Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[rich]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary

good piece on the effects of Google and its ilk on the culture of San
Francisco. interesting contrast with Gold Rush in the 19th century and
the mining rush in Wyoming, North Dakota and other places today. lots
of Pynchonian echoes

Rich

'All this is changing the character of what was once a great city of
refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists. Like so
many cities that flourished in the post-industrial era, it has become
increasingly unaffordable over the past quarter-century, but still has
a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics
and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations– though we
may be a relic population. Boomtowns also drive out people who perform
essential services for relatively modest salaries, the teachers,
firefighters, mechanics and carpenters, along with people who might
have time for civic engagement. I look in wonder at the store clerks
and dishwashers, wondering how they hang on or how long their commute
is. Sometimes the tech workers on their buses seem like bees who
belong to a great hive, but the hive isn’t civil society or a city;
it’s a corporation.'

Last summer, I went to look at a house for sale whose listing hadn’t
mentioned that the house was inhabited. I looked in dismay at the
pretty old house where a family’s possessions had settled like silt
over the decades: drum set, Bibles, faded framed portraits, furniture
grimed with the years, cookware, toys. It was a display of what was
about to be lost. The estate agent was on the front steps telling
potential clients that they wouldn’t even have to evict: just raise
the rent far beyond what the residents can afford. Ye who seek homes,
come destroy the homes of others more frail.