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The Three Bay Areas (2017)

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Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#2
This feels kind of like the article equivalent of a political cartoon: sure, it's accurate and worth a chuckle if you squint at it from a distance, but it's been done to death and I'm unsure if it's a productive portrait outside of the instinct to say "lol sooooo true!"

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#3
Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style.

Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#4
As someone who grew up in the Bay I find it curious to make the distinction that there are three.

There's South Bay, East Bay, North Bay and the Peninsula.

They're all very different, but lumping in the Peninsula with the South Bay feels hamhanded given that most of the South Bay IS NOT like the Peninsula.

It's kind of an in-joke that nobody actually knows where Silicon Valley is.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#5
post #4

As someone who grew up in the Bay I find it curious to make the distinction that there are three. There's South Bay, East Bay, North Bay and the Peninsula. They're all very different, but lumping in the Peninsula with the South Bay feels hamhanded given that most of the South Bay IS NOT like the Peninsula. It's kind of an in-joke that nobody actually knows where Silicon Valley is.

The article isn't at all about three geographical bay areas, it's about three socioeconomic bay areas. I see elements of all three (but mostly the third) in my neighborhood in SF.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#6

Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style. Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.

I go out to the Bay Area often and I don’t know many people who fit into this narrative. This article may say more about the author than the Bay.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#7

Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style. Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.

The Bay area is way more complex than this simplistic trichotomy. The north bay alone (north of Golden Gate) is completely different to the peninsula and east bay. (Marin is also very different to Sonoma county, the top of the bay area). As work/jobs have changed the blue collar San Franciscans have been squeezed out to the 'burbs and a similar situation has occurred in the south bay with people squeezed out of the suburbs to the eastern x-urbs, until recently a very long commute to work.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#8

Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style. Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.

> Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area?

From 10,000 ft, pretty much, although with any topic as complex as this, much nuance lost in the caricature. There are significant shades of gray between these three broad groups. I know households with blue collar workers married to doctors for example, and teachers married to property developers.

Where you really find the caricatures in this story are in households where all the workers are either highly compensated or very low compensated, or somewhere in between.

> Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters.

It's not terribly surprising though. The only population of the Bay Area who has a strong shared interest with the current POTUS is the wealthy established professional and capitalist class. Many of them still wouldn't openly support POTUS because of their disagreements on social and cultural issues - they are the "racism/homophobia is horrible but don't raise my taxes" crowd, which around here slots you a conservative Democrat.

And sure, there are xenophobes and ethno-nationalists in the Bay Area just like everywhere, but statistically there are fewer of them here than you'll find in other parts of the country more friendly to the current POTUS, so there's no point in calling them out as a major group around here.

Also lot of people in the elite group described in the article have close family "back home" that do fit the description of POTUS supporters, which is sort of a flaw of this article in that it only attributes such relationships to the blue collar class, when in fact they're quite ubiquitous. So much so that it has caused rifts between such people and their families. I am myself just such a person.

Re: The Three Bay Areas (2017)

#9

Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style. Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.

The author is painting with a broad brush but some of it does resonate with me. Realistically most people I know are a combination of two or more of those "bay areas". Although I was not from the bay area "proper" as many "true bay area people" would remind me being from the most southern town in Santa Clara county :)
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