technically a net-outflow, it's statistically insignificant. The outflow for immigrants was around 80k.
    - 7y ago
nostromo 7y ago
I've noticed in Seattle how differently Covid-19 has impacted the city core vs the suburbs. Suburbs seem almost normal. People are out. They are shopping. There are kids around. People are in parks. The big difference is nobody is drinking at bars or restaurants. The urban core seems like something out of a zombie movie. It's dead. Everything is closed. There is almost nobody out and about. Few people are on transit. If you do see someone they have a mask on. If I lived downtown right now I'd really be regretting my choice. Not having a yard, a car, and a home office right now would be awful.
- notyourwork 7y ago
  Downtown is great for running and biking due to lack of foot traffic and pedestrians. Otherwise downtown is a ghost town as of late and it’s eerie at times.
qppo 7y ago
I kind of want to write a dystopian novel where to solve the housing crisis, the state of California contracts private businesses to build out rapid transit underground. But instead of paying them any money, the excess earth is dumped into the Bay and the tunnelers are granted land rights to anything above water. The Bay is only 12 feet deep anyway. An ecological disaster resulting in the construction of a neo-feudal society in the new county of Rancho Musk. Everything between the Bay bridge and San Jose, suburban sprawl. Hey kid, did ya know Treasure Island used to be an Island?
- RhysU 7y ago
  I have a silly fictional notion that California's way forward will at some time require being annexed by Oregon so that they can wipe away oodles of historical legislative choices in one swoop. Followed quickly by a "civil war" in which "South Oregon" secedes.
not_a_moth 7y ago
Left SF after 8 years. Many other world cities have what SF offers, including the beauty, restaurants, quirky bars and cafes etc. but the thing that stands out most is the concentration of talented, smart, ambitious people in tech. Tech scenes in other cities don't compare. Something in the air that will push you to be better. I do hope said concentration diffuses to other cities, because in retrospect it's clear to me SF is a mess... the generally low quality overpriced housing, filth, and general anxiety walking on sidewalks in most parts of the city (not unfounded, been harassed many times). Goes for most neighborhoods. Was still fun experience in my 20s, but I wish I hadn't been so attached to the idea of living in SF.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wyclif 6y ago
I think it's fair at this point to say that any HN submissions that are critical of SF are going to be immediately flagged. Every single submission I've ever made that talks about these issues has been immediately flagged. I've often wondered why people are so touchy about SF, but perhaps it's simply because startup people have a lot invested in SF. They live there, and they want to promote a certain fairytale image of the place that doesn't reflect the reality of shit-covered sidewalks, lack of police presence and public safety, crack dealers, discarded needles, and aggressive barking mad homeless people. But the danger is that it makes HN look like a place where vigorous debate and exchange of ideas and criticism is not welcome.

76 points by jseliger 7y ago

jdhn 7y ago

>Oracle, for example, has moved its yearly conference to Las Vegas. This is kind of a bad example to show that San Francisco is losing its place as the US's premier tech city, as Vegas is a huge conference city and already hosts tech oriented conferences like CES and Defcon.

derision 7y ago
I think it actually is a good example, I think your argument would make sense if they were moving to a new growing location, but the fact that they're moving to a place they could have moved all along exactly shows that now there is some incentive that didn't exist before
- jedberg 7y ago
  Not really. They just outgrew the conference space in SF. They don't fit in Moscone anymore.
- jdhn 7y ago
  I think that the Schwab example is much better, as they could stay if they wanted (they have the money), but decided to leave anyways.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

The property values and city taxes probably keep going up, so the powers that be and the NIMBY donors won't care about any of the little people problems. So in economic techtopia, will it be decline be a myspace, or a facebook?

tjr225 7y ago

A milquetoast hit piece of a beautiful city. We’re all aware of SFs problems, not sure why this article is worth even a glance.

refurb 7y ago
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated her in a tweet, saying, “I look forward to working with you to continue San Francisco’s proud tradition of standing as a guiding light for progress across America.” Are you disagreeing with Nancy then? Since the 60's SF has had a continuous (60 years!) progressive rule and this is what we end up with. Looking at the major problems in SF, I see a direct link to SF government policies: Crime - stop locking people up! Homelessness - we just need to spend more money! Schooling - we just need more money! Housing - unless it's subsidized, we'll block it every time
- tjr225 7y ago
  The problems are amplified multifold in conservative and centrist cities throughout the US south and Midwest. Perhaps with less homelessness but of course you don’t fucking freeze or melt to death in San Francisco because the weather is so mild. Go hang out on the east side of Kansas City and tell me SF has real problems. Forget Havana, these places look like Baghdad. I once got locked out of my house and my wife couldn’t get me my keys because some teenagers shot a bunch of holes in the library she worked at. Add on to this that you might make about 70k year there tops and the charm starts to free fall. It’s actually pretty funny because there’s no way you would ever spend any time in a truly violent neighborhood. San Francisco(sans Oakland) pales in comparison to an actual scary place. Even if you chose a nicer conservative town such as Omaha, find me more than a handful of educated engineers who would be willing to relocate there. They don’t exist, by in large, because Omaha is devoid of culture, interest, or beauty. I’d take SF any day, even with the needles and human shit. But of course I’m not brainwashed by political hit pieces- regardless of whatever Nanci(sp?) Pelosi or whatever Peter Thiele thinks.
dajohnson89 7y ago
SF's problems are serious enough to warrant discussion. That being said, there is a growing narrative on the right of how the urban (read:liberal) centers are failing. This article is one of many such hit pieces.

droopyEyelids 7y ago

Analyzing the demographic flux of a metropolitan area can be really interesting. That is not what this article is about.

Proven 7y ago

Well done, big government progressives!

voz_ 7y ago

Really a disgusting city.

ransom1538 7y ago

I spent 15 years in SF. Experience: Paying $4100 for a 2 bedroom, being assaulted on the muni multiple times, trying to explain to my parents why needles litter the sidewalk, going through a detective witness interview (after my neighbor was violently attacked and had her home ransacked). I was willing to stay. I love SF. Once I realized things would only get worse, I left :(

101404 7y ago
How can a city with so much income and smart inhabitants become such a #$*@&? What happened?
- jedberg 7y ago
  Huge wealth disparity.
- dpoochieni 7y ago
  Good intentions, bad government, as usual... Sadly... as usual
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Not enough of a balance in local politics? Republicans and Democrats are both shitty sides of the same coin, so there's a reason they're 50/50 in most stable places.
- testfoobar 7y ago
  See where some of the money goes yourself: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/san-francisco/ https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/san-francisc...
- Lammy 7y ago
  Things make more sense when you take a look at the post-WW2 black population growth in the Bay Area compared to the rise in interest in "local control" growth policy and the timing of some famous "Progressive" votes like the Freeway Revolts: https://i.imgur.com/6F0gP4l.png https://i.imgur.com/6F0gP4l.png I certainly can't speak to _intentions_, but I can observe the result of how basically every decision taken since the '60s has worked to maintain the segregation that used to be legal at the time: http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea

Lammy 7y ago

> Even the sights and sounds of the city suggest a certain derangement. When the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was first built in the 1970s, its designers failed to understand the acoustics between wheel, track, and tunnel. Since the nineteenth century, competent railroad engineers have known that a tapered, flanged wheel will handle turns better and generate less noise. For some reason, BART designers ignored this design in favor of a cylindrical wheel with a straight edge. The "some reason" was to withstand the crosswinds on the Golden Gate Bridge. We only use the top of the bridge's two possible decks, and the bottom deck was slated to carry the BART Marin line: https://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg

refurb 7y ago
OK, but freight trains use the normal wheels everywhere else in America, including very windy places.
- ashtonkem 7y ago
  Freight trains are much heavier on the same gauge. The weight limit for a BART train loaded is 55 tons. Compare that to a freight car which weighs 30 tons empty, but can carry up to 100 tons worth of stuff inside it.
  - refurb 7y ago
    OK, but I assume those trains are sometimes moved around empty?
    - ashtonkem 7y ago
      Ideally no. But a lot of them are also flat beds and cattle cars that’ll let air through them when totally empty. I’m assuming that wind is taken in as a factor when deciding what stock to send where though.
      - refurb 7y ago

enoreyes 7y ago

It feels a bit misleading to immediately attack Boudin for his work in Venezuela. He was a translator there between undergrad and law school. His leftist background is certainly quite interesting but I felt that the early attempt to attack his character by associating him with Chavez comes across as a bit of a stretch that I think hurts the credibility of the author.

bosswipe 7y ago
Yea that was my hint that this is just an ideological rant.
- trowawee 7y ago
  I was curious what the City Journal was, so I looked it and the Manhattan Institute up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy.... Worthwhile reading for anyone wondering where the original piece is coming from. Personally, looking over their history, I think their interest in publishing a piece like this is likely rooted in ideological issues rather than actually looking at anything meaningful. (I also think they've been wrong about...very nearly everything they've ever offered a position on, so I'm skeptical about this claim that SF is on the brink of tipping over into a Mad Max set.)
  - refurb 7y ago
    Care to list everything they take a position on and been wrong about? That's quite a claim.
refurb 7y ago
You can read the article he wrote called "Chavez for Life" https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/

jedberg 7y ago

Most of these complaints aren't really city issues. BART isn't run by the city. PG&E provides power to 1/2 of the state. The housing issue is one that the Mayor has some control over. But not a lot. There are too many landowning moneyed interests to get anything done with zoning. Even the non-moneyed interests work against themselves by supporting policies that actually hurt the poor. Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime. Those folks really have nowhere to go, so they could be arrested, then released back to the streets, and now they can't get a job because they have a record. SF needs to make major strides in up-zoning the entire city. That alone would solve a lot of the problems. Then they can start worrying about petty crime with all that extra tax money they would have. SF isn't even the biggest city in the Bay Area (San Jose is) so if anyone is going to push on PG&E it should be a multi-county effort, not just rest on SF.

starik36 7y ago
> Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime Right now, ok, maybe an argument could be made for it. But petty crime wasn't being prosecuted before CV either. CVS Pharmacy downtown was keeping many products in the back (as opposed to the shelves) because police don't do anything about thieves that were stealing stuff in broad daylight. You literally had to ask the cashier to go and look for some items.

Pfhreak 7y ago

This piece seems to be a political hit piece on SF. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of critical analyses on the failures of both the city and the citizens of SF, but this is not that. This appears to be someone who is mostly interested in just complaining. (And with a clickbait headline that isn't backed up in the article.)

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Yes, you could feel the seething behind the words. Still tended to agree with it. One nitpick, Chavez is a favorite punching bag for the right. Most don’t seem to know Vz was pillaged for decades by corrupt capitalists before that. If you ever wondered why folks choose communism when it’s never worked at scale this is why. After the experience you’d probably rather watch the world burn as well.

gorgoiler 7y ago

The article brings up BART wheel/rail noise, which is an interesting window into SF’s unique and some might say self inflicted issues. It’s my understanding BARTs screech comes from statutorily over-powered brakes grinding flats into the wheels. The power rating didn’t take into account the fact that BART is both an all weather outside and an underground (dry) system. On wet outdoor tracks the indoors-only power brakes lock up and wear the wheels flat. In turn these flats grind periodic indents in the tracks, and the whole thing has a feedback loop which ends up in the entire track being corrugated and no wheel ever being truly circular. Solid axles (no differentials) don’t help either. Screeching and howling ensues to a level that is damaging to the hearing of passengers and staff alike.

Gibbon1 7y ago
The flat wheel thing is a mistake that was made what, 60 years ago. Everyone involved is dead. They've been finally working on fixing it. Yeah BART could be a better built systems if only people long dead had made better choices.

necubi 7y ago

This is a weak rant that has little business being on HN. Just a bunch of random complaints that poorly reflects the totality of SF. Some hits are totally misplaced, like this one: > But the culmination of local incompetence and misplaced priorities has to be the blackouts and fires. The monopoly utility, PG&E, began rolling blackouts this past autumn to prevent sparks in dry and windy weather. Millions went without power for days. What on earth does this have to do with SF? PG&E is a state-wide utility over which SF has no particular authority, and SF wasn't even affected by the rolling blackouts. Certainly SF has problems with property crime, homelessness, housing costs, and NIMBYs. But clearly people still love living here, as evidenced by the continual inflow of people to the city and the region. Articles like that this attempt to paint it as a wasteland feel completely out of touch with the actual reality of living here.

notyourwork 7y ago
Having lived there for 3 years in downtown and recently moved away I couldn’t be happier. For how much tax Californian residents pay, San Francisco is a disgrace of a city.
bhupy 7y ago
> Certainly SF has problems with property crime, homelessness, housing costs, and NIMBYs. But clearly people still love living here, as evidenced by the continual inflow of people to the city and the region. Articles like that this attempt to paint it as a wasteland feel completely out of touch with the actual reality of living here. San Francisco, objectively, has a net-outflow. This is not a normative statement. https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/bay-area-exodus-fleeing-moving-cost-census-13778557.php https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/bay-a...
- GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
  2500 people left over 8 years. While technically a net-outflow, it's statistically insignificant. The outflow for immigrants was around 80k.
  - 7y ago

nostromo 7y ago

I've noticed in Seattle how differently Covid-19 has impacted the city core vs the suburbs. Suburbs seem almost normal. People are out. They are shopping. There are kids around. People are in parks. The big difference is nobody is drinking at bars or restaurants. The urban core seems like something out of a zombie movie. It's dead. Everything is closed. There is almost nobody out and about. Few people are on transit. If you do see someone they have a mask on. If I lived downtown right now I'd really be regretting my choice. Not having a yard, a car, and a home office right now would be awful.

notyourwork 7y ago
Downtown is great for running and biking due to lack of foot traffic and pedestrians. Otherwise downtown is a ghost town as of late and it’s eerie at times.

qppo 7y ago

I kind of want to write a dystopian novel where to solve the housing crisis, the state of California contracts private businesses to build out rapid transit underground. But instead of paying them any money, the excess earth is dumped into the Bay and the tunnelers are granted land rights to anything above water. The Bay is only 12 feet deep anyway. An ecological disaster resulting in the construction of a neo-feudal society in the new county of Rancho Musk. Everything between the Bay bridge and San Jose, suburban sprawl. Hey kid, did ya know Treasure Island used to be an Island?

RhysU 7y ago
I have a silly fictional notion that California's way forward will at some time require being annexed by Oregon so that they can wipe away oodles of historical legislative choices in one swoop. Followed quickly by a "civil war" in which "South Oregon" secedes.

not_a_moth 7y ago

Left SF after 8 years. Many other world cities have what SF offers, including the beauty, restaurants, quirky bars and cafes etc. but the thing that stands out most is the concentration of talented, smart, ambitious people in tech. Tech scenes in other cities don't compare. Something in the air that will push you to be better. I do hope said concentration diffuses to other cities, because in retrospect it's clear to me SF is a mess... the generally low quality overpriced housing, filth, and general anxiety walking on sidewalks in most parts of the city (not unfounded, been harassed many times). Goes for most neighborhoods. Was still fun experience in my 20s, but I wish I hadn't been so attached to the idea of living in SF.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wyclif 6y ago

I think it's fair at this point to say that any HN submissions that are critical of SF are going to be immediately flagged. Every single submission I've ever made that talks about these issues has been immediately flagged. I've often wondered why people are so touchy about SF, but perhaps it's simply because startup people have a lot invested in SF. They live there, and they want to promote a certain fairytale image of the place that doesn't reflect the reality of shit-covered sidewalks, lack of police presence and public safety, crack dealers, discarded needles, and aggressive barking mad homeless people. But the danger is that it makes HN look like a place where vigorous debate and exchange of ideas and criticism is not welcome.