Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[Ian Livingston]

richard romeo wrote:  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.

Sounding much like Mucho, here, Rich, almost 50 years later. I remember SF
when it was the city of dreams, when a walk in Park was trip into a reality
like nothing I could have imagined from the little Central Valley farm town
where I was reared. It will never likely become the beige mall those
sprawling cities have become, so alike it's hard to know which one your in,
but it has begun to feel a bit like a beige mall with an extraordinarily
pretty face. The Park is a haven of rules where dogs aren't allowed to play
frisbee, and no Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane will ever be allowed to
set up and play without $300 ticket prices and carefully contrived security
to avoid any spontaneous outbreaks of peace, love, and understanding. Even
City Lights is more like a yuppie hot spot than the freak show it was.
Sometimes when I go into San Francisco I feel a little like Chrissy Hinde
visiting Detroit. But I still love The City like no other this side of
Florence.

On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 6:32 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
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