381–390 of 832 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've lived here off and on since 1993. I work for startups but haven't hit the lottery. There's a lot of San Francisco (and Bay Area) out there that has nothing to do with the startup scene, and many, many people who have no connection to and couldn't care less about it. You should have gotten out more.
its hard to appreciate anything else when you are bleeding through the ears due to expenses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.
>not enough laborers Not enough wages. If the free market is good enough for everything else, why not for labor?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society is strange. Last year a Canadian woodworker made cabins for the homeless which was destroyed (probably because of some regulation) by the city.
SF and Oakland have both had problems with fires in encampments. I'm betting the... let's call them guerilla housing efforts generally don't measure up on fire safety.
Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours.
I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it off during covid times, and today the quote for the same work is well over $300k. Sure, some company with modular units is gonna sell you a stainless steel box public bathroom for that price, but it’s far from the same thing as a proper building.
To those touting ‘cheap’ self cleaning toilets:
https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a...
https://dcist.com/story/19/07/29/this-self-cleaning-toilet-c...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the difference between bureaucracy and grift? All those 1.7 million dollars go into pockets, no?
Honestly it's a big difference. One is payroll and legal, the other is laundered and illegal and the feds regularly prosecute SF gov officials for this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like there are two SF's - the one that other people write about on 6th Street and the tenderloin, and then the one I visit west of that which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant American cities I have ever spent time in.
I think you need to be a bit desensitized to problems that are visible all over the city (e.g. trash under and along freeways etc) for that to not be the memory that sticks rather than the beauty. It is like SF needs a “clean up the city volunteer day” once a month that is broadly attended.
The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that doesn't represent the whole city. If there is a next time you visit, I recommend spending some time in the panhandle, the Haight, the sunset, basically anywhere bordering golden gate park.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People in tech companies with many offices tend to call cities by the nearest airport, cause that's what the local office (or datacenter) is called.
Yes, I worked in Moutain View, AKA MTV. And the SF office of Google is SFO. But nobody calls the city SFO.
Yes they do. And some also call it Frisco and San Fran.
After 35 years in the Bay Area I have settled on calling it "The City" but will bust out with "San Fran Frisco" on special occasions to just to be irritating to those who desperately want to "fit in."