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Aesthetically Seattle and San Francisco are nothing alike. San Francisco's architecture is a one of a kind style in the US, the Pacific Victorians, and the city's Spanish, indigenous, and Mexican history explicitly distinguishes its architectural style and NorCal culture from the PNW cities. Seattle's architecture isnt even built by the same material let alone being aesthetically like San Francisco. Culturally San Francisco is NorCal. We are the out west pioneers and innovators that started our history with struck gold and became the city stardom of the west until LA surpassed us. Its culture = 100% California though distinct from SoCal. So it has more in common with LA and SD by a significant margin than the PNW cities IMO.
New York Magazine is currently running a piece, opining on how SF has morphed into NYC:
Quote:
Originally Posted by New York Magazine
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that San Francisco morphed into bizarro-world
New York, when it went from being the city’s dorky, behoodied West Coast cousin to
being, in many ways, more New York–ish than New York itself—its wealth more
impressive, its infatuation with power and status more blinding. Maybe it was this past
November, when New York elected a tax-the-rich progressive as mayor and, two days later,
Twitter, a company that had been courted by San Francisco politicians with a
Bloombergian combination of municipal tax breaks and mayoral flattery, went public at
around a $25 billion valuation. Maybe it was when, after the crash, bonus-starved Wall
Street bankers started quitting their jobs and heading to the Bay Area in droves to join the
start-up gold rush. Or maybe it was when San Francisco became the new American capital
of real-estate kvetching, thanks to supra-Manhattan rents and gentrification at a pace that
would make Bushwick blush...
That's the problem with SF. It's always defined from a wealthy white person's perspective in terms of mainstream media exposure. Seattle and Portland are defined from white perspectives too, although understandably because Portland and Seattle are much whiter in demographic proportion than SF. Stereotypically, when people think of SF, they think of the homeless in Golden Gate Park, hippies, gay people and rich liberal pretentious fart sniffers. All of these groups exist pretty much solely in SF's white population which is not even the overwhelming majority of the city. Because of this, people forget that SF is a large city in California with all the good, bad and in-between things that come with California cities and really is not all that similar to Seattle or Portland.
I like this honesty. I've never been to SF, but it does seem to always be defined through the lens of a White Yuppies and Hipsters. Areas like Hunts-Point seem to be ignored.
The similarities with NYC is business. NYC in the last couple of years has started viewing San Francisco as its rival. San Franciscans and Manhattanites likely share the most similar lives socioeconomically and the business culture in both cities is the worlds elite.
Unfortunately NYC is out of its league. San Francisco is now the worlds most dynamic economy, our growth is higher than China's 7.1%. We are now the richest metro in world history and Wall Street execs are quickly retiring from the old declining industry back east to try their hand as venture capitalists in the worlds new axis of money and power, Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley will put Wall Street out of its misery soon. NYC's developing a notorious inferiority complex to the SF Bay Area. Their retaliation is 'Silicon Alley'.
I like this honesty. I've never been to SF, but it does seem to always be defined through the lens of a White Yuppies and Hipsters. Areas like Hunts-Point seem to be ignored.
The Bay Area is arguably the most diverse metro in the Country and SF (while not as diverse as some other parts of the Bay) feels incredibly multi-cultural and diverse as well.
The Bay Area is arguably the most diverse metro in the Country and SF (while not as diverse as some other parts of the Bay) feels incredibly multi-cultural and diverse as well.
Which raises the point, why is it viewed through such a narrow lens?
The similarities with NYC is business. NYC in the last couple of years has started viewing San Francisco as its rival. San Franciscans and Manhattanites likely share the most similar lives socioeconomically and the business culture in both cities is the worlds elite.
Unfortunately NYC is out of its league. San Francisco is now the worlds most dynamic economy, our growth is higher than China's 7.1%. We are now the richest metro in world history and Wall Street execs are quickly retiring from the old declining industry back east to try their hand as venture capitalists in the worlds new axis of money and power, Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley will put Wall Street out of its misery soon. NYC's developing a notorious inferiority complex to the SF Bay Area. Their retaliation is 'Silicon Alley'.
I see the comparisons. I've heard SF/Manhattan comparisons and Oakland/Brooklyn comparisons. In the same way Brooklyn is the historically more working class borough of NYC in comparison to Manhattan, and is now the hip, nouveau-artsy borough of NYC. Oakland seems to be o the same track, as it is gentrifying and attracting many a resident form SF, despite it's more working-class history. Jay-Z himself, has proclaimed "Oakland like Brooklyn".
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