Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[Bled Welder]

But you're....Oakland.  What is that water that lays between. the
peninsula and Oakland?  Isn't there a large bridge?  Been over it many
times myself.

Not as in, walking, by byself.  Driving.  I think occasionally one has
the misfortune of landing somewhere called Oakland....


On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 8:32 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.