San Francisco, 2018

for eccentricity and misfortune. It was a working-class town for much of its existence, as all ports are. The views were more spectacular, the weather more benign, perhaps; but life was life. The Tenderloin District south of Union Square could hold its own with the Bowery back in New York for down-on-their-luck troubadours and grit. As in Manhattan, those who have, passed in close proximity to those who have not. This was just the way of the world in a town dominated by commerce and waterfront. The unions represented on the shouter’s jacket told as much about the city’s history as the bankers and corporate lawyers gathering a few hours later over lunch at Nob Hill’s Pacific Union Club. San Francisco has been an immigrant haven (though survival for many new arrivals, especially the Italians and Chinese, required accommodation to native bigotry). American blacks were never particularly welcome, though they too found ways to survive. Gays famously came to town, especially following America’s wars in the Pacific as the Navy and other armed forces discharged those caught in the closet at the first port on national shores. San Francisco was the sort of town that anyone could claim as home. The cyber revolution changed all of this. Suddenly, people who thought themselves The bright California morning sun lit up an azure sky on a typical San Francisco weekday morning late one recent January as dozens of ferryboats came and went from the city’s famous Embarcadero. A chill in the air proved just enough to require light coats and jackets. The streams of commuters disgorged by the boats perhaps sported fewer neckties than their counterparts back east trekking through Manhattan’s Grand Central Station that morning. They nonetheless moved with no less purpose into the surrounding forest of Financial Center office towers. A main branch of streaming humanity flowed up Market Street, thinning out block by block as a handful peeled off into this or that workplace lobby. Just past Freemont Street, the determined calm of commuters making their morning journeys crumbled. A beefy bald man just past his prime was walking against the flow in a jacket pockmarked by union insignia. He shouted at the top of his lungs for “millennial scum” to return home. This was “our city,” he bellowed. “You rich leeches, get the F@#% out of our town.” Suddenly, California didn’t seem quite so mellow. So this is what Silicon Valley has done to The City. San Francisco has been a quirky place ever since the famous California Gold Rush that passed through its docks. The city always seemed to have space

smarter — and, hence, superior — to everyone else had more money than social ethics. They too appreciated the city’s beautiful views, its embrace of the good life and its underlying urban charm. They began to buy up everything and anything in sight. Perhaps they didn’t really want to price everyone else out; they just wanted their own and, if others were displaced, so be it.

Over time, like New York, San Francisco has become a less interesting place. Main shopping districts offer the same upperend chain stores as any top-of-the-line suburban shopping center. GPS guides drivers down streets which look more and more like anywhere else. The forces of homogenization continue to devour anything in their path.

The shouters in the streets know precisely whom to blame. All those self-proclaimed betters now find themselves vilified by passing strangers on busy streets. The shouters hardly are alone. On November 14, 2018, to cite just one example, freelance journalist Laura McCamy made pretty much the same point when she wrote in the nothing-if-not-respectable website Business Insider,

When I moved to San Francisco in 1987, the inclusive City by the Bay was home to artists, dreamers, queers, and weirdos. I made friends, got a job, and learned never to call the city “Frisco.” In San Francisco, the unconventional fit in. I felt right at home. A little more than a decade later, my Bay Area home started to change. Tech companies and their employees began to run roughshod over San Francisco and the East Bay. Real estate prices soared, and the eclectic Bay Area culture that I love started to disappear. Poets and revolutionaries have been pushed to the margins while tech companies turn the Bay Area from a magnet for all types of creative thinkers into a mecca for just one thing: tech. 18

Revolutions devour themselves. There is growing evidence that many young San Franciscans are themselves overwhelmed by rising prices and battered by social dislocation. They represent a generation that has become acutely aware of inequality and injustice. Millennials often reject the prejudices of their parents and grandparents. Individually, they might well agree in sorrow with the shouter that his city is lost; collectively, they embrace a diversity their very presence eviscerates. A recent movie about the city carries the title, The Last Black Man in San Francisco. What a sad turn for the home of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookshop, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Jefferson Airplane’s “Summer of Love,” Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, and Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City.

The San Francisco Arts Commission, a leading city government arts organization, framed the challenge well in its 2014-2019 Strategic Plan: “We believe the arts create inspiring personal experiences, illuminate the human condition and offer meaningful

ways to engage with each other and the world around us. We imagine a vibrant San Francisco where creativity, prosperity and progress go hand in hand.” 19

For San Francisco to remain a creative center, the time has arrived to find new ways to achieve what was so special in the past. Until then, the shouters will continue to verbally assault the crowds heading to work along Market Street.

View of Embarcadero in San Francisco. 2017. Photo: Bob Collowon. 2017. Wikimedia Creative Commons. License: CC-BY-SA-4.0.