Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[Phillip Greenlief]

there are many bridges.

sent from phillip's iPhone

On Mar 3, 2013, at 3:16 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.