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San Francisco: The reckoning is here

yared.com

11–20 of 53 posts

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#11
I'm not so sure things are as dire as the article makes them out to be. As long as you avoid soma, lower nob hill, civic center, fidi, and the tenderloin it's been a great place to live during/after the pandemic. Rent is actually cheaper than pre-pandemic, the city is still super walkable and bikeable, there are more than enough bars, restaurants, and live events every weekend to keep me busy and then some.

Shameless pitch for people who may be new to the area and can only see the negative side of the SF bay area, me and another local started a conversational podcast loosely about awesome bay area events & activities: https://bawcast.com/

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#12

>San Francisco has replaced its DA and now re-funded police When was SF police de-funded? Budgets have only increased [1] each year, any rhetoric notwithstanding 1. https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen...

Never. This is classic "repeat-the-lie-and-keep-walking"-style writing.

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#13
>California has the same age-adjusted excess mortality as Florida, so the destruction was wrought for naught.

Seems arbitrary to compare with Florida when the linked data shows California ranked 38, and nearly half the excess mortality of states at the top that seemingly didn’t take the same COVID-19 precautions.

When the article begins with such a false premise, it’s hard to take the rest of it seriously

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#14
post #4
post #3

San Francisco has always been a boom and bust place, as anyone who was here during the 2008 crash, the dotcom bubble, or probably even the gold rush would tell you. The author of this seagull* article needs to take a deep breath, wait a couple of years, observe, and then realize that they could have saved themselves the effort. *fly in, crap all over everything, fly out

Mature cities like NYC* find ways to incorporate new industries and grow with them. SF doesn't want to grow up apparently. That's fine, but the seagulls aren't to blame. SF could have used their tax revenue to build something awesome. [*] I guess the cities which successfully do this have a long history of being centres of trade and commerce. Those activities facilitate pro-tolerance and anti-zero-sum thinking.

You’re comparing apples (the Big Apple, it turns out) and oranges. SF is 7 miles by 7 miles of hilly, earthquake prone land, surrounded on 3 sides by water. There is literally no “new land” available to build on, and redeveloping existing lots to rezone, or increase density, or whatever is costly and slow (and that’s true in most US cities, not just SF).

These are _essential_ complexities of land use in SF that are fairly unique to it, and hence comparisons to other cities are rarely useful.

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#15
post #4
post #3

San Francisco has always been a boom and bust place, as anyone who was here during the 2008 crash, the dotcom bubble, or probably even the gold rush would tell you. The author of this seagull* article needs to take a deep breath, wait a couple of years, observe, and then realize that they could have saved themselves the effort. *fly in, crap all over everything, fly out

Mature cities like NYC* find ways to incorporate new industries and grow with them. SF doesn't want to grow up apparently. That's fine, but the seagulls aren't to blame. SF could have used their tax revenue to build something awesome. [*] I guess the cities which successfully do this have a long history of being centres of trade and commerce. Those activities facilitate pro-tolerance and anti-zero-sum thinking.

Weird to use NYC as the example here, given the ghost town that is Manhattan.

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#16
This seems to be a rag-bag of right-wing talking points e.g.

* Covid lockdowns - bad

* Harsh policing - good

So the chances of it being based on anything other than the writers pre-concieved political biases is basically nil.

In particular, SF seems to be getting blamed for partly Californian and Federal policies in a somewhat loose manner. Even if you disagree with them, and you think the people in charge of SF at various levels agree with them, it's silly to heap it all onto SF as some kind of hate-focus.

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#18
post #3

San Francisco has always been a boom and bust place, as anyone who was here during the 2008 crash, the dotcom bubble, or probably even the gold rush would tell you. The author of this seagull* article needs to take a deep breath, wait a couple of years, observe, and then realize that they could have saved themselves the effort. *fly in, crap all over everything, fly out

2001 even more than 2008 as it was a long slog with lots of bankruptcies.

It really was. I still see ghosts from that time as I move through the city.

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#19

>California has the same age-adjusted excess mortality as Florida, so the destruction was wrought for naught. Seems arbitrary to compare with Florida when the linked data shows California ranked 38, and nearly half the excess mortality of states at the top that seemingly didn’t take the same COVID-19 precautions. When the article begins with such a false premise, it’s hard to take the rest of it seriously

If I’m reading that data correctly, it also looks like Florida’s age-adjusted COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 is 8% higher than California’s. Is that supposed to be interpreted as equivalent?

Re: San Francisco: The reckoning is here

#20
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mature cities like NYC* find ways to incorporate new industries and grow with them. SF doesn't want to grow up apparently. That's fine, but the seagulls aren't to blame. SF could have used their tax revenue to build something awesome. [*] I guess the cities which successfully do this have a long history of being centres of trade and commerce. Those activities facilitate pro-tolerance and anti-zero-sum thinking.

Weird to use NYC as the example here, given the ghost town that is Manhattan.

I mean, TFA literally pulls up NYC as a supposedly-flattering point of comparison:

> An ambitious young person can now have that awesome Google job while living in the Meatpacking district and walking to the Google office in Chelsea.

Although this is in itself a bit of an odd take given that this has been the case for over fifteen years— I was literally living this life as an intern at Google NYC in 2007.

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