Some things just seem to keep coming back over and over..
About the 1840s gold rush (this one is more about the amount of cash in the city and less about losing of the soul): "“Despite the amazingly high cost of living and the extraordinary opportunities for frittering away money, everyone in early San Francisco was supremely confident that he would soon be able to return home with an incalculable amount of gold,” the author writes in the book while describing the city decades ago. “Everything was conceived on a vast scale, and there was always plenty of cash available for any scheme that might be proposed, no matter how impossible or bizarre it seemed.”" NYTimes.
April 3, 1985: "The Brandolinos' story is being repeated throughout San Francisco, where a decade-long building boom has transformed the city's skyline and its population. One example is the Brandolinos' old neighborhood, once a thriving Italian district, later an enclave for beatniks, now home to chic restaurants, high-rent apartments and increasing numbers of offices.
In short, San Francisco has become perhaps the most gentrified large city in the nation. Districts that a decade ago were blue collar are now ghettos for young urban professionals, who have spawned a consumptive economy in which one highly successful new chain mass markets croissants, sort of a Yuppie version of Winchell's doughnut shops." LA Times
1999: "The flyer tucked on the windshield of a tech worker's car on South Van Ness didn't mince words: "The Mission has been colonized by pigs with money. ... They help landlords drive up rents, pushing working and poor people out of their homes."
The leaflet urged people to key the cars of wealthy new transplants: "Take action now!"
The year was 1999." SFGate
Oct 28, 1999: "Isn’t the dot-com invasion just the latest example of gentrification — a phenomenon that started in the go-go ’80s? In a sense, yes — but the speed, libertarian ethos, irritating hipster pose and chilling finality of this invasion put it in a different league from earlier ones." Salon
Dec. 6, 2013: "Build Your Own NY Times Op/Ed Bemoaning San Francisco"
Feb. 24, 2014: “Is San Francisco losing its soul?” The Guardian
March 12, 2014: The SF Chronicle makes fun of "losing its soul" pieces: "It is a tale of two cities. It's a city of very rich people and very poor people. A Dungeness crab of a city. A city losing its soul. Sleek, black Uber cars that whisk hipsters from bar to bar. Danielle Steel's hedge. Thirteen-dollar sandwiches. Google Glass.
That's your opening paragraph, visiting journalists. You're welcome.
It's our effort to help our brethren who have flocked here to write the latest "How the tech boom is changing San Francisco" opus."
Go ahead, search "is san francisco losing its soul?".
