4 ms·

SoMa didn't have the ball park yet so it was kinda sketchy anywhere past the highway, and there were a bunch of weird muggings/knifings when a person of the wro

by cdibona 13y ago

SoMa didn't have the ball park yet so it was kinda sketchy anywhere past the highway, and there were a bunch of weird muggings/knifings when a person of the wrong race would go to the wrong bar or place. We knew not to go the Korean club on Harrison. Meth heads would surround the happy donut and south park was a bit of a homeless tent city, and while there were some of the same hotels near the convention center, the west hall hadn't been built yet and it was all kinda run down the way most of moscone is. I used to do a fair amount of work in the Potrero hill area in 2000 or so and dreaded parking there. Then the bust happened and not only did a lot more parking appear, but many of the good restaurants in that area shuttered almost overnight. We lived in lower Haight until 1999, and it was okay, if you could roll with a little bit of homeless person screaming in the middle of the night just outside the place we rented. Our cars were broken into a few times and we got a few parking tickets a year but that was the price one paid to live in SF. It largely wasn't worth it. First me, then my soon to be wife got a job in the south bay, we moved to los altos to skip the commute. The funny thing is the big 'displacement' story in the city around 2000 was the gentrification of the Castro, where older more established gay folks were making it difficult for younger, poorer gay people to find places to live near the Castro (which is sort of the traditional gay nexus in SF) IMO SF is in much better shape nowadays, and it has a lot to do with the thousands of tech companies in and out of the city employing people who add their money and the rest to the city.

sedev 13y ago
Coming from San Francisco, but not living there right now, I continue to be dismayed about the city government. They're about average for a local government in most respects, very good in some, and abysmal in a couple of important ways. The one that I see most often lately is about the most basic fundamentals of economics. The city, very broadly, would like to see the price of housing flat or falling - "affordable." Leaving aside the many possible negative side effects, the only way to get to a falling cost of housing is for less of it to be demanded or more of it to be supplied. The city government can't much affect the former, and has resolutely, bullheadedly, stubbornly refused to improve the latter. It's disastrous. It is is fine and worthy to say - hey let's keep the character of our neighborhoods. Great! But in pursuit of that, they've basically given existing residents a veto on anything new, nearly down to the single-block level in some cases. There are many aspects of the current issues with San Francisco. One aspect that is fully under San Francisco's control is, "shall we build more housing or not?" - and the city government is working as hard as possible to make the situation worse in that aspect. Drives me to tears.
mc32 13y ago
Exactly, people don't remember what SF was like in the 80's. It was a dump. The city was slumping, people were leaving the city (net negative migration). Real Estate was in a funk (RE agents were leaving). Walking Market was a gamble. SOMA was more like 6th and 5th streets --but all over. The slow rise in tech in the early 90s pushed SJ and SF out of their slumber and downward trend. Now that wealth from tech is permeating the city and bringing economic benefits, non tech people want the benefits derived from tech wealth without the side-effects. Thing is, if everyone of the 6million plus people in the Bay area earned 150k/year, we'd still have the same problems. You can't fit 6 million people in a city with low housing stock and insignificant housing stock coming online. So, some of those 150k earners will do better finances and be able to leverage their earnings to buy --the less financially savvy would be unable to afford SF --and then we'd be back to 'being priced out'.

by cdibona 13y ago

sedev 13y ago

Coming from San Francisco, but not living there right now, I continue to be dismayed about the city government. They're about average for a local government in most respects, very good in some, and abysmal in a couple of important ways. The one that I see most often lately is about the most basic fundamentals of economics. The city, very broadly, would like to see the price of housing flat or falling - "affordable." Leaving aside the many possible negative side effects, the only way to get to a falling cost of housing is for less of it to be demanded or more of it to be supplied. The city government can't much affect the former, and has resolutely, bullheadedly, stubbornly refused to improve the latter. It's disastrous. It is is fine and worthy to say - hey let's keep the character of our neighborhoods. Great! But in pursuit of that, they've basically given existing residents a veto on anything new, nearly down to the single-block level in some cases. There are many aspects of the current issues with San Francisco. One aspect that is fully under San Francisco's control is, "shall we build more housing or not?" - and the city government is working as hard as possible to make the situation worse in that aspect. Drives me to tears.

mc32 13y ago

Exactly, people don't remember what SF was like in the 80's. It was a dump. The city was slumping, people were leaving the city (net negative migration). Real Estate was in a funk (RE agents were leaving). Walking Market was a gamble. SOMA was more like 6th and 5th streets --but all over. The slow rise in tech in the early 90s pushed SJ and SF out of their slumber and downward trend. Now that wealth from tech is permeating the city and bringing economic benefits, non tech people want the benefits derived from tech wealth without the side-effects. Thing is, if everyone of the 6million plus people in the Bay area earned 150k/year, we'd still have the same problems. You can't fit 6 million people in a city with low housing stock and insignificant housing stock coming online. So, some of those 150k earners will do better finances and be able to leverage their earnings to buy --the less financially savvy would be unable to afford SF --and then we'd be back to 'being priced out'.