https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.97e4111ad97d

I left 17 years ago. It sounds as if I got out at a good time. (Even though I miss many things about it.)

I read that too. I lived there for only 4 years in the early 1970s but enjoyed the casual, eccentric vibe of the city. Recent visits revealed a very different place in many ways. The Tenderloin and Market St. are the worst, in terms of homelessness, and I suppose you can escape it in other neighborhoods...but so many other things have changed too (rents, businesses, shopping) that it seems just so different now.

One surprise, when I was there a year or so ago, was the Mission District. I remembered it as kind of down-at-the-heels, and media reports say it's all spiffy and hip now. But the part I saw (Mission between about 18th and 24th) was pretty much the same as always.

I see so much of the same thing happening in Seattle. Fortunately, Seattle is larger and, for the time being, more diversified than SF, so while Amazon has destroyed the South Lake Union area and is about to destroy Bellevue, and while Microsoft turned the outer suburb and apple orchards of Redmond into luxury living for tech transients, much of classic Seattle is still recognizable... if you can see past the homeless and eye-watering property values and stretched-way-too-thin infrastructure.

It will be interesting to see what happens when a city simply cannot be home to anyone who makes less than $100K or $200K. Nobody to work in a grocery store or restaurant, nobody to clean, fix, teach, build, drive, or any other role that pays minimum wage or even double that.

A few people are willing to commute two hours each way to drive an uber or sell $15 falafel. But I can only imagine that given a chance, most of them would move somewhere else more hospitable.

Feh.

Growth. Low density. Affordable.


Pick two.

I lived near SF when in university and so have been especially following its evolution. Every time I've heard youall raving about SF (OK it was in reference to visits, taken and recommended), I wonder if we're talking about the same area.

Ever since I heard about the medical conference relocated from there after the finding of giant garbage bags of human feces*, that symbolizes the new Bay Area to me.

That and (granted, Oakland never had the same cachet) the subway stabbings on that line apparently owing to whacked out homeless riding it for temporary housing.

Wondering when Hi Tech cos will be forced to relocate their headquarters from there owing to a combo of problems - COL, crime, and whatever DOES happen to their service population's commuting issues.

(Meanwhile, I'm not as enthused even if I could afford it, about my former fantasy of moving there to be near the son who now works there. Trump's target CA tax bill has played a role too.)

*Extraneous, but am I the only one who wonders HOW - why too - someone managed to fill those excrental garbage bags? It amounts to a kind of performance Art.