SF The best city in the world is a mess
invite response
2019 Jun 9, 9:42am 654 views 9 comments
by tovarichpeter ➕follow (6) 💰tip ignore
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nativeson/article/It-s-true-San-Francisco-is-a-mess-And-13961833.php
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1
RWSGFY
2019 Jun 9, 9:47am
RWSGFY
2019 Jun 9, 9:47am
tovarichpeter says
"Decades of one-party rule", duh.
Sooner or later, every San Franciscan is going to have to answer this question: Why is the best city in the world such a mess?
"Decades of one-party rule", duh.
2
Tenpoundbass
2019 Jun 9, 9:48am
Tenpoundbass
2019 Jun 9, 9:48am
The best City in the world doesn't elect people that they allow to intentionally run it into the ground.
The Best city in the world would have a recall election for every son of a bitch that is an elected official after about the third day of Shit and Syringes on the streets.
SF if the biggest stupid Losers and idiots, the most Liberally retarded city in the world If SF was a person he would be a Stooooooooooooooooooooopid Mother Fucker.
The Best city in the world would have a recall election for every son of a bitch that is an elected official after about the third day of Shit and Syringes on the streets.
SF if the biggest stupid Losers and idiots, the most Liberally retarded city in the world If SF was a person he would be a Stooooooooooooooooooooopid Mother Fucker.
3
Ceffer
2019 Jun 9, 11:16am
Ceffer
2019 Jun 9, 11:16am
tovarichpeter says
Gee, somebody just noticed?
Look at the City Councils of these places and a quick gander tells all. Responsible, sane people don't even try to run for office any more. It's liberal patronage for the lowest common denominator. California is a new "rush to the bottom of the barrel".
SF The best city in the world is a mess
Gee, somebody just noticed?
Look at the City Councils of these places and a quick gander tells all. Responsible, sane people don't even try to run for office any more. It's liberal patronage for the lowest common denominator. California is a new "rush to the bottom of the barrel".
5
RC2006
2019 Jun 9, 5:31pm
RC2006
2019 Jun 9, 5:31pm
It's amazing how bad it's gotten and it's the same irrefutable cause in each case.
7
NDrLoR
2019 Jun 9, 8:42pm
NDrLoR
2019 Jun 9, 8:42pm
It’s true — San Francisco is a mess. And everyone knows it
Carl Nolte June 8, 2019
The Washington Post is the latest to be on San Francisco’s case. It was once the Paris of the West. Now it’s “Too homogenous, too expensive, too tech, too millennial, too white, too elite, too bro.” Like a true San Franciscan, I read every word. Wincing. The piece is pretty much true. Everybody’s Favorite City is in big trouble. And everyone knows it. I heard from a woman who was one of the neighbors when I lived on 21st Avenue, years ago. She was a kid then and played with my daughters on the sidewalk — jump rope, games like that. “This is not the city I grew up in,” she wrote. “I will never come back.” You hear that a lot from expatriate San Franciscans. They moved out for a hundred good reasons, but a lot of us loyalists stayed with the city. We still like the city — the feel of it, the small-town nature of San Francisco, the neighborhood restaurants, the corner stores, the nutty vitality of the place.
SF in the Eyes of a Native Son
But this is no little “cable cars climbing halfway to the stars” view of the city. People who have lived here for a long time can see clearly what’s wrong with the city. But it’s San Francisco. It’s like a romance gone awry. It’s complicated. The reason the Bay Area is so expensive is beyond the control of the people who live here. Global forces are at work. The Bay Area has become the epicenter of a tech revolution that has generated huge fortunes and brought in a class of people who have invented a new world of technology. That happened for lots of reasons: This was a region that welcomed innovation, had great educational institutions, and was beautiful to boot. The world rushed in. Remembering the Leslie Salt Mountain: Bay Area’s odd, glistening landmark Millionaires and billionaires and Uber drivers and Google buses. All the problems that were here before got worse: traffic, housing prices. Even in the good old days there was a Skid Row. Now the beggars, drug addicts and lost souls are all over the city. To cope with these problems, the citizens have continued to elect weak city governments, all built on compromise and deals with competing pressure groups. At City Hall everybody is responsible for everything and nobody is responsible for anything. To make a complex problem worse, the city has so many rules and regulations that it has become nearly impossible to build anything. And the city desperately needs new housing. San Francisco has the highest building costs in the country. Architects and builders say it costs an average of $650,000 to build an ordinary San Francisco home these days. Even affordable housing is not affordable.
The city is out of control. Traffic is a mess, but it’s rare to see a traffic control officer. Trucks are double-parked everywhere. The city is dirty — a friend just back from Mexico City was astounded to find the streets there far cleaner than the ones in her native city. There is so much human waste on the streets of San Francisco the city formed a “poop patrol” where workers are paid $71,000 a year, about same as the average schoolteacher. And so on. The Washington Post is right. It’s too too. So why do we loyalists stay? Why don’t we cash out, sell our modest homes for a million bucks and buy a mansion in Broken Bow, Neb.?
It’s the people you find here. People like Fran Martin and Anne Seeman and their neighbors, who turned a neglected eyesore in an out-of-the-way neighborhood into a 6-block-long showplace called the Visitacion Valley Greenway. People like Nancy Windesheim and Joan Carson, who headed an effort to repair and landscape a one-block section of Esmeralda Avenue in Bernal Heights and turn it into a small treasure, complete
with a children’s slide. Or older San Franciscans like Amy Meyer, who helped turn old military posts into what became the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, now one of the most visited national parks in the country. There are other people with smaller visions who built community gardens all over the city; the neighbors who put in a kids’ swing just off San Jose Avenue. Or the Gum Tree Girls, who stood up to the city and stopped a freeway that would have destroyed Glen Park Canyon. Those people. Many of these people are not native San Franciscans pining for the good old days and complaining about how the city has gone to the dogs, dammit. They moved here because they saw something special in this place. They did a lot of work to make San Francisco better. Not just talk. Hard work.
These people and people like them are the real reasons San Francisco is still The City and why some of us are still proud to be San Franciscans.
Carl Nolte June 8, 2019
The Washington Post is the latest to be on San Francisco’s case. It was once the Paris of the West. Now it’s “Too homogenous, too expensive, too tech, too millennial, too white, too elite, too bro.” Like a true San Franciscan, I read every word. Wincing. The piece is pretty much true. Everybody’s Favorite City is in big trouble. And everyone knows it. I heard from a woman who was one of the neighbors when I lived on 21st Avenue, years ago. She was a kid then and played with my daughters on the sidewalk — jump rope, games like that. “This is not the city I grew up in,” she wrote. “I will never come back.” You hear that a lot from expatriate San Franciscans. They moved out for a hundred good reasons, but a lot of us loyalists stayed with the city. We still like the city — the feel of it, the small-town nature of San Francisco, the neighborhood restaurants, the corner stores, the nutty vitality of the place.
SF in the Eyes of a Native Son
But this is no little “cable cars climbing halfway to the stars” view of the city. People who have lived here for a long time can see clearly what’s wrong with the city. But it’s San Francisco. It’s like a romance gone awry. It’s complicated. The reason the Bay Area is so expensive is beyond the control of the people who live here. Global forces are at work. The Bay Area has become the epicenter of a tech revolution that has generated huge fortunes and brought in a class of people who have invented a new world of technology. That happened for lots of reasons: This was a region that welcomed innovation, had great educational institutions, and was beautiful to boot. The world rushed in. Remembering the Leslie Salt Mountain: Bay Area’s odd, glistening landmark Millionaires and billionaires and Uber drivers and Google buses. All the problems that were here before got worse: traffic, housing prices. Even in the good old days there was a Skid Row. Now the beggars, drug addicts and lost souls are all over the city. To cope with these problems, the citizens have continued to elect weak city governments, all built on compromise and deals with competing pressure groups. At City Hall everybody is responsible for everything and nobody is responsible for anything. To make a complex problem worse, the city has so many rules and regulations that it has become nearly impossible to build anything. And the city desperately needs new housing. San Francisco has the highest building costs in the country. Architects and builders say it costs an average of $650,000 to build an ordinary San Francisco home these days. Even affordable housing is not affordable.
The city is out of control. Traffic is a mess, but it’s rare to see a traffic control officer. Trucks are double-parked everywhere. The city is dirty — a friend just back from Mexico City was astounded to find the streets there far cleaner than the ones in her native city. There is so much human waste on the streets of San Francisco the city formed a “poop patrol” where workers are paid $71,000 a year, about same as the average schoolteacher. And so on. The Washington Post is right. It’s too too. So why do we loyalists stay? Why don’t we cash out, sell our modest homes for a million bucks and buy a mansion in Broken Bow, Neb.?
It’s the people you find here. People like Fran Martin and Anne Seeman and their neighbors, who turned a neglected eyesore in an out-of-the-way neighborhood into a 6-block-long showplace called the Visitacion Valley Greenway. People like Nancy Windesheim and Joan Carson, who headed an effort to repair and landscape a one-block section of Esmeralda Avenue in Bernal Heights and turn it into a small treasure, complete
with a children’s slide. Or older San Franciscans like Amy Meyer, who helped turn old military posts into what became the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, now one of the most visited national parks in the country. There are other people with smaller visions who built community gardens all over the city; the neighbors who put in a kids’ swing just off San Jose Avenue. Or the Gum Tree Girls, who stood up to the city and stopped a freeway that would have destroyed Glen Park Canyon. Those people. Many of these people are not native San Franciscans pining for the good old days and complaining about how the city has gone to the dogs, dammit. They moved here because they saw something special in this place. They did a lot of work to make San Francisco better. Not just talk. Hard work.
These people and people like them are the real reasons San Francisco is still The City and why some of us are still proud to be San Franciscans.
8
HeadSet
2019 Jun 10, 7:50am
HeadSet
2019 Jun 10, 7:50am
It’s the people you find here.
You find people like that in countless communities across the US.
You find people like that in countless communities across the US.
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