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Here's almost the same article from 1999: "How the Internet ruined San Francisco" http://www.salon.com/1999/10/28/internet_2/ http://www.salon.com/1999/10/28/in

by kens 12y ago

Here's almost the same article from 1999: "How the Internet ruined San Francisco" http://www.salon.com/1999/10/28/internet_2/ http://www.salon.com/1999/10/28/internet_2/ "The dot-com invasion -- call them twerps with 'tude -- is destroying everything that made San Francisco weird and wonderful." Buildings getting converted to condos, soaring real estate prices, evictions, artists unable to afford SF, traffic, class struggles against yuppies, gentrification. The only thing missing from this 1999 article is Google buses. Edit: with more comments than upvotes (45 vs 30 currently), the parent article is going to get penalized off the front page. So you might want to slow down the commenting... http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

VonGuard 12y ago
I was here the first time. I'm here now. This is so totally different than 1999. In 1999, the boom included a lot of counter-culture people. Hackerspaces were still hidden underground things, and the technology was so new, a lot of pie-in-the-sky dreamers were here trying to make their way in the world. This time around, there is an established norm for how the startup scene works, and that scene requires MBAs and business suits. The people who have come around to take advantage this time are not nerds, they're not tech people, they're people of all sorts. I think the best way to so describe them is to say that these are normal people. That's fine anywhere else, but not in SF, home of the weirdos. SF has NEVER been a town of normal people. This gentrification process is basically turning SF into the Valley. The old days where burning man types held parties in their warehouses are long gone now. The first dot com boom made millionaires out of some of these weirdos, like JWZ. But this boom is not doing that. The people getting rich now came to SF just to get rich, and they have no interest in being weird, burning man, or any of the SF-style weirdness. Yes, in 1999 artists had to leave SF. But at that time, it was just some artists and weirdos leaving. This time, it's ALL of them leaving. There are no more blue collar people in SF. No more weirdos in SF. No more poets in SF. It's a real shame, and while it could have happened in 1999, it didn't quite get going enough to really do the damage that's being done this time around.
- BashiBazouk 12y ago
  NEVER any normal people, eh? How about in the 40's? 30's? Late 1800's? San Francisco has been around a lot longer than a couple of decades and it's still mostly normal people today. Just look around sometime and in other neighborhoods than to which you live...
  - VonGuard 12y ago
    OOoooooK, the 30's and 40's saw what spawned the Film Noir movement: a climate of fear and paranoia, somewhat related to fears of Japanese invasion during WWII, but mostly came from movies like Dark Passage, and the fact that two major, photogenic prisons were located here. The 50's saw the Maltese Falcon and the beat poets coming to light. The 1800's were when San Francisco BECAME weird. Ever hear of Emperor Norton? The Gold Rush? Little Dick? The gold rush brought, specifically, risk-takers and odd hermit folks to the Bay Area, even if only temporarily, and Little Dick was a 15-year old female gang leader who murdered Chinese people as a hobby in the 1850's. SF has always been weird. The only people here, before, who you could consider not-weird were the blue collar sorts. This was not a town of lawyers and doctors and people with children. It was a town of homosexuals and beats and sailors and hackers and burners and hippies. It was a great town. Now, it's just Manhattan west. A millionaire's playground.
    - swatow 12y ago
      The fact that you use murdering Chinese as an example of the "weirdness" that you promote is truly disgusting. I'm not saying that you support such an act, but to include it in a list of things that you are generally positive towards, without any qualification or disclaimer, indicates the implicit unimportance of Chinese lives, relative to SF's unique culture.
    - BashiBazouk 12y ago
      SF has also been normal. Normal/weird is not mutually exclusive. SF has also been and is still is quite gentrified. For every Emperor Norton or Little Dick you have the Pacific Union club, industrialists and bankers. Those who had/have chic apartments and townhouses then head off to their mansions in Hillsborough. Hippies and beats did not build all those tall buildings around market street. If you watch all those Noir films, just like walking around the city today, look beyond the main characters and see all the normal people going about their business. As Manhattan is still the center of fine art, theater, opera and classical music in this country, I don't know that I mind the comparison...

by kens 12y ago

VonGuard 12y ago

I was here the first time. I'm here now. This is so totally different than 1999. In 1999, the boom included a lot of counter-culture people. Hackerspaces were still hidden underground things, and the technology was so new, a lot of pie-in-the-sky dreamers were here trying to make their way in the world. This time around, there is an established norm for how the startup scene works, and that scene requires MBAs and business suits. The people who have come around to take advantage this time are not nerds, they're not tech people, they're people of all sorts. I think the best way to so describe them is to say that these are normal people. That's fine anywhere else, but not in SF, home of the weirdos. SF has NEVER been a town of normal people. This gentrification process is basically turning SF into the Valley. The old days where burning man types held parties in their warehouses are long gone now. The first dot com boom made millionaires out of some of these weirdos, like JWZ. But this boom is not doing that. The people getting rich now came to SF just to get rich, and they have no interest in being weird, burning man, or any of the SF-style weirdness. Yes, in 1999 artists had to leave SF. But at that time, it was just some artists and weirdos leaving. This time, it's ALL of them leaving. There are no more blue collar people in SF. No more weirdos in SF. No more poets in SF. It's a real shame, and while it could have happened in 1999, it didn't quite get going enough to really do the damage that's being done this time around.

BashiBazouk 12y ago
NEVER any normal people, eh? How about in the 40's? 30's? Late 1800's? San Francisco has been around a lot longer than a couple of decades and it's still mostly normal people today. Just look around sometime and in other neighborhoods than to which you live...
- VonGuard 12y ago
  OOoooooK, the 30's and 40's saw what spawned the Film Noir movement: a climate of fear and paranoia, somewhat related to fears of Japanese invasion during WWII, but mostly came from movies like Dark Passage, and the fact that two major, photogenic prisons were located here. The 50's saw the Maltese Falcon and the beat poets coming to light. The 1800's were when San Francisco BECAME weird. Ever hear of Emperor Norton? The Gold Rush? Little Dick? The gold rush brought, specifically, risk-takers and odd hermit folks to the Bay Area, even if only temporarily, and Little Dick was a 15-year old female gang leader who murdered Chinese people as a hobby in the 1850's. SF has always been weird. The only people here, before, who you could consider not-weird were the blue collar sorts. This was not a town of lawyers and doctors and people with children. It was a town of homosexuals and beats and sailors and hackers and burners and hippies. It was a great town. Now, it's just Manhattan west. A millionaire's playground.
  - swatow 12y ago
    The fact that you use murdering Chinese as an example of the "weirdness" that you promote is truly disgusting. I'm not saying that you support such an act, but to include it in a list of things that you are generally positive towards, without any qualification or disclaimer, indicates the implicit unimportance of Chinese lives, relative to SF's unique culture.
  - BashiBazouk 12y ago
    SF has also been normal. Normal/weird is not mutually exclusive. SF has also been and is still is quite gentrified. For every Emperor Norton or Little Dick you have the Pacific Union club, industrialists and bankers. Those who had/have chic apartments and townhouses then head off to their mansions in Hillsborough. Hippies and beats did not build all those tall buildings around market street. If you watch all those Noir films, just like walking around the city today, look beyond the main characters and see all the normal people going about their business. As Manhattan is still the center of fine art, theater, opera and classical music in this country, I don't know that I mind the comparison...