7 ms·
How San Francisco staged a comeback
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agohttps://archive.ph/t8zU4 https://archive.ph/t8zU4
- epistasis 3y agoThe local political scene in San Francisco is beyond broken, but the idea that it's a failed city was always a media fabrication. Based on yet more terrible politics, but just political wish casting from outside of San Francisco. To be surprised, you'd have to believe the media and propaganda more than your own eyes and ears.
- chii 3y ago> a media fabrication. it's in the interest of the right-wing media to push the narrative that san fran is failing due to the left's "interference".
- foolfoolz 3y agothis isn’t reduced to something so basic as “right wing media.” there was a real problem. the city as a whole thought it and voted to recall their district attorney for his policies of not prosecuting crimes
- throwing_away 3y agoIs it? I used to live there and now I don't. The homeless situation really did get out of control after 2015 or so. I hear it's only gotten worse. Maybe owning a home shouldn't take longer than a SWE's working lifespan. If you're very wealthy and can afford to be isolated in SF, it's probably still a lovely experience.
- beretguy 3y agoNot sure why you are downvoted. I lived there 8 years, relocated to the east side (because of work initially but decided to stay) and would never want to (or even be able to afford) to come back. Homelessness, drugs, expensive housing, traffic, car break-ins, theft in broad daylight (you can steal up to I think $800 worth of stuff and not get punished), underground street racing gangs (they block intersections in broad daylight to do donuts and cops just stand there and watch unable to do anything about them), red light traffic cameras everywhere, paid freeway lanes, gender politics is being forced on elementary/middle school kids while science like math is being simplified (instead of encouraging smart kids to study harder material they bring curriculum to a lower level to match the level of kids who struggle with math) - it’s not a city where I would want to raise children in. Pardon my poor English.
- not_really 3y agoHow to tell someone you haven't visited SF since 2021, without telling them
- iaseiadit 3y agoIt’s easy to dismiss everyone who doesn’t like being surrounded by fentanyl and meth addiction and crime as “right wing,” but it just makes them sound pretty sensible. All my friends moved away over a span of about three years. I held on as long as I could but I finally threw in the towel too.
- wyclif 3y agoEasy way to tell which longtime SF residents have Stockholm Syndrome: they blame everything that is completely broken in the city on "right wing media."
- more_corn 3y agoReally? I lived there. It felt pretty failed to me. Utter corruption at the planning department. Lawlessness, open injection of opioids in broad daylight on city streets. No police response for anything. People just stop reporting theft and property crime because police obviously don’t give a shit. Speaking of shit. All over the streets. Smash and grab theft so rampant that there’s a cop on every corner downtown during Christmas season. The only thing they can get done is the one city service that is cash flow positive. Writing you tickets for street cleaning. Honestly, couldn’t get out of there fast enough. What part of sf do you still enjoy?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoThe solution is pretty simple, don't go to downtown. Downtown, at least many parts of it, is a containment zone for the homeless and the addicted and their various services. It's not that different from Skid Row/Flower District in DTLA. You can enjoy Pac Heights, Noe, the Dogpatch, the Sunset, the Richmond, North Beach etc. etc. just fine without ever making contact with downtown, the same way most people don't hang out on 5th and San Pedro in LA and can still enjoy Silver Lake. You can pretend it doesn't exist and never cross paths, unless you really insist on spending quality time on 6th and Mission and other fine intersections. Would I like it better if the Tenderloin was more Fifth Avenue and less World War Z? Sure, but that's not happening with the way SF politics work, so I might as well live with the cards we were dealt.
- xcrunner529 3y agoNot exactly a ringing endorsement lol. Where are the gay bars in SF?
- felixfbecker 3y agoIn the Castro. Not downtown
- gedy 3y agoA whole 1.5 miles away
- bilbo0s 3y agoyou'd have to believe the media and propaganda more than your own eyes and ears. So basically, you'd have to be any human. We parrot propaganda all the time. Rarely is any of it fact based. You don't need facts to get people to buy into your narrative. You just need a story that fits your world view. Truth or falsehood is largely irrelevant.
- tlogan 3y agoIf you are rich then San Francisco is not broken / failed. It is a great place: excellent private schools, nice wether, nice restaurants, etc.
- dilyevsky 3y agoSouth bay / peninsula have better private schools (even some good public ones), nicer weather, maybe fewer nicer restaurants though
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoSouth bay is car hell if you don't like to drive. There are plenty of reasons to want to live in SF rather than San Jose.
- dilyevsky 3y agoMost rich people mostly don’t have to drive. Sf is for young single/dinks and retirees
- roughly 3y ago> The local political scene in San Francisco is beyond broken Real question here, is there a city who's residents don't say this?
- pfannkuchen 3y agoCopenhagen?
- lostmsu 3y agoMaybe if they don't know what happens on the backstage.
- trilbyglens 3y agoThere are myriad
- Ajay-p 3y agoYes, many I say. When you see the poverty, malcontent, and crime right before your eyes every day on the streets of your city, it is a problem. Atlanta does not have the level of open lawlessness than San Francisco does. Atlanta has its problems but it's a nice place to live for anyone. San Francisco is only a place to live for the wealthy, everyone else is crushed by the insanity.
- microtherion 3y agoAtlanta has more violent crime than San Francisco (as do many other cities). The one crime where San Francisco really stands out is theft, everything else is more or less middle of the pack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoAtlanta has a lot more violent crime than any west coast city. Easier to get murdered there as well.
- Gabriel54 3y agoFirst time driving through San Francisco I saw someone shooting up heroin on the sidewalk. Seen lots of stuff in NYC, Trenton, Camden, etc., but never such obvious issues with drug addiction and homelessness.
- hezralig 3y agoFirst time I was walking through Houston I saw a man shit on the sidewalk and fall into it. What was your point?
- Grum9 3y agoEveryone shits, not everyone does heroin.
- bilbo0s 3y agoEver been to rural Wisconsin? We definitely have what we like to call an 'opioid' problem here. I lived in Houston from Rita to Harvey. Also had serious drug problems. Needles and all. There is no way other people living in Houston could not have noticed these issues. Homelessness, drugs, rampant crime. For San Fran to be different from Houston, there would need to be something more.
- Gabriel54 3y agoIt was an anecdotal example. Other examples I saw include drug paraphernalia (e.g. needles) littered all over the sidewalks, vast encampments of homeless people, and no police presence. Maybe a bad day? I've been to Houston many times and never seen anything like that. I've also seen shadier parts of NYC but the level of despair appeared much higher in SF.
- culi 3y agoDrove through Hollywood and saw a man pull over on a very busy and well-lit street, open his car door, and proceed to piss between his car and the busy sidewalk. That's just normal city stuff. Has a certain charm to it imo
- 3y ago
- beretguy 3y ago> but the idea that it's a failed city was always a media fabrication. Let me copy a piece of my comment I already wrote as a reply to a different comment deeper in this thread: > Homelessness, drugs, expensive housing, traffic, car break-ins, theft in broad daylight (you can steal up to I think $800 worth of stuff and not get punished), underground street racing gangs (they block intersections in broad daylight to do donuts and cops just stand there and watch unable to do anything about them), red light traffic cameras everywhere, paid freeway lanes, gender politics is being forced on elementary/middle school kids while science like math is being simplified (instead of encouraging smart kids to study harder material they bring curriculum to a lower level to match the level of kids who struggle with math). So no, it’s not just “media fabrication”. San Francisco is in a state of chaos and lawlessness and it is getting worse.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoFrom Parent: > but the idea that it's a "failed city" was always a media fabrication. And you mention: > Homelessness, drugs, expensive housing, traffic, car break-ins, theft in broad daylight (you can steal up to I think $800 worth of stuff and not get punished), underground street racing gangs (they block intersections in broad daylight to do donuts and cops just stand there and watch unable to do anything about them), red light traffic cameras everywhere, paid freeway lanes, gender politics is being forced on elementary/middle school kids while science like math is being simplified (instead of encouraging smart kids to study harder material they bring curriculum to a lower level to match the level of kids who struggle with math). "Things I don't like" does not make SF a failed city, it doesn't mean property values will fall (let alone go to zero) as everyone flees. It does mean that SF will continue being a city not for everyone. > So no, it’s not just “media fabrication”. San Francisco is in a state of chaos and lawlessness and it is getting worse. Again, that's really just your opinion and outlook, you don't have to live in SF, you probably don't.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoSure, but also, maybe don't come, the cost of living for locals doesn't need to get any higher. Maybe wait until there's new construction, so it's not a zero sum situation where the only way to get in is to elbow someone else out. Let's not go back to 8 grand per mo for a 2br at Nema. SF does everything in its power to not grow, to restrict access. The city population grew barely 20% over the last 70 years, while places like Austin TX went up by 830% during the same time period. Might as well be on different planets.
- culi 3y agoDid you grow up in SF?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- epistasis 3y agoThe core brokenness of SF is the idea that if they can just exclude the right people, the city will be better. It's the core problem of pretty much every issue it has. Instead of building a city on exclusion, it needs to be accepting again, become a city that wants to welcome every human.
- more_corn 3y agoNobody gets excluded in sf. Except by high rents.
- parineum 3y ago> If you want good schools, public transport or public safety, San Francisco is not the place for you. TLDR The GDP of the city is way up. Everything else still sucks.
- appplication 3y agoPublic transport isn’t world class, but it’s functional and better than most US cities. Public safety also isn’t really an issue for anyone that doesn’t identify as an unattended backpack in the backseat of a locked car with out of state plates.
- theultdev 3y ago> Public safety also isn’t really an issue for anyone that doesn’t identify as an unattended backpack in the backseat of a locked car with out of state plates Don't travel to San Francisco, your car will be vandalized and robbed, got it. I mean, why is that the standard? Nowhere I go do I ever have to worry about something like that.
- jen20 3y agoMy car got broken into with absolutely nothing to steal, along with 5 others in Texas. The police wouldn’t even come out despite clear camera footage of the perpetrator. Why is that the standard? The AG and DAs could not be more polar opposites than in SF, yet the result is the same.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Freedom2 3y agoThis hasn't been my experience in Texas at all, or any mid-west state. The police have always been timely and responsive, for both myself and my colleagues.
- 3y ago
- 1-6 3y agoSounds more like propaganda to me.
- qwertyuiop_ 3y agoThis is media's propaganda version of "mission accomplished"
- tummler 3y agoThe Economist doth protest too much, methinks.
- g42gregory 3y agoThe Economist’s trust factor is not making a comeback though, at least not for me.
- m3kw9 3y agoAre people still trying to avoid feces while walking to get a avocado toast?
- riehwvfbk 3y ago[flagged]
- yieldcrv 3y agoWhen I was paying $6,000/month for a publicist, we had articles written like this and would also conveniently be number 2 or 3 in buzzfeed listicles, but that wasn’t really for humans never number 1, we would put our competitors at number 1 and assume their google alerts or network picked it up. then congratulate them for winding up in the same article, and use that coincidence with conference organizers to have us or our publicist invite them to be on the same fireside chats on stage. that was for humans. our Google results look impeccable great for our other assumption that our dates would cyberstalk us, I mean investors I dont pay the publicist anymore but all those assumptions were true and still pay dividends