5 ms·

20-30 years ago San Francisco was considered... a nightmarish hellscape. Until the first dotcom boom the city was in decline, or at least that's how the story g

20-30 years ago San Francisco was considered... a nightmarish hellscape. Until the first dotcom boom the city was in decline, or at least that's how the story goes. My understanding is that at that time it also had a booming art scene and was going through an awesome counter culture phase that birthed Burning Man. Maybe that's what's ahead now that everyone is leaving? Videos showing the drug problem are terrifying though...

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I first visited SF at the start of the .com boom in 1996 when I had friends living there. Rent controlled apartment, 3 bedroom for something like $1100 USD. Beautiful city, a bit grungy, with just a lot of neat stuff going on. Went to a few cool underground parties, ate well, saw a lot of good art, went to some good bookstores and other shops, and met some really neat people. I wanted to move there. Within a few years almost all my friends who weren't tech industry people -- or married to one -- couldn't afford to live there anymore and almost all left. The next time I got into to SF was about 20 years later and, yeah. Wow. Not the same city. So completely different. Many of the physical trappings were the same, but the atmosphere was entirely different.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  So my point being that supposedly around 1990 SF was in an awful decline etc. I wish I was alive in late 1990’s SF
gedy 4y ago
SF had less street crime and open drug use 20-30 ago. Definitely was more visitable for tourists at least.
mkr-hn 4y ago
I wonder how many of the homeless residents tech people complain about were part of that art scene and counterculture but got gentrified out of their homes with nowhere else to go.
- labcomputer 4y ago
  Well, considering that every homeless census of SF shows[1] that the vast majority aren't long-term residents of San Francisco and that SF has some of the most renter-friendly laws in the country, I'm going to say "not many". [1] If you understand how statistic work, and how to read critically. The censuses seem to be written by someone who thinks "How to Lie With Statistics" was an instruction manual, not a warning. Edit: Here's the latest pre-pandemic census: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep... On page 18, we learn that fully 30% of SF's homeless became homeless before moving to SF. Of the remaining 70%, only 55% (so 38% of all homeless in SF) are long-time (>10 years) residents of SF. 27% of SF's homeless lived in SF between 1 and 10 years. On page 19, we learn that only 30% of SF's homeless had a home they owned or rented immediately prior to becoming homeless. The rest were couch surfing, institutionalized, in SROs or subsidized housing. We probably shouldn't assume zero correlation (but we don't have a better prior, because the crosstabs are not available, so...). But if we do, this suggests only around 11% of SF's homeless population were long-term renters who were kicked out. On page 22, we learn that only 13% of SF's homeless cited "eviction" as the primary reason for currently experiencing homelessness. In contrast, "lost job" is the the most common reason, at 26%. Substance abuse is #2 at 18%. On page 21, we learn that 65% of homeless people in SF have been homeless for more than a year. That's an interesting statistic because that's the same percent homeless who became homeless while in SF and whose total residency in SF was more than a year. Again, the crosstabs are not made available to us, but it is suggestive that many of the people from page 18 who reported being long-term SF residents were not long-term SF residents at the time they experienced housing loss. Not to sound conspiratorial, but my points above could be easily refuted with crosstabs from the census. The silence is deafening.
ghaff 4y ago
20-30 years ago, a lot of large US cities were net losing population (and employers). At one point, after Teradyne moved out, I don't think there was a single significant tech company in Boston though I think the bio build-out in Kendall Square had started.
sammalloy 4y ago
> 20-30 years ago San Francisco was considered... a nightmarish hellscape. Not true in the slightest. There was little crime, you could walk everywhere safely, day or night, and the food was still incredible, and cheap. Major parts of the city were on a roadmap towards revitalization before dotcom was ever a thing. Yerba Buena Gardens was competed in 1993, for example. No disruption required. > Until the first dotcom boom the city was in decline, or at least that's how the story goes. It’s the exact opposite. The city was undergoing major revitalization before the dotcom era. The first dotcom boom brought major gentrification, and with it, people who didn’t care for the values and culture of the city.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  Sorry, I never experienced it in 1990's - I just heard that's what people thought of SF at the time. My point was a bit more optimistic but not well expressed - usually when places are considered 'bad' or 'poor' they often rebound with an awesome vibrant scene and culture. What I wanted to say was more along the lines that 'negative' reputation is usually a great cover for something special going on. I personally do believe SF has a boom/bust cycle in it's DNA. When I was in my early 20's and living there around the late 00's, people were talking about how 'SF is over'. I vividly remember an older fellow telling me that he's been hearing that line since the 60's, and yet somehow the city always manages to evolve into something new and 'legendary'.
- wankerrific 4y ago
  I agree about the major first dotcom bringing people who didn’t care for the values and culture of the city but disagree about the roughness. The mission and the part of soma near the old trans bay terminal were pretty rough. People got mugged in broad daylight kinda rough
  - sammalloy 4y ago
    I was living in the Mission and working near SOMA. Never had a problem in ten years, and we would be walking to and from work and to the bars until close. There was 1% of the homelessness back then that you see now, and almost no sign of drug addiction on the streets except for a few blocks of some rough areas. The city was generally considered one of the safest to live in the country at the time, and easily affordable. Inequality changed everything, because the people who moved into the city did so to exploit its workers, its housing, and its resources. That’s when all the true creatives moved out and the bean counters and disrupters and fake privacy advocates moved in. While it’s popular to blame midwest software engineers, the true blame lies in vast swaths of old money from back east, which attempted to turn San Francisco into Manhattan, and destroy all of what made the city great to begin with. They succeeded.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I first visited SF at the start of the .com boom in 1996 when I had friends living there. Rent controlled apartment, 3 bedroom for something like $1100 USD. Beautiful city, a bit grungy, with just a lot of neat stuff going on. Went to a few cool underground parties, ate well, saw a lot of good art, went to some good bookstores and other shops, and met some really neat people. I wanted to move there. Within a few years almost all my friends who weren't tech industry people -- or married to one -- couldn't afford to live there anymore and almost all left. The next time I got into to SF was about 20 years later and, yeah. Wow. Not the same city. So completely different. Many of the physical trappings were the same, but the atmosphere was entirely different.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
So my point being that supposedly around 1990 SF was in an awful decline etc. I wish I was alive in late 1990’s SF

gedy 4y ago

SF had less street crime and open drug use 20-30 ago. Definitely was more visitable for tourists at least.

mkr-hn 4y ago

I wonder how many of the homeless residents tech people complain about were part of that art scene and counterculture but got gentrified out of their homes with nowhere else to go.

labcomputer 4y ago
Well, considering that every homeless census of SF shows[1] that the vast majority aren't long-term residents of San Francisco and that SF has some of the most renter-friendly laws in the country, I'm going to say "not many". [1] If you understand how statistic work, and how to read critically. The censuses seem to be written by someone who thinks "How to Lie With Statistics" was an instruction manual, not a warning. Edit: Here's the latest pre-pandemic census: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep... On page 18, we learn that fully 30% of SF's homeless became homeless before moving to SF. Of the remaining 70%, only 55% (so 38% of all homeless in SF) are long-time (>10 years) residents of SF. 27% of SF's homeless lived in SF between 1 and 10 years. On page 19, we learn that only 30% of SF's homeless had a home they owned or rented immediately prior to becoming homeless. The rest were couch surfing, institutionalized, in SROs or subsidized housing. We probably shouldn't assume zero correlation (but we don't have a better prior, because the crosstabs are not available, so...). But if we do, this suggests only around 11% of SF's homeless population were long-term renters who were kicked out. On page 22, we learn that only 13% of SF's homeless cited "eviction" as the primary reason for currently experiencing homelessness. In contrast, "lost job" is the the most common reason, at 26%. Substance abuse is #2 at 18%. On page 21, we learn that 65% of homeless people in SF have been homeless for more than a year. That's an interesting statistic because that's the same percent homeless who became homeless while in SF and whose total residency in SF was more than a year. Again, the crosstabs are not made available to us, but it is suggestive that many of the people from page 18 who reported being long-term SF residents were not long-term SF residents at the time they experienced housing loss. Not to sound conspiratorial, but my points above could be easily refuted with crosstabs from the census. The silence is deafening.

ghaff 4y ago

20-30 years ago, a lot of large US cities were net losing population (and employers). At one point, after Teradyne moved out, I don't think there was a single significant tech company in Boston though I think the bio build-out in Kendall Square had started.

sammalloy 4y ago

> 20-30 years ago San Francisco was considered... a nightmarish hellscape. Not true in the slightest. There was little crime, you could walk everywhere safely, day or night, and the food was still incredible, and cheap. Major parts of the city were on a roadmap towards revitalization before dotcom was ever a thing. Yerba Buena Gardens was competed in 1993, for example. No disruption required. > Until the first dotcom boom the city was in decline, or at least that's how the story goes. It’s the exact opposite. The city was undergoing major revitalization before the dotcom era. The first dotcom boom brought major gentrification, and with it, people who didn’t care for the values and culture of the city.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Sorry, I never experienced it in 1990's - I just heard that's what people thought of SF at the time. My point was a bit more optimistic but not well expressed - usually when places are considered 'bad' or 'poor' they often rebound with an awesome vibrant scene and culture. What I wanted to say was more along the lines that 'negative' reputation is usually a great cover for something special going on. I personally do believe SF has a boom/bust cycle in it's DNA. When I was in my early 20's and living there around the late 00's, people were talking about how 'SF is over'. I vividly remember an older fellow telling me that he's been hearing that line since the 60's, and yet somehow the city always manages to evolve into something new and 'legendary'.
wankerrific 4y ago
I agree about the major first dotcom bringing people who didn’t care for the values and culture of the city but disagree about the roughness. The mission and the part of soma near the old trans bay terminal were pretty rough. People got mugged in broad daylight kinda rough
- sammalloy 4y ago
  I was living in the Mission and working near SOMA. Never had a problem in ten years, and we would be walking to and from work and to the bars until close. There was 1% of the homelessness back then that you see now, and almost no sign of drug addiction on the streets except for a few blocks of some rough areas. The city was generally considered one of the safest to live in the country at the time, and easily affordable. Inequality changed everything, because the people who moved into the city did so to exploit its workers, its housing, and its resources. That’s when all the true creatives moved out and the bean counters and disrupters and fake privacy advocates moved in. While it’s popular to blame midwest software engineers, the true blame lies in vast swaths of old money from back east, which attempted to turn San Francisco into Manhattan, and destroy all of what made the city great to begin with. They succeeded.