The tech scene in SF and the Bay Area at large was taking its last breath in 2015. When I arrived in SF in 2007, it was, in retrospect, already on its way out.

The tech scene in SF and the Bay Area at large was taking its last breath in 2015. When I arrived in SF in 2007, it was, in retrospect, already on its way out. But you could still walk down Mission in SOMA and overhear people talking about Apache configuration, witness technical team meetings in Yerba Buena Gardens, or run into the same people from another company's engineering team at the rotating schedule of bespoke coffee places (if the online camera someone setup across the alley from Blue Bottle indicated it was to busy, Special Xtra was the closer alternative). In 2015, South Park was waning as a startup office Mecca. Overhearing technical discussions and interviews at coffee shops and bars was replaced with overhearing discussions about pitch decks and VC meetings. By 2015, the industry was fully infected with finance bros drawn to "easy VC money". This when we got non-viable startups like juicero, flower delivery, or one that would pick up your mail and scan it. Companies like WeWork and Uber being tech companies because they have an "app" made everyone think all you needed was an app to be a tech company, and having an app was defacto required to get VC investment. The trends have always been evident from the billboards you'd see in the city and along 101. They have become more homogeneous with AI content more recently, but the blockchain/Bitcoin cycle was pretty homogeneous too. I don't know that's there more far-right. But there is less of the free-spirit hippy branding (which was riding on 60s and 70s nostalgia anyway). Mention going to Burning Man and people say "Really?" rather than "Cool". The people who got rich over a decade ago got older. The advertising/billboards do reflect/are the zeitgeist. There are conversations about working at an AI startup or how their pitch is based on AI at the coffee shop I frequent, which is outside SOMA/FiDi (and in view of the GGB). I don't think it's more sinister, SF still feels like California, at least in terms of the coastal relaxed attitude and hope if not in terms of being a big tech draw. Thanks to COVID, coming to the Bay Area to work in tech isn't required, or expected, anymore, which makes all the narrowly focused billboards seem odd: who are they advertising to other than other AI startups?