thank u for putting thought & care into covering the radical history of SF and not shying away from addressing the overblown/misplaced criticisms of SF. i lived in the outer sunset for 7 years during my 20s and was forced out due to retaliation from my corporate landlord when i tried to unionize my building. it's not just techies who i've seen oppose affordable housing or services for unhoused people: i saw my own neighbors, white and chinese immigrant boomers, vehemently call for more policing and criminalization of folks who use drugs. it was wild, but i still believe we ultimately all want safety & to have our basic human needs met. while i'm not a local, i also have a deep love for the city & the people who stay & fight for it every day. haters gonna hate as they say, but the bay is my home.
Thank you for reading and for your very thoughtful comment (also, for your efforts unionizing your building! there's so much amazing tenant organizing in SF—the San Francisco Tenants Union is especially helpful)
There is so much I would love to learn more about (and maybe write about) re: anti-homelessness in San Francisco, and how even non-tech homeowners have been complicit in worsening the housing market here…
I feel very similarly; for better or worse I have a strong emotional attachment to the city, so I'd like to—in my own, humble way—help sustain what is special or meaningful about SF.
I enjoyed this piece a lot. I went to SF for the first time as an adult in 2022 and I was awed by the natural beauty and the vistas. As a native New Yorker, I had never known anything like it. I found the hills staggering and I came to believe SF is, from its sheer physicality alone, the most remarkable city in the world. I understood immediately why young people moved there in the 60s. If it were a cheap city still, it'd be a true wonderland.
Thank you for your comment—totally agree SF is so distinctively beautiful as a city, perhaps one of the most beautiful cities in north America—and for sharing your writing on California as well!
I really liked your reflections on the cashless society of the SF Bay Area and who it excludes: “Cash is dirty, cash is untraceable; cash is liberating. Advertisers can’t hunt down cash in the same way. Corporations must temporarily content themselves with anonymity. Cash, once in hand, doesn’t care about class. A certain income—or at least a movement out of the most destitute of ranks—is required to open a bank account and walk around with plastic. Cash doesn’t ask for your papers.”
thank you for reading!! to be clear, I have no problem with NYC—it's just interesting to me how NYC and SF are compared side by side when they're very different!
like Manhattan is 1.6 million people, San Francisco only 800k…it actually makes perfect sense that there are fewer events and things going on
As a bay area local, thank you for this essay!! I’ve yet to manage actually living in SF but I’ve bopped around the bay area all my life and love taking advantage of what sf has to offer! & i absolutely feel u on tech people, i have worked at biotech startups up till now & the amount of times people have reacted weirdly to me choosing to take public transit over uber & ive yet to be stabbed yet! I think also people conflate gross and annoying with unsafe because ive def been annoyed at loud videos (which lets be real plenty of tech people do as well) or seen public urination at bart stations but the human response is to recognize how hard it can be to find a public bathroom! Even with the privilege of knowing i could always afford a coffee to access a bathroom i still tend to be mildly dehydrated when im walking around just to avoid the issue.
Finally, i have def been at a few of the events you listed which reminds me while I’m good about soaking up the cultural events i could stand to be more social at the event itself 😅 thank you again for the essay & passages i can send my bay area friends like THIS!!!! ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
thank you for reading! and loved all your thoughts as well—SF has really great public transit (yes, it's worse than Europe/Asia…but I think we forget how BAD it is for many American cities!) and sometimes the disruptions on public transit can be quite funny and human (people watching videos, gossiping with each other, playing music, dancing)
I basically think you can't get away from having to interact with OTHER PEOPLE in a city, who are sometimes messy and unpleasant and disrupt your peace, but could also be future acquaintances, friends, lovers…people who let you overhear a really amazing piece of gossip about people you don't know…
(and conflating inconvenience/noise with a LACK OF SAFETY is to me a very insidious, perhaps even carceral, line of reasoning)
I'm so late to this, but like others said, thank you for painting a more holistic picture of SF (my favorite city). The negative takes can be tiring, but my heart skips a beat whenever I come across someone else who loves this city as much as I do. It reminds me of the quote from The Last Black Man in San Francisco: "You don't get to hate [San Francisco] unless you love it."
thank you, Zoë! and yes…many of the critiques of SF (the intense pressure of gentrification, the dominance of tech, the visible homelessness) aren't wrong, they're just incomplete without a fuller picture of the history and culture of the Bay Area
Love this piece. I LOVED living in SF so much (2019-2022). It's so, so beautiful and there are many artists and activists and generally countercultural people there. I'm sick of some of these mainstream takes that appear to be written by people who spent 20 minutes shopping on Market Street before going back to the Hyatt Regency to write their thinkpiece about why people shouldn't steal baby formula from Walgreens.
BTW, one of my favorite things ever is San Francisco on Queering the Map: https://www.queeringthemap.com/. It's so beautiful (and heartbreaking)!
omg YES there is something very tiring about the Anti SF Thinkpiece Industrial Complex and how, in the eagerness to dunk on the untrammelled capitalism and unchecked tech industry in the city (totally fair to critique!) people forget about San Francisco’s amazing history! Also, who even hangs out on Market Street except the people writing those pieces??
I love Queering the Map but never thought to look at San Francisco specifically, so thank you!
I love this so much!!!!! I fell in love with SF the first time I went to outsidelands and have been a huge SF stan since. I’ve never understood the “artless grey” narrative bc SF is clearly so full of art and culture. Your point about how the perception of safety is politically weaponized, especially to women, is SO important. As a girl who solo traveled for a year, I feel like “safety concerns” in cities which are the pinnacle of inequality, is the falsest narrative ever and we cannot let people keep getting away with selling it to us as a way to keep us inside, scared, and further isolated/ powerless anymore!!! Ty for spreading the love <3
Thank you for reading and commenting!! And the safety concerns were really the start of this essay…I do care about my safety and the safety of other women, but it’s always interesting to me how concerns of women’s safety are used to disguise very classist and racist perspectives. And as you said, this happens SO much when people talk about safe travel destinations…especially when third world countries come up…
So happy to read someone put into writing many of my own thoughts about what makes SF great. Was there in January and again the January before and both times found so much to love today, not to mention so much of its history that inspires. And don't forget The Wiggle, perhaps the world's most powerful metaphor for UX and for life! The bike scene and bike paths there have always been ahead of the rest of the country.
I've never actually cycled The Wiggle—putting it on my list for 2024!
Even beyond the history and culture of SF, it's also just a beautiful city (maybe one of the most beautiful cities in America?). I love all the hilly neighborhoods and the gentle exertion of power-walking up the various inclines of the city!
this was so funny and so smart 😭 thank you for this glorious post Celine! i moved to SF in September and have been loving my experience so far, I'm so bullish on SF ♥️
thank you! and very very much hope you have a beautiful time in SF…the unparalleled produce, the charming Victorian houses, the gay couples everywhere holding hands!
"And when I ask them how their new life in NYC is going, “the culture” turns out to be: eating at Tiktok-famous restaurants and going to the same 5 clubs in Bushwick. In a city replete with cultural opportunities, they make dining out their personality and go on a Korg shopping spree." —this made me laugh!!
I loved your list of favorite things about San Francisco—going to use it as inspiration to think about the ways I can explore/soak up the culture in my own city more instead of being a "there's no culture" complainer ☺️
Thank you for laughing (genuinely—I am experimenting with more frivolous polemicism, and I'm glad it came across!)
I do genuinely think that every city of a sufficient size has interesting, unexpectedly lovely things about it…and really great communities…it's hard to find sometimes, but so worth it when you do! All the best in your urban life this year
Wow I just came across this post and there must've been something in the air in February. I wrote my first post defending / celebrating arts and culture in San Francisco right before Valentine's Day as well. The Substack (San Francisco Has [No] Culture) has been about helping people see what amazing access to culture we have here in the Bay (and celebrating the artists themselves), and writing it has made me love the city even more. I so identify with how you've celebrated the city and recognized its flaws while also calling out what it means to engage. There's so much opportunity here!
Thank you for this. SF has always been, and will always be, my favorite city in the world. It's so full of beauty, culture, art, and good people.
I've been here over a decade now, and my take is that what someone does or does not see in SF is more of a reflection of them than it is of the city. There's so, so much to celebrate if someone is willing to see it.
ahhhhh!!! i, too, was at the lab in awe of mindy seu’s live performance of cyberfeminism index !!! also absolutely inspired and infatuated with her.
i resonate w everything you said about sf. the history behind socioeconomic policy decisions (big tech tax breaks as you mentioned) is often abstracted that the city representation is flattened to the general public. but i love my pockets in the city that sometimes even resemble a ~ quaint life ~ thank you for this piece!
This right here!: “I sometimes wonder—do they go anywhere except work? Do they meet people who aren’t coworkers? Do they think the city is full of tech people because they exclusively circulate in tech circles?”
thank u for putting thought & care into covering the radical history of SF and not shying away from addressing the overblown/misplaced criticisms of SF. i lived in the outer sunset for 7 years during my 20s and was forced out due to retaliation from my corporate landlord when i tried to unionize my building. it's not just techies who i've seen oppose affordable housing or services for unhoused people: i saw my own neighbors, white and chinese immigrant boomers, vehemently call for more policing and criminalization of folks who use drugs. it was wild, but i still believe we ultimately all want safety & to have our basic human needs met. while i'm not a local, i also have a deep love for the city & the people who stay & fight for it every day. haters gonna hate as they say, but the bay is my home.
Thank you for reading and for your very thoughtful comment (also, for your efforts unionizing your building! there's so much amazing tenant organizing in SF—the San Francisco Tenants Union is especially helpful)
There is so much I would love to learn more about (and maybe write about) re: anti-homelessness in San Francisco, and how even non-tech homeowners have been complicit in worsening the housing market here…
I feel very similarly; for better or worse I have a strong emotional attachment to the city, so I'd like to—in my own, humble way—help sustain what is special or meaningful about SF.
I enjoyed this piece a lot. I went to SF for the first time as an adult in 2022 and I was awed by the natural beauty and the vistas. As a native New Yorker, I had never known anything like it. I found the hills staggering and I came to believe SF is, from its sheer physicality alone, the most remarkable city in the world. I understood immediately why young people moved there in the 60s. If it were a cheap city still, it'd be a true wonderland.
I'd add, California stuck in my head to such a degree it became a recurring thing on my Substack https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/california-saga-2022-2023
Thank you for your comment—totally agree SF is so distinctively beautiful as a city, perhaps one of the most beautiful cities in north America—and for sharing your writing on California as well!
I really liked your reflections on the cashless society of the SF Bay Area and who it excludes: “Cash is dirty, cash is untraceable; cash is liberating. Advertisers can’t hunt down cash in the same way. Corporations must temporarily content themselves with anonymity. Cash, once in hand, doesn’t care about class. A certain income—or at least a movement out of the most destitute of ranks—is required to open a bank account and walk around with plastic. Cash doesn’t ask for your papers.”
(from https://open.substack.com/pub/rossbarkan/p/the-cashless-society)
your brain!!!!!! currently in nyc and I'm always thinking about sf hahah....... love reading your thoughts, celine!
thank you for reading!! to be clear, I have no problem with NYC—it's just interesting to me how NYC and SF are compared side by side when they're very different!
like Manhattan is 1.6 million people, San Francisco only 800k…it actually makes perfect sense that there are fewer events and things going on
As a bay area local, thank you for this essay!! I’ve yet to manage actually living in SF but I’ve bopped around the bay area all my life and love taking advantage of what sf has to offer! & i absolutely feel u on tech people, i have worked at biotech startups up till now & the amount of times people have reacted weirdly to me choosing to take public transit over uber & ive yet to be stabbed yet! I think also people conflate gross and annoying with unsafe because ive def been annoyed at loud videos (which lets be real plenty of tech people do as well) or seen public urination at bart stations but the human response is to recognize how hard it can be to find a public bathroom! Even with the privilege of knowing i could always afford a coffee to access a bathroom i still tend to be mildly dehydrated when im walking around just to avoid the issue.
Finally, i have def been at a few of the events you listed which reminds me while I’m good about soaking up the cultural events i could stand to be more social at the event itself 😅 thank you again for the essay & passages i can send my bay area friends like THIS!!!! ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
thank you for reading! and loved all your thoughts as well—SF has really great public transit (yes, it's worse than Europe/Asia…but I think we forget how BAD it is for many American cities!) and sometimes the disruptions on public transit can be quite funny and human (people watching videos, gossiping with each other, playing music, dancing)
I basically think you can't get away from having to interact with OTHER PEOPLE in a city, who are sometimes messy and unpleasant and disrupt your peace, but could also be future acquaintances, friends, lovers…people who let you overhear a really amazing piece of gossip about people you don't know…
(and conflating inconvenience/noise with a LACK OF SAFETY is to me a very insidious, perhaps even carceral, line of reasoning)
I'm so late to this, but like others said, thank you for painting a more holistic picture of SF (my favorite city). The negative takes can be tiring, but my heart skips a beat whenever I come across someone else who loves this city as much as I do. It reminds me of the quote from The Last Black Man in San Francisco: "You don't get to hate [San Francisco] unless you love it."
thank you, Zoë! and yes…many of the critiques of SF (the intense pressure of gentrification, the dominance of tech, the visible homelessness) aren't wrong, they're just incomplete without a fuller picture of the history and culture of the Bay Area
love the quote you shared ❤️
Love this piece. I LOVED living in SF so much (2019-2022). It's so, so beautiful and there are many artists and activists and generally countercultural people there. I'm sick of some of these mainstream takes that appear to be written by people who spent 20 minutes shopping on Market Street before going back to the Hyatt Regency to write their thinkpiece about why people shouldn't steal baby formula from Walgreens.
BTW, one of my favorite things ever is San Francisco on Queering the Map: https://www.queeringthemap.com/. It's so beautiful (and heartbreaking)!
omg YES there is something very tiring about the Anti SF Thinkpiece Industrial Complex and how, in the eagerness to dunk on the untrammelled capitalism and unchecked tech industry in the city (totally fair to critique!) people forget about San Francisco’s amazing history! Also, who even hangs out on Market Street except the people writing those pieces??
I love Queering the Map but never thought to look at San Francisco specifically, so thank you!
I love this so much!!!!! I fell in love with SF the first time I went to outsidelands and have been a huge SF stan since. I’ve never understood the “artless grey” narrative bc SF is clearly so full of art and culture. Your point about how the perception of safety is politically weaponized, especially to women, is SO important. As a girl who solo traveled for a year, I feel like “safety concerns” in cities which are the pinnacle of inequality, is the falsest narrative ever and we cannot let people keep getting away with selling it to us as a way to keep us inside, scared, and further isolated/ powerless anymore!!! Ty for spreading the love <3
Thank you for reading and commenting!! And the safety concerns were really the start of this essay…I do care about my safety and the safety of other women, but it’s always interesting to me how concerns of women’s safety are used to disguise very classist and racist perspectives. And as you said, this happens SO much when people talk about safe travel destinations…especially when third world countries come up…
been saying this forever that we need more sf-positive takes!!!! thank u for this
yes!!!! there's a reason people like living here and why many people choose to (or even fight to) remain here!
So happy to read someone put into writing many of my own thoughts about what makes SF great. Was there in January and again the January before and both times found so much to love today, not to mention so much of its history that inspires. And don't forget The Wiggle, perhaps the world's most powerful metaphor for UX and for life! The bike scene and bike paths there have always been ahead of the rest of the country.
I've never actually cycled The Wiggle—putting it on my list for 2024!
Even beyond the history and culture of SF, it's also just a beautiful city (maybe one of the most beautiful cities in America?). I love all the hilly neighborhoods and the gentle exertion of power-walking up the various inclines of the city!
this was so funny and so smart 😭 thank you for this glorious post Celine! i moved to SF in September and have been loving my experience so far, I'm so bullish on SF ♥️
thank you! and very very much hope you have a beautiful time in SF…the unparalleled produce, the charming Victorian houses, the gay couples everywhere holding hands!
"And when I ask them how their new life in NYC is going, “the culture” turns out to be: eating at Tiktok-famous restaurants and going to the same 5 clubs in Bushwick. In a city replete with cultural opportunities, they make dining out their personality and go on a Korg shopping spree." —this made me laugh!!
I loved your list of favorite things about San Francisco—going to use it as inspiration to think about the ways I can explore/soak up the culture in my own city more instead of being a "there's no culture" complainer ☺️
Thank you for laughing (genuinely—I am experimenting with more frivolous polemicism, and I'm glad it came across!)
I do genuinely think that every city of a sufficient size has interesting, unexpectedly lovely things about it…and really great communities…it's hard to find sometimes, but so worth it when you do! All the best in your urban life this year
Wow I just came across this post and there must've been something in the air in February. I wrote my first post defending / celebrating arts and culture in San Francisco right before Valentine's Day as well. The Substack (San Francisco Has [No] Culture) has been about helping people see what amazing access to culture we have here in the Bay (and celebrating the artists themselves), and writing it has made me love the city even more. I so identify with how you've celebrated the city and recognized its flaws while also calling out what it means to engage. There's so much opportunity here!
Thank you for this. SF has always been, and will always be, my favorite city in the world. It's so full of beauty, culture, art, and good people.
I've been here over a decade now, and my take is that what someone does or does not see in SF is more of a reflection of them than it is of the city. There's so, so much to celebrate if someone is willing to see it.
ahhhhh!!! i, too, was at the lab in awe of mindy seu’s live performance of cyberfeminism index !!! also absolutely inspired and infatuated with her.
i resonate w everything you said about sf. the history behind socioeconomic policy decisions (big tech tax breaks as you mentioned) is often abstracted that the city representation is flattened to the general public. but i love my pockets in the city that sometimes even resemble a ~ quaint life ~ thank you for this piece!
This right here!: “I sometimes wonder—do they go anywhere except work? Do they meet people who aren’t coworkers? Do they think the city is full of tech people because they exclusively circulate in tech circles?”
thank you for writing this <3