When The Lights Go Down In The (NewAge) City

"What sickens me most about San Francisco is not its dirt, or its large homeless population, or its questionable safety, but that locals and the city government seem to accept these circumstances. Hipsters boast of how disgusting and unsafe their Mission living situations are, as if choosing to live amongst squalor when you have the means not to do so makes you a better person. The wealthy seclude themselves in the Marina, Russian Hill, and Pacific Heights, and lobby against public transportation that would bring undesirables to their pristine neighborhoods. Aging hippies in the Haight argue about marijuana legalization and anti-war referendums when men and women are dying – visibly dying – on the streets of the Tenderloin. It’s as if all parties don’t occupy the same city, see the same shameful sights on the street, and bear the same responsibilities to taxes and charity that might help address these deep-seated and difficult problems.

Month after month, San Franciscans gather for festivals and parades: Pride, the Folsom Street Faire, LoveFest, Bay to Breakers, and so forth. The privileged fill the streets, dressed in gaudy costumes, embracing any excuse to celebrate their sexuality, their liberal views, their comfort with alternative approaches to life and social structures. Were San Francisco taking care of its own, creating an environment in which everyone had access to the same comforts and opportunities, I would encourage such celebrations every week. But, as liberal and libertarian as I am, I think there’s something disturbing and solipsistic and fundamentally broken about a place that seems to value a different way of life over better quality of life. It is this that I object to most strenuously about San Francisco.

There are other nuisances and disappointments, to be sure:

• An obscenely high cost of living for comparatively poor real estate and social services.

• Unreliable and inadequate public transit, paling in comparison to most any other major city in the world.

• Lots of traffic and very little parking – factors that would be less of an issue if the public transit was adequate.

• Generally poor urban/civic planning.

• Limited and mediocre cultural institutions. It’s easy to exhaust museums, theater, and other forms of the arts in SF. Most of what you’ll find outside the mainstream is dim, amateurish, and – as above – obsessed with being different rather than simply being better. (The ballet is the major exception. It’s quite good.)

• Entirely a matter of personal preference, but I dislike much of the architecture in San Francisco. Some find the endless peeling Victorians quaint. I prefer buildings that are truly historic or aggressively modern.

• Vast dead spaces between and within neighborhoods. For a city of relatively small size, you’ll find that most of it isn’t worth repeated visits. Areas worth spending time in are usually just several blocks, scarcely enough to occupy an hour or two with window shopping and a stroll.

• Enormous competition for limited resources. You will wait for everything. The better a thing is (food, coffee, a nice place to sit), the longer you’ll wait for it. When you finally get what you want, you’ll be crammed in with others trying to enjoy the same place/thing, diminishing everyone’s enjoyment.

There is, I’ve found, precious little to do here, particularly if you’re not inclined towards sports or the outdoors. I recall asking several locals what exactly people did on a Saturday afternoon, at a loss after having gone to the scant few museums and walked around the few worthwhile neighborhoods. 'Hang out in the park or sleep, I guess' was the common answer. And indeed, that’s what many people do: the Mission’s Dolores Park is filled with idling throngs weekend after weekend, soaking up the sun, chatting, drinking, smoking, existing. Nothing wrong with the simple pleasures of friends and good weather, but there’s more to life than living from one hangout to the next.

There are some things about the city that are harder to put a finger on, too. While people in San Francisco are endearingly open-minded, all too often they’re self-centered, passive aggressive, and cold. As above, it’s easy to meet people through work or a common interest, but harder to meet random friendly strangers. Rarely in San Francisco has a kindness been done to me by a stranger – offering directions when I look lost, for example. When traveling, I’m again shocked at how much better people are to one another in other places, even in reputedly hard and unfriendly cities like New York."

-- Alex Payne, calling "The City By The Bay" out - or "waaay out" - on his blog, called Al3x.net.