"On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy... [The] downtown business district — the bedrock of its economy and tax base — revolves around a technology industry that is uniquely equipped and enthusiastic about letting workers stay home indefinitely.... Business groups and city leaders hope to recast the urban core as a more residential neighborhood built around people as well as businesses but leave out that office rents would probably have to plunge for those plans to be viable...."
From the comments over there, which I will characterize as left and right, politically:
The left-wing view: "The Techies came to town, made their money, drove up real estate prices and left. They strip-mined the culture, leaving behind a shell of what was once the most vibrant city on the West Coast. There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco. That brought depth and texture to the city, but those people are gone. It became all about money. And what's a book store, anyway?"
The right-wing view: "Homelessness receives a passing reference in this article. Crime is basically ignored. But these are significant quality of life factors contributing to the exodus of companies and office workers away from major US cities, including SF. Post-2020 life in our country is a lot different than before, in many ways not for the better."
Posts
103 comments:
They are both correct…
The larger issue is that San Francisco is our most beautiful American city and it has been ruined by liberals.
San Fran’s tourist industry barely holds on. The place is nowva hell hole. You have to pretend it is still interesting. That is a major loss.
Interesting that the left wing view is quite "conservative" in the way it looks back to idealized golden era.
Yesterday I was speaking with someone who fled the problems in San Diego and they spoke of them like they were like the economic cycle, like crime and blight waxes and wanes and there’s really nothing you can do about.
It’s bad policy that’s the cause…
"There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco."
Sure there was -- in 1978. The tech companies may have altered San Francisco's economy, but that was a continuation of changes that had been going on for a long time. The idea that they transformed it from an urban paradise where you could live in a clean, safe neighborhood for virtually nothing is a myth.
My sister in law lives there. They bought an apartment. It was worth over 1 million. They have to share the yard with their upstairs neighbors, and they have a co-account they both contribute to, to fix up the house. (THAT is weird to me, but whatever) They were SHOCKED that their Walgreens closed due to left wing policies that let people come in and rob the store, as long as it was under $1000. All of their favorite restaurants are leaving or closing down. They called us conspiracy theorists when it first started happening, but it hit their neighborhood. Their car has been broken into numerous times. They LOVE Nancy Pelosi and think she is the Queen. They voted for this, and now they don't understand how it could happen to them. I can't complain much since I live in Progressive Sanctuary state of New Jersey, but I don't vote progressive. It really doesn't matter anyways, because I am convinced progressives are brainwashed, and my sister in law will continue to vote like she always has. I, in New Jersey am outnumbered. It sucks, but the job is here....3 more years.
I feel the same way about New York City. Used to go ALL the time, still have great gift cards, but I refuse to go to cities that are criminal asylums. Let it burn.
a "leftie" said...
There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco.
When Was this "time"?? When WAS this "time"??
Lefties live in a dream world... Dreaming of dream days
Great idea to make downtown more residential.
A key to that is residents. Where will they come from? How will they make a living?
Last republican mayor left office more than 50 years ago. Just a coincidence I am sure.
John Henry
In order for a city to work, grow, and prosper all - rich and poor, individual or corporation - have to agree and adhere to a social to the social contract. San Francisco is a harbinger for the rest of the United States. A distinctly dystopian one. Buckle up America.
That left-versus-right framing applies only to the recent decade or two. SF started down a tourism-hippie-gay-bookshop path back in the 1950s and 1960s Beatnik era. Before that, SF was a working class shipping port (see the first Dirty Harry film and TV show Streets of San Francisco for the last vapors of the prior era).
Haight-Ashbury went kitsch-Disney long ago, with Ben and Jerry's next to a fake clock permanently stuck at "4:20." Wealthy retirees and tourist hotels took over all the photogenic locations by the 1970s and 1980s at the latest. At the same time, crime was "redlined" by neighborhood. The ultra-wealthy Nob Hill is near the junkie and street person paradise of the Tenderloin District. Mission District parks featured used needle drug syringes next to children playing. LONG AGO.
The techies true headquarters is about one hour south of San Francisco near Stanford University, Hewlett Packard, Apple, etc. in Silicon Valley proper (Mountain View, Menlo Park, Cupertino, etc.). In the last 10-15 years Google, Facebook, etc. started to bus employees from SF down to their offices. "You can life in the city. You can have it all." So, lefty memories are quite short / ignorant of longer patterns.
Right wing people were always in the shadows or forced to be truly tolerant libertarians to work in a loooooong left-dominant culture. Many right-wingers never wanted to be in the city, in that culture, or deal with the costs/politics. But, $150K to $300K salaries involve life sacrifices. They made a deal.
My bottom line is that California's true political attitude is "I got mine. Screw you. Go away." Rich NIMBYs pretend to be left and dress everything in environment and social justice language to obscure their actual goal: GO AWAY! These people were hoisted on their own petards with COVID and remote work. I figure 10-20 years of rethinking and troubled real estate values may change the landscape.
Cities were built because of the concentration of labor. Its a chicken and egg debate, but thats the crux of it.
The cities were because of the grunt work needed. Floors and floors of typists.
But what is happening now is the conversion of what was, to what will be. Nobody knows.
Not everybody can, or wants to work from home. Teamwork used to be the buzzword, now teams is an app to do video conferences. We will swing the pendulum back to the ladder climbers demanding to be back in the office, because that is where the ladders are.
Agree with rehajm—they are both correct. The decision by city leaders to encourage crime and homelessness made the city not just unliveable, but also hostile to people visiting. All the flows of money are interrupted. The tech people made the city impossibly expensive, driving out the middle class and pushing the lower class into the streets. But the city leaders could have done far more by reforming housing rules than by throwing money at the problem. Failure of leadership is San Francisco’s biggest problem.
Both of your extracts are dead-on. Refreshing to see someone on the "left" with a rational perspective.
Is this a zero-sum game or do both views have merit?
Yes absolutely they are both correct. Dave is not wrong either. One thing you people might not realize is that the liberals who have ruined California or not Californians. California was californicated by a mass Exodus from the East Coast during the 60s and '70s. Flatlanders fuck everything up.
The left-wing view, and the sane view. But that's not boringly neutral. Get woke, go broke is a stereotype because so many recognize the truth it conveys.
They are both correct, but notice that each side is speaking an ENTIRELY different language.
Left: "The techies strip-mined the culture."
Thefuk does that even mean? What language is that? It's a language of word salad that has no meaning except whatever occurs in the mind of the reader. It has no objective meaning that could be measured.
The right: "If you let your local thug population get the idea they can crime up your neighborhood with zero thought of getting arrested or jailed, then the good people who make up your neighborhood are going to move on. And you'll just be left with empty buildings - an economic desert."
This is a measureable language. It can be computed to determine if the theory lines up with reality. Turns out it does.
That's the problem here. One side speaks a foreign language devoid of facts composed of unprovable theories.
The other side just leaves the town to the thugs and quietly goes elsewhere.
"And what's a book store, anyway?"
Oh please. As if this persyn picked up a paper of the nyt and then broke out the stationary to mail a letter to the editor. Spare us.
This is the New York Times...what right-wing views...?!
Both are true. The tech companies brought in lots of money, and a young cohort looking for a certain lifestyle. This group provided a lot of money towards increasingly radical left-wing politicians.
I don't know what "strip mining the culture" means, but both views are correct. I had a roommate in SF who worked part time in a kite factory and went to SF State and now she is a VP at the World Bank. Things were looser and better and the streets were lined with air-cooled VWs. Now they are lined with broken glass. SF is now circling the drain and the corrupt government is clueless and incompetent. The country needs to pay attention to this ongoing disaster.
We know that gentrification can happen. What's the reverse of gentrification? That can happen too. If too many problem people inhabit a neighborhood, the other people move on.....As Dave Begley points out, this happened to SF under exclusively liberal management. The broken windows policy worked. The toleration of window breakers not so much.
All that still visit - who remember what was - believe your lying eyes.
Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town.
As rehajm stated, they are both correct. But this is not news to anybody paying attention, or to anyone who has lived or gone to SF frequently over the last decade or so.
This is a direct result of policy. You get more of what you subsidize, less of what you tax. The Left has had a stranglehold on that city for years. But as is the case, the most extreme notions of 'Left' are tried out in the cities and towns of California- SF, Berkeley, Oakland in particular- before they are spread around like an aggressive disease.
For years, Oakland had been working on becoming dangerous and unlivable. A place in constant angry victimhood. SF managed to keep all that at bay for awhile. But, as I've written here a few times, I quit staying in SF on my SF business trips about 3-4 years ago. I couldn't take it- no, I saw no reason to put up with the crap any longer. I would stay north of the City in Marin Co. Then drive down into the city to do my business, often having to walk around people laying in the street, or crazies just screaming out at invisible antagonists.
Remember, before he took over the state as Governor and started destroying things statewide, Gavin Newsom was the Mayor of San Francisco. The City took it's final plunge under Gavin. Yet even today, while the city is working under water fiscally, they are instituting free money programs for (of course) people of color, women, and any other aggrieved tribe that can be fit into this round of free money.
These are people who function purely on emotions and zero intellect. And they lead our major cities right now. San Francisco WAS our most unique and beautiful city. It's a dump now. And it's by design. What you are witnessing in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, and many other once great cities, is a live and up close look at the end product of Democratic policies in action. You can deny it all you want but the reality is staring at you. It's real. We are more third world now than anyone wants to admit. And, look south to our border. This is the 'fix' from Washington DC.
And yet...these people- these 'leaders'- keep getting funded by industry, backed and protected by media, and voted into office. You do get what you voted for. And the people of San Francisco deserve to get what they have now. Every day. Good and hard. Enjoy!
When they've had enough, perhaps they'll stop 'feeling' and start 'thinking'.
I have mostly fond memories of working at an old six story Pac Bell office building in 1985-86 that had survived the 1906 earthquake (but condemned after the 1989 earthquake) while PB was building what became known as “the DeathStar” company headquarters at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon, Ca..
I remember how office workers would hit the streets in their walking shoes at lunchtime for a brisk walk. First time I’d ever encountered a panhandler was in SF. A very vibrant city, per my recollection. All gone to scat now…
The left-wing view:
Well, it ain't like this is something new. Raymond Chandler had Phillip Marlowe making the same observations about Los Angeles in 1930's and 40's. San Franciscans should be thankful that their city didn't jump the shark as fast as the Southland did post WWII.
"Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town."
Not sure about this. I live in Downtown Minneapolis. Do you? Not as busy as I would like, too many storefronts not open, vacancy rates for high rises still high, but condos still selling for a lot, and rental apartments still fetching high rents. Still hard to get into the best restaurants without a reservation made more than a week in advance.
Makes me wonder about San Francisco. I think the best indication is always real estate prices, both the level and which direction they are going.
"There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco."
Nah, it was spendy in 1968. I was in the vanguard of beggars then, but at least I realized I could never afford to live a decent life there and got the hell out.
The left is about culture, luxury, and redistributive change. The right is about Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Ambrose said...
Interesting that the left wing view is quite "conservative" in the way it looks back to idealized golden era.
It is because nobody is accurately describing the positions of the people involved.
There is this constant "liberals doing this" and "conservatives doing that" garbage when nobody even knows what liberal and conservative mean.
Part of this is the inaccurate use of labels that confuse and distract from the real problem.
The real problem is an Oligarchy that is trying to turn our country into Mexico. It has completely taken over the Democrat party and is a good part of the Republican Establishment.
There is only one alternative to the Oligarchy right now and I don't know if he truly understands the problem. He is supporting McCarthy right now. I haven't seen any sign that McCarthy is reformed in any way.
I think someone is going to have to run against the Oligarchy and against Trump.
I don't see that person currently in the political sphere.
"ndspinelli said...
Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town."
Yep. Because of racism.
Mom and Dad worked, met, and married in SF. I was born there. The stories they would tell of their single years are so evocative. Dad watching famous players at Candlestick and almost getting blown off the stands and into the bay. Mom seeing famous musicians at little clubs. The last time I visited the city smelled like mold and rot -- a Venice with none of the charm left.
William said...
We know that gentrification can happen. What's the reverse of gentrification? That can happen too. If too many problem people inhabit a neighborhood, the other people move on.....As Dave Begley points out, this happened to SF under exclusively liberal management. The broken windows policy worked. The toleration of window breakers not so much.
The same thing happens under "conservative" management.
They just look like trailer parks instead of ghettos.
Khandahar was a big modern city in the 70's. It had a modern airport we drove past every time we left the wire. It was a city with paved roads, electricity, glass buildings. We operated in a city with shipping containers used to block off blocks and create fiefdoms and places where neighbors would steal the power lines leading to other peoples homes.
The level of Infrastructure in a country is going to have a >.9 reverse correlation to the incarceration rate.
RMc said...
This is the New York Times...what right-wing views...?!
Ann must pretend.
That way she can ignore the fact this is the deceptive and counterfeit division of the country the Oligarchs have created with "right-wing" and "left-wing."
The Oligarchs own both the "right-wing" and the "left-wing."
That is what Trump is about. That is why his most ardent opponents are Republicans.
I don't know when you could work part-time and survive in SF. I know Feds assigned to that city at pretty high levels (e.g. GS-13) that had LONG commutes and still were forced to have a roommate. And that was 30+ years ago.
I was in SF in 2017. Sitting at a nice restaurant watching a drug deal go down right outside the window. Lots of similar exciting views to behold.
One of my friends leads tour groups as a living. They have west coast tours and recently decided to skip SF. A few years ago that would never have been considered.
More of Heinlein's" bad luck"...
Polis and Denver's democrat mayor are trying to keep up.
Downtown Omaha is vibrant and growing. Our Central Park Mall was remodeled and it opened on July 4 with a series of concerts. Kristen Chenowith sang from the new bandshell. Fab.
Across the street is The Holland Center which has some of the best acoustics in the world. Beautiful building. Next to it is going to be The Steelhouse; another concert venue. Next block over is The Jewell which is my favorite jazz venue.
Mutual of Omaha is building a new skyscraper headquarters where the main library was. Buns and the homeless use to hang out there. Problem solved!
A new science museum is being built on the riverfront.
By 2026 we will have a streetcar.
We have a great convention venue where Warren Buffett has his annual meeting and the Bluejays play. Four blocks to the west is our baseball park.
The police actually police here in Omaha.
And our restaurants are great. Better than the French Laundry.
Maybe everyone can agree that the wrongest take was from the journalist or columnist or blogger who wrote last year that California's problem was that it elected Republicans in the Thirties and Forties and missed out on Fiorello LaGuardia (who actually was a Republican) and Social Democracy.
The usual idea was that you could work in San Francisco and live in Oakland or somewhere else on the East Bay where the prices were lower. The techies upended that. Remember the buses taking them from their pads in SF to their companies in the SV? Of course rents went up in the city and work got harder to find.
Still, the techies are something of a scapegoat for ongoing trends in the economy and society -- the way that people blame Reagan for the end of the postwar economy when it had already come to an end in the Seventies.
The current problem is that the city's politicians can't and won't cope with the city's problems. That would be the case even if there were more part-time book store workers and fewer billionaires.
Where have I heard this before? Oh yeh ...
New New York: Making New York Work For Everyone Action Plan Puts Forth 40 Initiatives as a Roadmap for the Future
Plan Includes Five Areas of Focus for 2023 to Support the Regional Economy and Make New York City an Even Better Place to Live and Work
Also Includes Recommendations of 59 Member New New York Panel Led by Robin Hood CEO Richard Buery and Former Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff
Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams Announce New New York Panel's Action Plan
There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco.
Damn. It isn't any fun being a trust fund hippie anymore.
Those rich capitalists destroyed the SF culture.
I know a young family who have been in a near-suburb of SF for about 10 years. Their lives were upended when the schools were closed; when they re-opened many parents had already moved their kids to private schools. Concerned about the deterioration of the schools, our young parents looked around for better ones. They found what they wanted in a nice suburb of Denver. They sold their Silicon Valley house, bought twice the house (with four times the land) in Colorado. Now they have a nice house, with a nice school system, and a million dollars in their pocket. One wonders why any young families stay in California, considering the work-at-home opportunities elsewhere/anywhere.
There is no guarantee that Colorado won't make the same disastrous mistakes as California, but suburban parents do tend to be "conservative about the things they know best," as the saying goes.
"Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town."
We used to visit the Twin Cities every year. Not anymore.
Isn't San Francisco the place where you can feed chocolate to the sea lions?
wendybar said...
"I feel the same way about New York City. Used to go ALL the time, still have great gift cards, but I refuse to go to cities that are criminal asylums. Let it burn."
Ditto Chicago. The neighborhoods. Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican. Within ten blocks you could eat six different cultures of foods. Now everybody is on their guard. Insular. "What are you doing here?"
The left ruins everything it touches.
Progressives were never happier than in the Covid mask six feet apart don’t kill Grandma We will tell you what to do era. Close your business. Now. Well let you know when you can earn a living.
Surprise! Your idiotic shutdown policies were embraced by the workforce who happily walk their dogs when it suits them. Many of these lifelong entitled accepted the new work at home entitlement and the are keeping it.
Blogger Enigma said...
That left-versus-right framing applies only to the recent decade or two. SF started down a tourism-hippie-gay-bookshop path back in the 1950s and 1960s Beatnik era. Before that, SF was a working class shipping port (see the first Dirty Harry film and TV show Streets of San Francisco for the last vapors of the prior era).
Yes, when I was in college in the 50s we would go to SF every few months and enjoy the scene. It was already getting funky with Carol Doda and Finochio's. Fishermans' Wharf was mostly restaurants by that time. The crime came later.
“Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town”
To be cynical, Minneapolis was never really a big tourist town. From those who didn’t grow up there, the climate sucks. The great thing about San Francisco was that the touristy parts of town have a great climate almost year around. My memories of SF are cable cars, Golden Gate Park, quaint shops, driving the coast, etc. And a lot of walking. My memories of Minneapolis I are months of snow, over warm buildings, and freezing my ass off every time I went outside. Didn’t help that it was mostly from a 2 month benchmark in the middle of the winter 40 years ago. My daughter, who spent a summer there during grad school doing a corporate internship, assures me that it was quite enjoyable during that time of year. But is really glad that she ended up outside Boulder.
My point is that many of us mourn the loss of the touristy towns like SF and NYC, but not the non-touristy cities like Minneapolis, and a number of others around the country that have died from an intersection of leftist politics and idiotic COVID-19 policies. Dem controlled big cities all across the country have mostly all turned into shitholes, while at the same time it has become apparent that the big downtown office buildings are a reminent of when we came to work on street cars, a century ago, and size was required to get things done. Now we (kinda - they pulled it down the street two years ago, but haven’t got it hooked up yet) have high speed fiber to our houses in rural NW MT, and it came standard at my last two houses in PHX, and there is no really compelling reason to have millions of workers commute into the big cities every day to work. Fewer, every year, it seems, are willing to deal with the downsides of Dem city urban mismanagement, the crime, drugs, filth, homelessness, etc, just to live in a (formerly) trendy location.
When we are in MT, we wake up to birds singing every morning, deer lunging in the front yard in the afternoon, and green as far as you can see in all directions. The shit you step in may be from a bear that ambled through the night before, but it isn’t human. And the needles on the ground are from the towering pine trees everywhere, and not from some junkie who shot up sitting on your front step. Everyone is armed, at least in their homes, and most are very polite and friendly. If you prefer convenient shopping and restaurants, our location in NE PHX is great. We are a mile west of Scottsdale Road, and most every luxury car brand is right there. Very good restaurants abound, one after another, mixed in with golf courses, high end stores (that don’t, yet, get robbed), and cosmetic surgeons. People moving in from CA can double, even triple, the square feet in their houses, with money to spare. And we have a very large open space just south of us, to walk the dog in. Both suburban and rural living have their advantages. On the flip side, the allure of urban living in many cities has crashed in many big cities across the country. For many, dealing with all of the downsides of living like that have more than paid for themselves, at least since my grandfather moved down from rural MI to Chicago over a century ago. How can companies continue to afford to pay the premium to get employees to live and work in high cost cities, in a world market, esp when they know now that it often isn’t necessary? There was a move to decentralize, but it greatly accelerated with those idiotic COVID-19 restrictions. I don’t think that we are going back anytime soon.
Victor David Hanson on the future of our once great nation.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/11/our-parasitic-generation/
"drove up real estate prices and left"
So as they leave, prices will come down and other people will return, right? And if that's not happening, that might be because--well, what could it be?
Because I was involved with the "creative" department of my company, for 10 years I went to the Apple conference in SF. Every year, the devolution of the city was quite evident. By the time I left the company for retirement, (2012) I had stopped attending the conference for 10 years (since 2002). Being approached by streetwalkers and stepping around feces and needles—even in the late 1990's and early 2000's—was a regular thing. SF has been a disaster for a LONG time.
The question then becomes, What is the responsibility of private entities to democracy and the public sphere?
Hmmmm. How 'bout the responsibility of GOVERNMENT to democracy and the public sphere.
It is GOVERNMENT not "private entities" that most potently affects democracy. The "public sphere" has a choice about engaging with "private entites." There is no such choice about engaging with Government*.
Consider that Government may legally deprive the public of property, liberty, even life. The prudent among us might therefore wish to grant the bare minimum powers to Government.
*The single exception is medical care. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.
Blogger ndspinelli said...Downtown Minneapolis is also a ghost town.
Almost all of our major cities are working their way to becoming shitholes. Some are farther along than others. This won't change until the cities decide they have a real problem and do something to fix it, which may take a while knowing who runs them.
Who cares? If the people in San Francisco don't like it, elect somebody to change it. Instead, they keep electing the same ol' crowd. Year after Year. conclusion? They don't mind the "decline".
Its the same thing in NYC. Do people in NYC really dislike the exploding crime? if so, they have a funny way of showing it.
Remember, that NYC had over 1000 murders a year in the ealy 90s, and the mayor almost won re-eleection. He got 48 percent against "fascist" Gulliani. The liberal/left doesn't care about homelessness and crime. Bascially, they're freaks who think some other guy will get killed/robbed/raped, not them. And they don't really care about the homeless. They secretly like the city streets full of derelicts, drug addicts, and crazies. Again, as long as it doesn't affect them PERSONALLY too much. They'll hand out the graft, and give the homeless rhetoric, and preen and moralize, but they dont REALLY care.
I wonder when a courageous politician will step up and say we can do better, get elected, and make stuff happen to reclaim the city. Doesn’t seem like anyone cares about it enough yet.
The last Republican mayor left office in 1964.
It is sad what has happened to San Francisco since.
The liberals went way too far in allowing any and all deviant and dangerous behaviors; drugs of all kinds and sex orgies in the streets.
Think I'm kidding? Google 'Folsom Street Fair' and look at images. What is shown is the PG/Sunday choir version of what really goes on.
They were able to fund all of their socialist wet dream programs because of tech, not despite tech.
But they went too far and conventions started cancelling. Moscone Center was empty.
Then the Chinese virus hit and everyone started working from home. Every restaurant in the Financial District on both sides of Market Street got hammered...mom and pop stores and big chains alike.
Then the smash and grab gangs swept through Union Square and cleaned out the high-end retail stores.
But even before that the SF government decriminalized theft and shoplifting. People could walk into a Walgreens, fill up a hefty bag and stroll right out. Even now there are burly armed security guards at jewelry stores and drug stores. And like the jewelry stores, the drugstores now put everything behind locked cabinets.
Don't blame tech. Tech brought millions into the city.
Liberalism turned San Francisco into a shithole city, first gradually and then suddenly.
See my first sentence above...
Both opinions have points of being correct, and both of them were written at a comfortable distance from the reality on the ground. Let's have the two writers live in an apartment in one of the worst homeless areas for a month and then write about it.
I went hiking with a couple that recently moved here from Orange county, a couple of months ago. They are so relieved. They can't help enumerating the differences in culture, attitude, cost, policy, so on.
I suspect we are seeing in California what I once witnessed living next to Venezuela after the start of Hugo Chavez's 'Bolivarian Revolution'. The wealthy ones left almost immediately, some of them already having foreign properties to refuge to (mostly in the US). The upper-middle-class executive and engineering class was next. Of course, this is a picture of the meritocracy dissolving - the people that can leave, do leave, then the smarter ones figure out how to leave one way, or another. At one time, there were terrific deals on boats, sailboats and yachts, for pennies on the dollar. But the consequence is, the society crumbles. The lower classes are left behind though, stuck, and there's enough of them that the kleptocratic autocracy can grind on. Now the currency has become so devalued, lower denomination bills blow through the streets as litter, and the average Venezuelan has lost about 20 lb in body weight. That's California's future - different details, but the same flavor. It's moved into debt territory now, and the tax base is getting smaller. Things will start to come apart, accelerating, but it will take a decade or two. Or maybe the demographics will transform as the cities collapse. There are a whole lot of rural, conservative citizens there too, don't forget. The cities are like a weeping sores on an otherwise beautiful fashion model.
Pencil said..."Not sure about this. I live in Downtown Minneapolis. Do you? Not as busy as I would like, too many storefronts not open, vacancy rates for high rises still high, but condos still selling for a lot, and rental apartments still fetching high rents. Still hard to get into the best restaurants without a reservation made more than a week in advance."
The retail and hotel stats tell a story different than yours-
https://www.americanexperiment.org/is-downtown-minneapolis-rebounding/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=35++retail+vacancy+and+50++hotel+capacity++Is+Minneapolis++rebounding+%3F&utm_campaign=Friday+Newsletter+12%2F16
Look at the year-by-year revenue from downtown liquor, lodging, etc. tax. It is about half of what it was pre-pandemic.
Democrats love crime, Antifa-Nazi thuggery, Illegal entrants, BLM hypocrisy - where all the BLM money went to 3 black grrrls at the top) and the black community were screwed.. Tech oligarch FBI spying, cheating and lying and suppression of speech they don't like on behalf of the MOB-Boss Biden family and their corrupt elite party of Putins.
with Hillary Robert Third Reich yammering on endlessly that speech they don't like is "disinformation".
but yeah- these same blue cities are inhospitable to someone wanting a simple life as an independent book seller. agree.
What rejahm said at the top
"What's the reverse of gentrification?"
I propose that the reverse is vilification. The word villain originates in the latter days of the Roman empire. When things got bad the low end workers at the posh "villas" had to fall back on their own resources. Villains were not originally out doing bad stuff....just living rough in grander but quickly fading surroundings. Feces (no needles, hadn't been invented yet) on the mosaic floors......
Tacitus
"California was californicated by a mass Exodus from the East Coast during the 60s and '70s. Flatlanders fuck everything up."
In other words, a horde of Massholes, like Howard.
Cities were doing pretty well before COVID and BLM/Antifa, or so I'm told. Retirees were moving in closer to the cities, and those suburban McMansions were going to be so many useless white elephants. Urbanites were creative, and cities were happening. Everybody was going to live on a livable, human scale without the big carbon footprints. Then everything turned around.
San Francisco's problems go back before that, but it's striking how much arrogance there was in cities then -- they were rich and productive and didn't need the hinterland -- and how it all came crashing down. There can be a similar arrogance in the hinterland, ideas of building a new country out of parts of America that aren't urbanized, but different parts of the country do need each other.
The kind of diciplines needed for acquiring wealth and prosperity appear to be far less difficult to follow, than the kind of dicipline needed to hold the wealth and prosperity once attained.
Seems to be true of individuals, private institutions and governments.
Washington DC is a cesspool of homeless, druggies and the crime is out of control. What makes the leaders think anyone wants to be there?
Go woke, go broke.
I don't know when you could work part-time and survive in SF.
I remember that.
However. "Survive" meant finding someone who would let you sleep on their couch rent free. Someone willing to work part time has a much easier time of it than someone who just wants to be loaded all day long and not work at all.
The allure of city living is real, until ugliness and fear overtakes the allure.
The ability to easily walk to 500 shops of various idiosyncratic descriptions, to see people along the way you have talked to before, that's enjoyable.
But fear of crime and having to walk through human excrement and past open drug use just dominates the experience.
The political viability of permanent decline has been one of the enduring puzzles of my adult years. It started with Detroit in the 60s. Now, in every major Democratic urban center from Philly to San Fran, the worse crime education and fiscal mismanagement get, the better for Democrat hegemony. Gangbangers, meth & fentanyl dealers and the homeless are the shock troops: wherever they show up, the Democrat Left is sure to triumph.
Can it be that a peculiarly Democrat economy prospers in such environments? I have seen a whole nonprofit/govt bureaucracy arise to serve (and grow) the homeless community here in Boulder. I suppose big city crime generates a similar ecosystem of criminal prosecution/defense/incarceration with middle class salaries. Inner city schools seem to fail ever upwards, No Teacher Union Left Behind. Even Hollywood is parasitic on urban dysfunction: from The Wire to Breaking Bad, gritty urban life creates drama for bored suburban dwellers, our new Wild West.
What does the following mean as attributed to a right-wing view? "Post-2020 life in our country is a lot different than before, in many ways not for the better." Because I can't think of a single objective way that the right wing would say that life is better since the pandemic.
It can't be a way of saying 'at least Trump isn't president/Biden is president' from a right-wing view. Unless you think David French, the Lincoln Project, Bill Kristol, etc. are considered still considered right wing? They seem to be enjoying the sh*t show that is the Biden administration.
I live in Portland.
The right wing view is correct.
Seattle is following the same trajectory. I often call Seattle "SF-Wannabe". I worked downtown most of the time from 1985 through 2018 and saw the growth, florescence, and deterioration. Local lore has it that tons of Californians moved up in the late 1980s and proceeded to do the same things that wrecked their old home. There were some seedy areas downtown, mostly confined to a couple of areas at either end, and in the 1990s it was built up into a very nice place to not only work but many lived downtown. In the '80s, downtown was mostly deserted at night and on the weekends (save for Pioneer Square and the Market areas), but then it was a hopping and nice place all the time.
After about 2005 the rot started to set in as real estate became more expensive and the socialists took charge and began enabling the homeless, mostly drug addicts and mentally ill.
I moved to AZ in 2018 and I'm certain the same thing is going to happen here, since tons of Californians and Washingtonians are moving here in droves and are already starting to change things. I predict a lot of things will be nice for a while -- booming economy, development, etc. -- but then the same rot will start happening. Hopefully, by the time it really gets going I'll be dead.
I actually read a few hundred of the comments on that article and was surprised how rational most of them were. Sure, there was the usual mindless Lefty blather about Big Tech and turning office buildings into homeless shelters, but most of the commenters seemed to have a pretty good idea what’s at the heart of SF’s decline.
But it’s the NYT, so knowing the problem doesn’t mean you would ever vote for the solution.
"There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco."
Based on what I've read, you don't even need to work in order to live in San Francisco. It sure sounds like plenty of people are doing it.
In early 67 I went to sf with 3 buddies.
We rented a 1st floor apt on fell st directly across from the Panhandle (part of Golden gate park)
1 br, lr, kitchen, bath, furnished.
Not deluxe but no slum either.
I doubt we paid more than $150 or 200 per month. None of us had jobs or money.
John Henry
"There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco."
Bullshit. If you rented a room in a big house with several others, cooked your own rice and bean, and sat around shooting the breeze for entertainment - maybe. Seriously doubt that one could work part time in a bookstore and realize the current expectation of living alone in a nice one bedroom in a convenient location.
@Creola Soul wrote: Washington DC is a cesspool of homeless, druggies and the crime is out of control. What makes the leaders think anyone wants to be there?
Go woke, go broke.
As with SF, LA, NYC, and Chicago, its quality depends on the neighborhood. Take a visit to Georgetown (no Metrorail station ; none of the 'undesirable' crowd), Embassy Row, or the guarded Kalorama area that's home to the Obamas and Jeff Bezos. Downtown has plenty of tented homeless people, but the federal building and monument areas are heavily policed. In contrast, the area south of the Anacostia river has long been a high danger zone, and the eastern edge too.
DC started to gentrify fiercely in the 1980s-1990s, as wealthy bureaucrats, lobbyists, and defense/healthcare executives swam up swamp to be closer to the money source.
I moved to AZ in 2018 and I'm certain the same thing is going to happen here, since tons of Californians and Washingtonians are moving here in droves and are already starting to change things. I predict a lot of things will be nice for a while -- booming economy, development, etc. -- but then the same rot will start happening. Hopefully, by the time it really gets going I'll be dead.
I agree. I moved here in 2017 from CA. For years I owned property on Vashon Island to be my retirement home. Seattle was a great place then. About ten years ago I sold the Vashon 10 acres. Seattle had stopped being attractive. The last election showed how the rot is growing. I'm not sure if it is Californians or the death throes of the old McCain machine.
The left-wing view: "The Techies came to town, made their money, drove up real estate prices and left.
You left out: and voted for the hard left scum who "decriminalized" shoplifting, public drug use, urination and dedication, and in general destroyed to quality of life for anyone who's trying to enjoy themselves in the city
They strip-mined the culture, leaving behind a shell of what was once the most vibrant city on the West Coast.
No, that's what the Left does everywhere. As David Burge / @iowahawkblog noted in 2015:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
Is the core behavior of the Left. Techies helped, but they helped by their left wing votes, not anything particularly "techie"
There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco.
1906? 1960?
Yes, there was a time when prices in SF were merely insane, rather than completely insane. You can thank the NIMBYs for making sure that not enough large apartment buildings were built
That's not the techies. Most of them would have been perfectly happy with a place in a high-rise building
Howard said...
One thing you people might not realize is that the liberals who have ruined California or not Californians. California was californicated by a mass Exodus from the East Coast during the 60s and '70s. Flatlanders fuck everything up.
Nope
CA was destroyed by the end of the Cold War.
So Cal voted Republican, because a significant chunk of the people there worked in defense industries. Those cut way back once the Cold War was over ("peace dividend"), which led to a major cultural shift
It was a long process of decline, and really took until 2006 until it was complete
The political viability of permanent decline has been one of the enduring puzzles of my adult years. It started with Detroit in the 60s. Now, in every major Democratic urban center from Philly to San Fran, the worse crime education and fiscal mismanagement get, the better for Democrat hegemony. Gangbangers, meth & fentanyl dealers and the homeless are the shock troops: wherever they show up, the Democrat Left is sure to triumph.
Chicago is run by the black gangs. Nothing will improve as long as they are untouchable. Little by little the white residents are leaving. Even middle class blacks are leaving.
Danno said...
"Pencil said..."Not sure about this. I live in Downtown Minneapolis. Do you? Not as busy as I would like, too many storefronts not open, vacancy rates for high rises still high, but condos still selling for a lot, and rental apartments still fetching high rents. Still hard to get into the best restaurants without a reservation made more than a week in advance."
The retail and hotel stats tell a story different than yours-
You are both right.
On aggregate, i.e. the margins, total activity is down. The middle and working class are being ground into nothing.
But the wealthy are still doing just fine.
In other words they are turning the country into Mexico.
The question becomes: how much money will be spent to rebuild SF when the next Earthquake hits?
There was never a time you could work part time in a book store and live in a house or apartment in San Fran. Maybe in a drug squat or in a shack on the beach.
Visited, briefly, SF about fifteen years ago. Told to go here and see this, go there and see that, so on. Did, mostly. One item was a line of cute little somethings or other--condos or apartments lined up on a hill.
Yup. Cute. Counted the electric meters.... How much did a 400 sq. ft apartment cost? For the price of your bedroom is an air mattress you roll up in the morning, you can pay an arm and a leg for cute. And tourists come to look. Oh Frabjous Day!
OTOH, none of the currently reported decay was obvious.
Waiting at the bay end of the line for a cable car, I grokked why a guy from SF sat at a high school football game in Michigan wearing two layers less than everybody else. Cold is the second game of a double header at Candlestick park with the wind off the bay.
As usual, glad to get out of town.
"Pencil said..."Not sure about this. I live in Downtown Minneapolis. Do you? Not as busy as I would like, too many storefronts not open, vacancy rates for high rises still high,"
Other than that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
"'There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco.'
"Bullshit. If you rented a room in a big house with several others, cooked your own rice and bean, and sat around shooting the breeze for entertainment - maybe. Seriously doubt that one could work part time in a bookstore and realize the current expectation of living alone in a nice one bedroom in a convenient location."
Why do you doubt that? It was certainly true in Manhattan as recently as the 70s and into the early or mid 80s in certain parts of town. (It's certainly not true anywhere in NYC now.)
Absolutely obtuse about 'homelessness'. Lots of mewling about how high real estate prices are driving the poor into the streets. It's the drugs. Drop real estate prices by 90% and the 'homeless' will still be shooting up and shitting in the streets, burglarizing, shoplifting..
The 'homeless' could care less about rental rates and home prices.
A friend sent me photos just a couple of days ago from downtown SF - midday middle of the week. Sutter between Montgomery and Kearny. Not another person in sight. Today she sent me photos of the addicts at Powell St BART. Right next to a display proclaiming a Winter Wonderland. Businesses in the Tenderloin are demanding tax refunds because nothing is done about the rampant crime.
Some people stayed in Detroit too. You only get one life. Why spend it stepping over turds at great expense?
Things would be simpler if the horrible billionaires and techies and the censorious commenters at the Times site weren't all voting for the same progressive policies.
Mystery solved: you are a Beat poet crashing on Neal Cassidy's sofa. You work part-time in a bookstore for pocket money and scrape along and scrape by just fine. Or you are a hippie or runaway squatting in an abandoned warehouse. Or like David DePape not so long ago, you are staying in a broken-down school bus.
"The kind of diciplines needed for acquiring wealth and prosperity appear to be far less difficult to follow, than the kind of dicipline needed to hold the wealth and prosperity once attained."
That discipline to maintain what is hard earned and good about a community is called conservatism, or more recently "right-wing white supremacy". How can a community let themselves do that? "Hitler, Nazis, homophobes", etc.
"MadisonMan said...
The question becomes: how much money will be spent to rebuild SF when the next Earthquake hits?"
Easy. Five to ten times more than is necessary.
I will be spending a little over a week in Chicago starting on Friday. Two days and nights with family in the far southwest burbs. The rest of the time in the West Loop. Will be hitting Steppenwolf, Second City, Drunk Shakespeare, maybe Dear Evan Hansen downtown and the Zebra Lounge piano bar off Rush Street, and perhaps a museum or two and (depending on the weather) Millennium Park and other outdoor locales, maybe including the zoo. The West Loop hotel is basically in the Fulton Market district, which, as far as I can tell, has a vibrant restaurant scene, as do the nearby Randolph Street strip and some other local places (including at least a couple of bars in Greektown and the always necessary late-night Mr. Greek Gyros).
Should be one of the safest and nicest parts of the city. Still, from a thousand miles away in Boston, the crime and violence seem to be getting more and more disturbing. A daylight robbery of an older woman in Lincoln Park by a seemingly organized group a few days ago. I have seen at least one or two reports of carjackings in the West Loop. Also a weird shooting incident at a restaurant not too far away a few months ago. And reports of decline downtown and on the Michigan Avenue shopping district.
I have a million relatives in the area. Most of my male relatives want to get the hell out, but you couldn't use dynamite to get my four sisters and a couple of nieces out of there. A few have been looking at Indiana to get out from at least the taxes without being too far away from the family group.
--gpm
Begley,
"By 2026 we will have a streetcar."
One Of These Is Not Like The Others™.
Enjoy Omaha well at lasts; I show you one of the early seeds of your destruction.
Haha. I’m in Monterey. Last night, the bartender, a young kid mentioned that he had three room mates in a studio apartment. He laughed at my Alabama residency till I started explaining about our beaches with photographic evidence. On the charter boat O fished on Saturday, every single person on that boat was charged with an absolute hatred of Gavin Newsome and the other animals destroying this beautiful state. I wish there was a way for these people to return to the life they knew, the rest, fuck em. They voted for this. And this is horrifying.
Been working in SF every day since the 80s.
Back then, bars were full, stores were crowded and there were unique institutions like Mark Pauline's Survival Research Lab which built machines that destroyed each other loudly and publicly.
Fun times.
The only town jokes were preppies and pop-up collars.
Then, after building the new Giants ballpark, the city started building out the rest of 'South of Market' hoping to capitalize on the Tech Boom.
It worked, for a while.
Unfortunately, out of guilt, SF citizens started electing a what instead of a who.
The town went from the City That Knows How to Amateurville. New sociological-bent departments flourished.
It started taking two years just to get a permit build a store or an apartment. And it kept getting worse.
The pandemic finished it.
Now drug addicts and vagrants, excuse me, the "unhoused", are everywhere.
All of which makes today's dueling NSP headlines funny:
In the NYT, SF has the 'Most Deserted Downtown'
In today's Chronicle, it's "Union Square Rebounding"
Um, no.
Until there's new city management to address the drug/homeless/mental health issues - and it cannot be what the current administration wants - free, hosted shooting galleries - there will be no rebound.
Only relapses.
Of the two opposing views of the problem, only according to one can the problem be fixed, and that's the right-wing view. So let them fix it.
Amusing to see the lefties complaining about the tech money that made it possible for city govt to get so amazingly dysfunctional. Naturally, they are unhappy that the money is disappearing.
Carol Doda
The really sad part.......I recognized the name immediately.
The irony of the left-wing comment on what ruined San Francisco: Former California residents are moving out and doing the same thing to other cities. And anecdotally, many of those people are from the left.
Ironic that they get what ruined THEIR city, but have no problem doing the same to OTHER cities.
I remember a story from a few years back describing the closing of a long established San Francisco comic book store. It was a personal interest story describing a well-loved establishment staffed by dedicated comic book enthusiasts.
The story spoke of the owner in glowing terms. He was a great guy who loved his employees.
And when he couldn't make a go of it any longer, he wasn't upset, he was grateful. Grateful that the city had hiked the minimum wage up to the point that his small business was no longer viable. He felt guilty about the low wages he offered and now with his business closing the guilt was gone.
Employees were not interviewed for comment. I suspect some were unhappy.
Perhaps some were grateful for losing their jobs at the comic book shop so they could move on to being nurses or mechanics or software developers. You know jobs that pay a lot more than selling comic books.
Small, low profit businesses close all the time and that wasn't what I found memorable about this story.
What was memorable was how the news organization characterized closing the business as doing the right thing. Protecting those poor workers from earning low wages.
It's telling that the news had no interest in how this closing affected the employees.
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