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I moved to SF fourteen years ago, not because it was a convenient place to earn, but because it was America's — and in most respects, the world's — greatest freak city: inclusive, diverse, irreverent, fringe, alt lifestyle, queer, utopian, communal, and beautifully weird.
Slowly it mutated into a place so normcore that the weirdos had to flee (to East Bay if they could afford it; to Oregon or Austin or Santa Cruz or back to the land in Grass Valley if not)
Even in my beloved Mission District, the freak flags were few and far between by 2012.
Even in my beloved Mission District, the freak flags were few and far between by 2012.
Companies like Twitter and Uber and Square, trying to attract freaks (or more accurately, the hipster workers who like to live near freaks), set up walled-garden offices downtown.
Then the khaki corporate conservatives who'd rather live in Menlo Park moved in to avoid a commute.
Then the khaki corporate conservatives who'd rather live in Menlo Park moved in to avoid a commute.
They moved to sky rises like Nema Lofts (pronounced like the metaphorical colonic cleansing, the brown eye sore it is), and wrote code and answered support tickets and hacked growth in above-the-fray, knowledge-worker Foxconns, designed to hide from their own neighborhoods.
They routinely voted against public transit expansion, instead paying private drivers to schlep their bodies from bunker to brunch.
They barely utilized our urbanity, but if they were forced to walk around and saw a naked person, they thought, "oh we had better outlaw this!"
They barely utilized our urbanity, but if they were forced to walk around and saw a naked person, they thought, "oh we had better outlaw this!"
Over the course of a decade, SoMa was colonized by Manhattan-London-Hong Kong, and the neighborhoods became a sort of Nydus Canal for Santa Clara County.
Noe Valley acquired both Bernal Heights and the Castro, such that even the gays all moved to oakland.
Noe Valley acquired both Bernal Heights and the Castro, such that even the gays all moved to oakland.
The poets and hackers and civil defenders and nonprofit directors and underground festival organizers and tactical improv absurdists in the dusty coffee shops of Divisadero were replaced with Blue Bottle and Sightglass, better for focusing worker bees & sleek corporate backpacks.
Lucca Ravioli on Valencia & Haight Ashbury Music Center were unceremoniously ripped out, and hardly anyone was enough of a "local" to notice.
Freak boutiques owned by witches and druids were replaced with muggle franchises: wizard hats supplanted by Goorin Bros.
Freak boutiques owned by witches and druids were replaced with muggle franchises: wizard hats supplanted by Goorin Bros.
Until now!
Thanks to Plague and the rise of the remote hamster wheel, we are experiencing a mass exodus of people who were really in San Francisco despite its weirdness, not because of it.
Godspeed ye to Denver, to Miami, to Seattle, to Austin. With apologies to the freaks :(
Thanks to Plague and the rise of the remote hamster wheel, we are experiencing a mass exodus of people who were really in San Francisco despite its weirdness, not because of it.
Godspeed ye to Denver, to Miami, to Seattle, to Austin. With apologies to the freaks :(
