Wake the Fuck Up, San Francisco
By: M.G. Siegler
Tags: San Francisco, Tech, California, Government, Policy

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

Exodus. That’s all you read about these days when you read about San Francisco. I want to believe it’s largely overblown, because it’s my nature to believe things are overblown.¹ But I think there’s a risk that it’s not.

Part of this is my own experience. I’ve lived in San Francisco for over a dozen years now. I’ve seen a few cycles. This feels different. Maybe it doesn’t feel different from the Dot Com Crash, I don’t know. But I know you’ll tell me that I don’t know. From everything I’ve gathered this is different. First and foremost because not only is the tech industry not collapsing, it’s thriving. But the city is nevertheless rotting.

Perhaps the rot is, in part, because of the tech industry. I certainly think it’s a part of it. Too many in our industry are arrogant at best and completely out of touch with reality at worst. But the more pressing issue would seem to be that despite tech being such an important part of the city, nothing has changed. Things have only gotten worse.

The more obvious answer is the pandemic. That’s in play too, but all of this was happening before COVID-19 started. And that will eventually be behind us. What won’t be are the fires. And that’s seemingly more a state and perhaps national and certainly global issue. The reality is that it’s a mixture of all of these things which are exaggerating and exacerbating underlying problems.

When you talk about such issues, a thousand people come out of the woodwork to tell you why you’re dumb and you don’t know the history and all that. That’s fine. I just think we’re beyond that. I feel as if I can say that because I live it day to day.² This beautiful city is now disgusting in ways both literal and figurative. It’s a shitshow in ways both figurative and literal. And no one will do anything about it. Hell, we elect a DA who embraces it.

Our city is on fire and we elect gasoline, a San Francisco story.

I think in order to actually affect change in the city of San Francisco we need to actually change things, in fundamental ways. We need someone to come in who just doesn’t give a fuck about all the intricacies and nuance about historical San Francisco politics. They come in with a goal, and do whatever they think they need to do in order to get to that goal.

If that sounds extreme it’s because it is extreme. But it’s also because we need extreme. “It won’t work!” Blah. Blah. Blah. San Francisco, perhaps more than any city, has been eaten alive from within by the status quo. If that doesn’t change, the city is at real risk. It won’t die, of course. But it risks a fate worse than death: irrelevance. I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio — this is what you want to avoid for a once great city.

To do so, you need reinvention. An intervention. Some changes which would sound insane, but actually change things. Many would be hard.³ They would need to be. But what is there to lose at this point? The tax revenue is already hitting the exits. That’s existential. Now is the time.

I think it’s a fair assessment to say that tech has gutted the city of its former soul. And yes, I’m a part of this. But this also isn’t anything new. Nor is it necessarily bad. San Francisco has been reinvented multiple times throughout its history. Change is the only real constant. The difference, this time, is that rather than the latest occupiers possessing the body until something else displaces them (us), they’re (we’re) fleeing. Leaving an empty carcass to decay.

I realize I’ve framed this as an “us vs. them” with tech on one side and “regular” San Francisco on the other. This is the natural narrative of the time, brought more to the front by wealth discrepancies showcased during tech’s latest boom. And neither “side” is helping this.⁴ But this actually isn’t a battle with tech on one side. And that’s the actual point here. This is a battle with everyone who lives in San Francisco on one side and the city’s policies and ineptitude on the other. We are all in this together, but we’re distracted by thinking that we’re not.

That’s why I have a real fear that nothing will actually change. We’re bogged down in bullshit. Fiddling with scoring pointless political points while San Francisco burns. I worry that it will take something truly catastrophic — even more so than the pandemic — to change things. An earthquake. The big one. Nature resetting, in a way. That may very well heal what ails this city but it will undoubtedly cost lives and homes. Why not at least try to change things without that? This is a wake up call.