How Is San Francisco These Days?

I lived in SF from '91 to '95 and visit every year and would move back in a heart beat if I could. The Tenderloin is a part of town I always head to for the restaurants. I worked with the homeless on a volunteer basis and do not find them dangerous. These people are mentally ill with drug and/or alcohol problems on top of it. I prefer photographing the more "interesting" part of town for example the tenderloin, mission, upper and lower Haight, etc. I can spend the whole day in Chinatown and then naturally walk over to North Beach for coffee and a cannoli. Enjoy your trip to SF! I also recommend taking the ferry to Sausalito for a day trip.
 
Steve M. said:
I'm no fan of what Guilliani did in New York. The man has zero class or scruples. Yes, New York got cleaned up, but now Times Square has been turned into a Disneyfied, soulless version of New York. In any case, New York is not San Francisco.

I first moved to S.F. in the early 80's and it was a great place to live then. It had a vibe, it had artists, it had musicians. Now it's a very strange mix of corporate tidiness, outrageous housing costs, and a homeless situation that is totally out of control. Crime, especially quality of types of crime, is just out of hand.

Blaming the liberals? It's San Francisco, not Dallas! The libs had nothing to do with any of this, it's grossly incompetent politicians and a huge, huge lack of leadership. To be blunt, the REAL problem is the google types that have moved in en mass and have absolutely nothing invested in the city. It's all about money, and it's a shame what has happened to the old guard who lent character and an artistic vibe to the Bay Area.

They're all gone now, priced out and fled to Albuquerque and places like it where they can afford to live and still speak their own mind w/o the politically correct intellectual terrorists telling them what to say and where to go. What replaced them are private corporate buses that pick up only their own work force, illegally block city buses to prevent the working class from getting back and forth, and a horde of yuppies who smugly sip their $12 a glass craft beers while rooting for the Cubs, the Red Socks, or whoever they rooted for when they still lived Back East.

These are not the people that made S.F. a great city, they're the people trying their best to turn it into Seattle, Boston, or Portland, and that's where they really belong. What have they contributed in terms of music, art or style? Not one thing. Your typical visitor won't see most of this, they'll just see the beautiful buildings and hills, as well as the in your face poverty and lack of compassion that these self satisfied corporate types could care less about. The area is still beautiful, but has become badly frayed around the edges, and it's 100% due to greed.

I really like their new mayor, and think she'll turn things around.
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I agree with a lot of this except the part about the company shuttles. They don't block city buses on purpose and take thousands of cars off the road every day and cut down on pollution.

I get it that people are angry about the tech firms gentrifying the city and pricing the average person out of the housing market, but the shuttles actually are a positive contribution due to the thousands of cars they take off the road every day. Traffic in the city would be a lot worse than it already is without the shuttles.

If you pay attention you will also notice that the company shuttle and city bus drivers acknowledge each other and tend to cooperate in traffic. They are all just working stiffs trying to make a living.

I also don't agree with the demonstrators that will shut down traffic in the Mission for two hours in middle of rush hour to demonstrate against the company shuttles. The only ones who are getting hurt by those actions are the average working people who end up late to work. They get their pay docked for the time missed and in a worst case scenario may lose their job. Nobody at a tech firm ever got fired for being late due to one of these demonstrations.

I've seen these demonstrations first hand and found it incredibly hypocritical to see the protestors documenting their actions with their iPhones from which the footage was probably uploaded to their Facebook page. Basically using the technology created by the very companies they are protesting.

And while we're on the topic, shooting out windows of the shuttles on the freeway is also way out of line.

But I do agree that the gentrification has sucked a lot of the color and creative energy out of the city. But that's happened to most big cities in the past 20 years like New York, Berlin etc. And yes, some of the younger tech workers act like a bunch of spoiled, entitled brats. It's not all of them, but enough to notice.
 
This S.F. newspaper article, especially the comments on it, tells you everything you need to know about who is currently residing in San Francisco and their priorities. Tried moving back there a few years ago and was just shocked by the mindset of the corporate run residents and their attitudes. Things change, people change. Glad I left, and won't be back. They used to call New Orleans the city that care forgot. That moniker is better suited for S.F. now.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea...-laughing-matter-SF-forming-Poop-13153517.php
 
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