San Francisco

{{cquote|But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The [[Bohemian Grove]], which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.|||[[Richard Nixon|Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon]]<ref>Tapes from 1971 as presented in "All the Philosopher King's Men" by James Warren in ''Harper's Magazine'' (February 2000)</ref>}}
[[Image:San Francisco Values.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The Castro, San Francisco, home of teh gayz.]]
'''San Francisco''' is an almost implausibly hilly coastal city in [[California]], noted for its sourdough,<ref>The local climate supports a specific micro-organism (''lactobacillus sanfranciscensis'') which is used to leaven the sourdough, so the result cannot be duplicated elsewhere. This makes people elsewhere very sad.</ref> Giants, Golden Gate Bridge and (gasp!) San Francisco values.™

San Francisco has a [[Multiculturalism|diverse ethnic and cultural make-up]], including sizeable [[Mexico|Mexican]], [[Latino]] and [[Japanese]] populations, and the largest and oldest [[China]]town in the [[USA]]. Other districts in San Francisco include Haight-Ashbury, the Mission, the Castro, Twin Peaks, Fisherman's Wharf, Nob Hill, the Tenderloin, Dogpatch, and the Tendernob.

The San Francisco Bay Area has a longstanding association with [[Freethought|free thinkers]] and alternative lifestyles. It was home to the [[socialist]] author Jack London in the early 20th century. During the 1950s it was a hang-out for beatniks like Jack Kerouac. [[Hunter S. Thompson]] lived there for a time. A decade later the city attracted a new generation of idealists and hedonists as [[hippie]]s flocked to the West Coast, climaxing in 1967's "Summer of Love," with psychedelic rock from the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Nearby Oakland and Berkeley became hotbeds of the [[New Left]] in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the wealthy Marin County suburbs were early adopters of the [[New Age]] movement, while high tech industry thrived around Stanford University in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale just to the south, leading to the area being named Silicon Valley, and the development of some of the first personal [[computer]]s.<ref>Which you are now using to access this awesome site!</ref> Trendy Bay Area [[futurist]]s like Stewart Brand played up a fusion of hippie culture, the New Age, the New Left, a growing [[environmental]] movement, and making high tech "tools" available to the common people; Brand's ''Whole Earth Catalog'' was representative of the freethinking Bay Area culture at the time. The city has also seen farcical mayoral campaigns by [[Jello Biafra]] in 1979 and Sister Boom Boom in 1983 attracting media attention; after the 1983 race a law was passed requiring candidates to use their real names on the ballot, popularly known as the "Sister Boom Boom Law." (Of course, not all the Bay Area's being conducive to experimentation and alternative thought has been to good ends. A complete picture would also have to include Anton LaVey's [[Satanism|Church of Satan]], the [[Temple of Set]], [[Synanon]], the Symbionese Liberation Army, and perhaps most notoriously, [[Jim Jones]] and the People's Temple.)

During the 1970s San Francisco became a haven for the [[gay]] [[rights]] movement, centering around the Castro district &mdash; still one of the USA's major gay neighborhoods. In 1977 Harvey Milk was elected as a city supervisor, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA. In 1978 he was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by Dan White, another supervisor, after Moscone refused to reappoint White. White's defense lawyers claimed that he was in a [[Insanity#Legal and medical insanity|state of diminished responsibility]] due to mental illness, as demonstrated by (among other things) the former health-food aficionado having begun eating sugary junk food. (Mistaken news reports claimed that the defense had actually blamed the junk food for White's mental illness and thus for the murders; this purported legal theory became known as the {{wpl|Twinkie defense|"Twinkie defense".}}) White was given a [[Kangaroo court|lenient sentence]], which provoked rioting among the gay community.

Today, of course San Francisco remains very [[liberal]] and progressive in some ways. In 2007, it became the first US city to ban plastic shopping bags from supermarkets. On the other hand, as the home of [[Silicon Valley]] and the West Coast capital of the electronic tech industry, it has undergone extreme [[gentrification]] and become the costliest<ref>[https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing-statistics/county-median-home-prices-and-monthly-mortgage-payment The top 4 counties in the US with the most expensive average home place are part of the San Francisco region]</ref> place to live in the United States.

==San Francisco values==
"'''San Francisco values'''" is a phrase apparently coined by [[Bill O'Reilly]],<ref>Conservapedia: [[CP:San Francisco #Bill O'Reilly and San Francisco Values|San Francisco]].</ref> but still claimed as a [[Conservapedia]] term. The phrase itself was also allegedly used by a speechwriter for [[George H. W. Bush]] during the 1992 election. Like most of the other CP terms, it is a catch-all phrase which conveniently [[Jonanism|lumps together]] a set of opinions and activities which [[wingnut]]s just don't like.

According to Conservapedia's "Foxtrot," who wrote the article on San Francisco values, it refers to the "general moral degradation" of the city, which includes "legalization of [[marijuana]], [[gay rights]], pro-[[abortion]], [[gun control]], [[environmentalism]], anti-[[MIC|military]], New Age [[spirituality]], [[Political correctness|politically correctness]], pro-[[illegal immigrant]]s, and heavy government regulation of [[business]]." Naturally, allowing businesses to harm the public without regulation isn't morally degenerate (as seen by Foxtrot), nor the fact that 9/10 of those attributes are common features of the [[Western world]].<ref>Conservapedia: [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=San_Francisco_values&oldid=490306 San Francisco values]</ref> What follows is a miscellaneous collection of distorted [[Lying by omission|half-truths]] regarding [[gay]] adoption, marijuana use, and some mayoral election figures.

While this characterisation is extremely vaguely pointing toward the real direction, in [[real life]], however, things are not quite that ''complex.'' If there are such things as "San Francisco values," they are usually summed up as "[[MythBusters|Jamie Wants Big Boom]]."

==Home of==
A bunch of nerds and weirdos who are cooler than you'll ever be:
*{{wpl|Emperor Norton|Emperor Norton I,}} "Emperor of these United States and Protector of [[Mexico]]"
*{{wpl|Billboard Liberation Front|The Billboard Liberation Front}}<ref>[http://www.billboardliberation.com/ The Billboard Liberation Front]</ref>
*{{wpl|Burning Man}}
*{{wpl|Cacophony Society}}<ref>[http://www.cacophony.org/ The Cacophony Society]</ref>
*{{wpl|Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence}}
*{{wpl|St. Stupid's Day Parade}}<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190921084608/https://www.saintstupid.com/menu.html First Church of the Last Laugh] (archived from September 21, 2019).</ref>
*{{wpl|Survival Research Labs}}
*{{wpl|Suicide Club (secret society)|The Suicide Club}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Cities]]
[[Category:California]]
[[Category:United States]]

Categories: Cities, California, United States