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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 s
by 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 agoNEVER 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 agoOOoooooK, 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 agoThe 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 agoSF 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...
- astrocyte 12y agoFine art ? By whose measure? Wealth? Theater/Opera/Classic music : And how does that resonate with society in 2015? What's the average age of attendees? I've had some of my best experiences with art/music venues/performing arts far from what wealth has defined as 'quality'. Constructed buildings? Yes, blue collar people built them as they did most things. Wealth/Money is an amplifier.. Too much of it and it drowns out the actual signal and turns it to noise. SF has gone full retard and the result is a hollowed vessel of noise .. Much like Manhattan. 'Fine art' as it were
- lowglow 12y agoWhere are all the tech weirdos moving to?
- GuiA 12y agoOakland
- rkuykendall-com 12y agoAustin?
- hack_edu 12y agoStill SF, and more than ever.
- radley 12y agoAustin, Oakland, Portland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, Utah...
- swatow 12y agoWhere you see weirdness I see monoculture that calls itself counterculture. And nerd/tech culture has never been part of this. To try and rewrite the history of nerd/tech culture like this is a form of cultural appropriation. The same nerds who were hated and ridiculed in the 90's turned out to be part of the counterculture movement all along! You say a lot of pie-in-the-sky dreamers were here trying to make their way in the world. How is that different to what is going on now? Isn't Elon Musk a pie in the sky dreamer? And does this make him a "weirdo"?