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Major difference between saying your better than a city or you’re better than a city in one area of life. Most people who do this just call these cities hell holes and leave it at that. Doesn’t matter if NYC had a lower crine rate for 20 years- they made these same comments then.
I wouldn't read too much into the comments section of boston dot com. That place has been a bot-filled cesspool for a loooong time. I haven't experienced that kind of elitism in my former corner of the metro area. Half of my friends from HS are now living in those other cities...
That's the inferiority complex I was talking about earlier; it's even worse with NYC.
It's rare you'll find a native Philadelphian leave those types of comments. It's mostly bitter transplants that couldn't hack it in DC, Boston, or NYC.
This is true. Native Philadelphians Rarely, if ever, outside of Pittsburgh (or jersey but everyone makes fun of nj), will crap on other cities.
I think for any city you need to separate locals from transplants
During the brief pre-L.A. aqueduct period when San Francisco could call itself the capital of the west, keep in mind that at the time it was barely even a peer with Buffalo, certainly much less important that Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Boston.
It was exponentially more important than Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Cleveland in that it was the principal financial and intellectual center of the nation's Pacific Coast as well as the entire region west of Denver (arguably west of the Mississippi), and within a few years of the gold discovery at Coloma had become one of the country's more vibrant, cosmopolitan centers. No one would argue rationally that the city is "the capital of the West" - in reality, the West Coast has centers of gravity from Seattle to San Diego - but while the status it had in its early years has waned as other cities have matured, the city has maintained its outsized influence on our national consciousness and story, from the United Nations conference through the Beats, Free Speech Movement, Haight-Ashbury, and its importance in LGBTQ+ activism, to the tech ecosystem that largely developed elsewhere in the region but would not have existed if not for the freedom of imagination and entrepreneurial spirit that originated in the city's earliest days and have made it a haven for creative people who often don't feel like they fit in anywhere else - the sort of energy Armistead Maupin celebrated (albeit in a highly romanticized fashion) in "Tales of the City."
San Francisco has plenty of problems, and it's going to take a lot of hard work and unpleasant choices to fix them. But it's still one of the country's most important cities in just about every category. It's not NYC in terms of scale of influence, and not a single San Franciscan I know personally or can imagine encountering would make the case that it is. But I'd argue that only a handful of cities can make comparable cases for being centers of the nation's, and the world's, imagination.
Last edited by caravan70; 05-25-2022 at 05:29 PM..
Reason: Minor typo.
It was exponentially more important than Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Cleveland in that it was the principal financial and intellectual center of the nation's Pacific Coast as well as the entire region west of Denver (arguably west of the Mississippi), and within a few years of the gold discovery at Coloma had become one of the country's more vibrant, cosmopolitan centers. [...]
San Francisco has plenty of problems, and it's going to take a lot of hard work and unpleasant choices to fix them. But it's still one of the country's most important cities in just about every category. It's not NYC in terms of scale of influence, and not a single San Franciscan I know personally or can imagine encountering would make the case that it is. But I'd argue that only a handful of cities can make comparable cases for being centers of the nation's, and the world's, imagination.
Very arguably on the bolded.
Keep in mind that the Plains states (and parts of the Mountain West: Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, northern New Mexico) are in the Federal Reserve districts of Minneapolis (9), which has a branch in Helena, and Kansas City (10), which has branches in Omaha, Oklahoma City and Denver. The wheat grown on those plains made its way to those two cities for storage and processing into flour.
That history of accepting misfits from everywhere that I snipped from your response, however, is IMO the biggest thing that distinguishes San Francisco from every other large city in the country.
doesn't well cover the Seaport, The West End, The Fenway, Southie, South End, Dorchester, South Boston, Roxbury, JP, East Cambridge, Charlestown, Somerville/ Everett, or Brookline..... It seems to be hyper focused on 40 Trinity Place and Back Bay. But does a respectable job on the core....
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It was exponentially more important than Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Cleveland in that it was the principal financial and intellectual center of the nation's Pacific Coast as well as the entire region west of Denver (arguably west of the Mississippi), and within a few years of the gold discovery at Coloma had become one of the country's more vibrant, cosmopolitan centers. No one would argue rationally that the city is "the capital of the West" - in reality, the West Coast has centers of gravity from Seattle to San Diego - but while the status it had in its early years has waned as other cities have matured, the city has maintained its outsized influence on our national consciousness and story, from the United Nations conference through the Beats, Free Speech Movement, Haight-Ashbury, and its importance in LGBTQ+ activism, to the tech ecosystem that largely developed elsewhere in the region but would not have existed if not for the freedom of imagination and entrepreneurial spirit that originated in the city's earliest days and have made it a haven for creative people who often don't feel like they fit in anywhere else - the sort of energy Armistead Maupin celebrated (albeit in a highly romanticized fashion) in "Tales of the City."
San Francisco has plenty of problems, and it's going to take a lot of hard work and unpleasant choices to fix them. But it's still one of the country's most important cities in just about every category. It's not NYC in terms of scale of influence, and not a single San Franciscan I know personally or can imagine encountering would make the case that it is. But I'd argue that only a handful of cities can make comparable cases for being centers of the nation's, and the world's, imagination.
You helped make my point in your first sentence.
Being a regional leader in a sparsely developed region falls far short of where Boston was at the time.
In 1910, Pittsburgh (at the time accounting for nearly 1/2 of national steel output) Cleveland, and Boston were much closer to being in a peer group (in terms of importance) with NYC and Chicago than San Francisco or Denver.
Los Angeles has overwhelmingly been the capital of the west coast since 1925(oil business, full consolidation of global film industry, San Pedro port surpasses SF, largest interurban rail grid in the world)-the fact that social/cultural movements have to be invoked for San Francisco to be relevant just drives that fact home even harder.
Lots of good knowledge around here. Some from the Bay area may have their imagined superior (inferior) complex about being the capital of the west coast but, being from the Socal region, we don't ever really hate Norcal or look down on them. People from around here more than likely have a recognition of appreciation for them. It's another great big metro with tons of offerings similar to ours in the same state, the similarities between the 2 regions are prominent and they're in CA. Everything outside these 2 metro regions are disparate like Portland or Seattle, those other cities are westcoast, just not California West Coast... San Diego is also included for obvious reasons but feel more like a 'sterile' version of the main 2 CA's..
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