I hate living in San Francisco (Oakland, London: cliquey, renters, lawyers)

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by ltrrtl218

You would think in such such a liberal city as SF they would expect everyone to pay their "fair share"

Without excusing the unpleasantness you describe (I accept that people have different comfort/distress levels according to personality traits and conditioning) - uh, just pointing out an issue with your statement about the "fair share" part from the standpoint of logic: what would be a "fair share" of basically nothing? That's what the homeless have, right?

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

And again, there is no such metric. You're just making stuff up. There is no "homeless census".

And yeah, SF has the worst visible homeless problem I have ever seen, anywhere. Much, much worse than NYC, where you are almost never bothered by bums.

Are you seriously incapable of or unwilling to Google some simple keyword string as: "what cities have the highest homeless populations?"?

There are more hits than every monkey in the world sitting at computer screens could read in a lifetime.

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Are you seriously incapable of or unwilling to Google some simple keyword string as: "what cities have the highest homeless populations?"?

There are more hits than every monkey in the world sitting at computer screens could read in a lifetime.

Sorry, but Googling random websites has nothing to do with the issue. There is no official metric for measuring homelessness in American cities.

Keep making excuses for SF's homelessness problem, though. Whatever makes you feel better, I guess.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Sorry, but Googling random websites has nothing to do with the issue. There is no official metric for measuring homelessness in American cities.

Keep making excuses for SF's homelessness problem, though. Whatever makes you feel better, I guess.

Sure. Youbetcha. Because the only usable data / stats / studies come from the government, right? It's a total wonder and embarrassment that research giants like Pew, Harris, Gallup, and all the university and social institutes and think tanks who do studies stay in business serving everyone from giant corporations to every local, state, and national government.

No excuses here for SF's homeless problem. Just a realistic baseline for understanding the actual situation as opposed to frothing over memes and AM talk radio hyperbole.

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Sure. Youbetcha. Because the only usable data / stats / studies come from the government, right?

Actually, yes. Only the U.S. govt. runs the Census. There are no nongovernmental entities with remotely similar resources and reach.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Actually, yes. Only the U.S. govt. runs the Census. There are no nongovernmental entities with remotely similar resources and reach.

So you deny the expertise, reputations, track records, demonstrable functional utility of research other than the Census, including all the aforementioned scholarly research upon whose work the functional daily world of commerce and politics revolves? Good for you, sticking to your myopia!

[ltrrtl218]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Without excusing the unpleasantness you describe (I accept that people have different comfort/distress levels according to personality traits and conditioning) - uh, just pointing out an issue with your statement about the "fair share" part from the standpoint of logic: what would be a "fair share" of basically nothing? That's what the homeless have, right?

Of course I realize that they don't have anything. I was making a joke with that comment. My point was more that muni needs to really crackdown and do something about letting the homeless or anyone for that matter, ride the bus without paying.

[TruthTeller1954]

I understand you 100%. I lived in SF from 1979 to 1985 when there was cheap rent and great culture. Can you believe I had a HUGE studio on Lombard Street for $400 a month? It was as big as a one bedroom with a view of the bay.

I moved from SF in 1985 right when SOMA was being developed and before the dot.com boom destroyed all affordable housing in the city.

The last few times I visited SF on weekend it was filthy and violent street people running amok harrassing and scaring people with zero cops on the street. My idea of Seventh Level of Hell is Market Street.

You might investigate Sacramento to move to. Rent is considerably cheaper. The hip artsy neighborhood is Downtown and Midtown and you can find studios for $700 and one bedrooms for $800. Rents in downtown and midtown will rise within the next two years due to new sports arena being built downtown. Elmhurst in East Sacramento is gorgeous, Land Park, Curtis Park are nice neighborhoods. You do not need a car if you live in these neighborhoods since the public transit is excellent. Any other neighborhood requires a car since RT Regional Transit is tiresome if you do not live in Central City.

Sacramento has great farmers markets, lots of culture, wonderful museums and more treesnthan any city in the world second only to Paris. It is a lot cleaner than SF. Frankly, Market Street is putrid and slummy. Sacramento is so far from Silicon Valley we are not a city of geeks and computer nerds but if that is your thing Hacker Lab on H Street is Geek Central.

Several universities, great ballet and live theater. Sacramento is the national capitol of Farm to Fork and our restaurants easily rival the food snob slow food scene in SF at half the price. Check out Sacramento News and Reviews paper. It is an alt-lit paper. I heard the Bay Guardian is now defunct.

[dalparadise]

I actually feel a bit sorry for people who hate San Francisco. I won't dismiss their feelings, though. They're entitled to them. It isn't for everyone. But I will say that those who hate SF tend to not be very interesting people. They seem void of passion and creativity. They're tired, tightly wound and tend to see the world in black or white. I'm not referring to the people who complain about SF--we all do that. I mean the people who hate it; who fear it; who don't get it. I feel sorry for those people. I really do.

SF is a city one chooses mostly with his heart, not his head. It makes no sense to live here! Go ahead. Try to justify the cost of rent, or the age of the housing stock, ****ty Muni, the homeless, broken streets, dirty sidewalks, the girls in green jackets...think of whatever riles you. You're right. It's not worth the price you pay! But you're trying to rationalize it. SF does not reward that kind of behavior.

San Francisco is a place of amazing creative energy and inspiration to be bigger than ourselves. That is a very ugly industry to many. It purposely challenges convention and makes many uncomfortable.

So, why would so many of the smartest, best-educated, most inventive, progressive, risk-taking people in the world want to be here? Please don't try to slice up the Bay Area, and say that they don't live or work in San Francisco, either. In doing so, you may fool some readers of City Data or even yourself, but you won't fool people who know this area. San Francisco is the hub of the Bay Area. It is its central city, its focal point. Without SF, the rest of the Bay Area might exist, sure, but it wouldn't be anything like it is today.

Why would they live here? Why not invent jeans and television, design smart phones and electric cars, revolutionize media and communications, start counterculture movements and champion people's rights somewhere else? Why SF?

If you were to ask people in 1906 about SF, they would probably have said the same things we read on CD today. SF was "haves"((g)old money) and "have-nots" (Chinese laborers). It was dirty (port city). It was immoral, disease-ridden and bawdy (lingering Wild West and Barbary Coast). And yes, it was expensive and crowded--gold had built a boomtown practically overnight 50 years before and people had crowded in to get rich. Sound familiar?

Then, the City shook and burned to the ground. Thousands more than the official reports died. Almost no buildings or infrastructure survived. So, they built it up again...of course! Why?

Why would SF draw the kinds of people who would risk everything to be there?

30 years after being totally destroyed, they were building one of man's greatest engineering marvels of the time...in tiny little boutique San Francisco, way out west, far from everything. Why? People still had the destruction and even the dirty city that came before it fresh in their minds while building it. It made no sense to live in this place then, either. But they kept building. Why?

There is a will and desire to be here, plugged into SF's creative energy, inspirational environment, and spirit of ingenuity, among free-thinkers and progressive, intellectual, inventive people, that many will never understand. I do feel sorry for them. That energy is life-affirming for those of us who get it. I imagine a life where I didn't value being in an environment that invigorated and inspired me would not be very fulfilling.

And maybe they're right--maybe we do turn too much of a blind eye to the City's many warts. Or, maybe our priorities lie elsewhere from those who seemingly value order and pristine, safe, sameness over everything else.

Maybe we view something like homelessness as more of a problem for a city's people than for a city's image. If you view it that way, you try to help the homeless, rather than sweep them out of sight. Maybe there just isn't an answer. Maybe we don't like commuting by car and don't value the expensive, wasteful, polluting means that enable it the same as you (we don't). And maybe our weather, location, attitudes, and other unique circumstances afford us rare viewpoints that are not applicable to other cities (they do). It's just different here.

So, are all the amazingly intelligent, wealthy, uniquely opinionated, talented, hungry, inventive, contrarian, convention-challenging, non-compromising people of San Francisco, who could easily live somewhere else just crazy to live here? Do you really believe they don't know any better?

I feel sorry for you if you do.

PS: to the above poster from Sacramento--you do indeed live in a nice, highly underrated place, but that's beside the point. You just contrasted Market Street with fond memories of your youth on Russian Hill as affirmation for hating SF. This is skewed logic. The fond memories of Russian Hill are still alive today, though at a higher price than you paid.

[modernist1]

^ In spite of the pretty silly title of this thread (you can almost see the foot stamping), I don't think there are many here who 'hate' San Francisco, nor are there many who don't 'get it' (a bit of an improbable esoteric conceit) - I don't 'get' London, I don't 'get' New York, I don't 'get' Paris, I don't 'get' Berlin etc.
Most of those here, merely cite their disappointment with the city's flaws.