One of my favorite local bloggers, anadromy, just got back from a month of travels — a month of travels which made SF’s problems a little more glaring.
And like, I know everybody’s sick of gripes about SF, but this list is particularly heartfelt and well written, and has a great denouement.
Here’s one good part:
Fuck the rapidly dwindling number of oddballs, weirdos and creative types in this city. And no, I’m not talking about the fucking bourgeois posers who work square jobs all year and then act like adolescent shitheels during Burning Man. I’m talking about the people who made different choices in life. Maybe bad choices. Choices they regretted. People who did not take SAT prep courses. People who did not spend their childhoods striving and climbing and obsessing over their class rank and extracurricular activities. Or people who did do those things but then realized how stupid and meaningless they are. People who play in bands. People who didn’t go to art school but still make art. Jesus, I probably sound like an asshole right now. But it’s real. I remember a different city with different kinds of people. True diversity, economically, racially, you name it. Trust me. What we’ve got now is a pale shadow of it. And it bums me out.
Fuck bloggers who sound like whiny fucking teenagers.
Amen.
Are whiners the new goddam hipsters? Go away, rent’s too high anyway.
So smug — you’ll be singing the same tune soon enough.
Not me, I’m raking in bank for rents on the building i bought in ’88.
Thank y’all for the 3 months i spend in Thailand every year.
They got Gary Glitter and they’ll get you, too.
Seriously! Show of hands – who wants Allan to stop posting this garbage that does nothing but fan the flames of hatred?
I do!
Eat shit and die,ass.
His name is ass. Of course he eats shit. And we’re all dying some day. So well played, predicting the obvious.
How about we just let people be people in this town? How about we grow the fuck up and move on with our lives instead of holding on to some stoned pipe dream from 2004? How about we just let SF be SF because it’s all good and eventually shit just works out? How about we all just get along and STOP BEING FUCKING DIVISIVE?!?
Fuck people who’s trust funds dried up!
Are you referring to bloggers?
I would invite you to move to a different city of your choice, that’s the great thing about life, you can move!
You can move to Portland! I believe it’s the whitest big city in this entire country, but hey plenty of people that claim to make ‘art’ live there! You might not read about any artists making the national news there, but shit they sure wear the fuck out of some flannel so they must be cool!
How about Detroit! Explore a city all but abandoned by the white man, and make sure to tell the locals all about how you’re an explorer!
Hey, New York! Oh wait, same thing? Yea…
umm umm Austin? Hm, techie also.
Well, Berlin is the new art capital, but yea you probably don’t speak German or even really know about that since I doubt you follow any kind of art news.
Oh well.
na ja, ich hab schon in Berlin gewohnt, und weisst du was? Sie ist auch wie SF gentrifiziert geworden.
I would invite you to move to a different city. It’s sooo easy to relocate, especially for someone as smart and erudite as yourself iuioasd!
The point you’re trying to make is heartless and stupid. White flight, red-lining, blockbusting was cool too I presume…if people had a problem with that they could just moooove!
Btws, the irony of the original gentrifiers being gentrified is not lost on me. The process itself is problematic and completely f-ed up.
“everybody’s sick of gripes about SF”
Yup. So stop putting them out there. Do what you can to make the place you live special; be constructive and encourage others, especially your square-job-working poser acquaintances, to do the same. This will do more than republishing the exact same whine about The Techidullification of SF that everyone else has published and shared and republished every fucking week of the last few fucking years.
Christ.
Liked it for the tilting at the squares and the bourgeois, but my favorite was the hilariously self-unaware “if you can’t afford it, get the fuck out” point about businesses that can’t hack the rising minimum wage.
I think someone should start the ‘No more office buildings’ ‘Yes to tons more housing’ party. Seriously, let’s stop all new permits of office buildings, and build a ton of housing.
Let’s slow down the employment growth here, and start to actually build enough housing for people that presently want to live here.
The housing crisis has gotten so out of hand I’m starting to think the State is going to have to step in and start building copies of Queensbridge throughout the city.
The employment growth is happening in the Bay Area regardless of what San Francisco does. Mountain View + Palo Alto + Menlo Park + Cupertino are all adding jobs like crazy.
The only effect of not building the office buildings in San Francisco is that there will be more traffic on 280/101 as the residents of our little bedroom community take shuttles and cars to their jobs in Downtown Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, at Pop’s…
White nerds playing wu tang records.
The number of creative types is surely drying up but there are still plenty of cool people around, DIY venues (somewhat), and plenty of bands.
Plus, mark Cuban said the tech bubble will burst this year.
Reminder: Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ To Fuck With
Pretty funny rant. And the comments prove his points, yet he also proves the points of the people who comment.
Lighten up, people. You’re allowed — no, REQUIRED to rant like a motherfucker when you live in the big city. I bet anadromy feels at least a little bit better about life after all that.
So, what happened to the good old San Francisco? We got older. What we wanted changed. We got tired of dealing with teenagers and 20-somethings when we had long since stopped BEING them. We got filthed out. We got crazied out. Bottom line, we got priced out. It’s a lot more fun, or at least tolerable, to live on the edge when you’re young. If you’re still trying to do it a generation or two down the line, you’re probably an addict of some sort — drugs, bohemianism, rent control, whatever.
Rent control is not a drug, christ on a cracker.
Says the rent control addict…
Rent control is the drug of choice for slackers, junkies, felons and alcoholics.
“…this list is particularly heartfelt and well written”
42 uses of the word “fuck” isn’t heartfelt or well written. You are all living in the past, life changes.
Well, to ME, sweetheart, 42 uses of the word “fuck” is pretty much the definition of “heartfelt”; “well written” is more of a judgement call, but I like to err on the side of style, having grown up reading Hunter Thompson.
That’s well said simon. We all get older and move on. The problem is, no replacement generation of slumming slackers is coming in to replace us. They can’t come here because it’s too expensive.
It used to be that moving to SF was like boot camp. When you came here, you had to leave your comfort zone and adapt to the city, not the other way around. Nobody came here because they had a sweet job waiting for them right out of college (actually those people did come here, but they all lived in the Marina where nobody had to see them).
Nowadays people come here straight from college and step right into a high-five figure job. These aren’t artistically curious kids and misfits or wannabe musicians, these are tech bros and children of helicopter parents who treat this as just another sheltered stop on their safe journey of life.
“The problem is, no replacement generation of slumming slackers is coming in to replace us. They can’t come here because it’s too expensive”
Exactly. The city is becoming a snowglobe of white privilege and carbon copy humans.
And you know why? It’s because the only way to move to SF without a pretty slick job is to have a bunch of roommates. And what sort of people are your potential roommates looking for to fill that extra room? NOT “artistically curious kids and misfits or wannabe musicians” — making the monthly rent nut has gotten too difficult to take chances like that.
exactly. this is what’s happening. thank you for articulating.
I don’t agree with it 100%, but like it a lot.
I too thought the rant was a little played out. Then I read his blog and really liked everything else written there. Fact is I’d rather have a beer with him than 95% of the fuckers in this town.
excuse me, but if they aren’t talking about philz then who the fuck is the writer talking about? because up until their professed love for shit coffee that was fucking 100%. enjoy the swill, suckers.
But but but but, Philzzz is kuuuhhlll
ummm how about 1234 Go Records Co habitating with a video rental place on Valencia… Thats pretty ALT! thats pretty PUNK! San Francisco sucks because you suck
just saw that! before you know it thorns of life will be having a reunion!
now thiss is how you get hits
Ha Ha
I agree with what that kids has to say. It should be obvious to anyone with a few wits about them that sterilized mediocrity is the natural habitat of the Apphole. Wish I could afford to move.