Doctors and lawyers ride the bus in SF. You get a guy making $300k/year on one side and a bum pissing down his leg on the other. It's one of the things that makes the city pretty cool.

Hippie

Having the cost of living being driven sky high is probably a factor too, though.

Someone should just build an app to solve the problem. Call it the Uber of Buses, have it track where the bus is and it can drive along slowly and people just hop on without it stopping. Its a billion dollar idea waiting to be made - by which I mean if you are a white man you can easily raise a couple million in a funding round and live the good life for a year or two.

By those conditions San Francisco is a non-entity as a city on the world stage of human history. Given that criteria, San Francisco is a poseur wanna-be and would be hard pressed to make a top 25 of current cities in the world (maybe even outside top 50).

He is right. Some people are saying "my kind of weird is good anything else is bad." Which is nonsense.

Ironically the most significant and lasting cultural development in that region is Silicon Valley and people want to disown that.

Silicon Valley has caused significant and lasting cultural changes world wide. Hippy dippy artists from San Francisco have had literally no impact. Turn of the 21st century San Francisco will be remembered as "That city by Silicon Valley".

You are misapplying the word culture. It doesn't have to be something weird or quirky to be culturally relevant. Just because a person does not like something does not make it culturally relevant. Cultural relevance extends way beyond architecture.

I lived in SF during the first dotcom boom. For some reason this whole thing has struck a chord with me - even though I don't really want to move back to SF any time soon. I think it's something like "I can trash my city, but **** any outsiders who trash my city." I don't feel like anyone who would write that blog post (and lets not kid ourselves that's going to be a lot more than one random yahoo) can call themselves San Franciscans.

I feel like a big chunk of SF is and has always been a transient city of people who come to find themselves. People who want to make it big go to NY or LA. Places like SF, Austin and Seattle attract people with no huge ambition who know they at least want to get out of wherever they happened to be born. Those people settle down and become the artists/service workers/techies/dreamers/whatever that make up a vibrant neighborhood. Anyone who would write that blog post is just going to take and never give anything back, or worse - try to remake SF in the image of Sili Valley. If those people are priced out forever you wind up with a boring bedroom community.

I've spent time in Sili Valley. The obsession with money, while understandable, and bland sameness makes my skin crawl. It would break my heart if SF succumbed to that.

Your spiritual home is silicon valley.

yeah when I ponder "what would make my current situation even cooler?" the answer is, invariably, no matter what situation I am currently in, "a bum pissing down his leg sitting next to me"

Sili Valley produces things that are culturally relevant. But the place itself is a cultural wasteland. I don't think you understand what culture means if you argue against that. Do you think a non-descript suburb of Cincinnati is culturally relevant? Because subtract the money and weather and that's what Sili Valley is.

Yeah - anyone who willingly choses to settle in Alabama would never ever see my point. Which is fine for you. But SFers have a right to fight to keep their city vibrant. Just like "Keep Austin weird".

Maybe it would help if I put this in terms you can understand: think of the Google buses as Greyhouds packed with Yankee Freedom Riders. Now does localism make a little more sense?

"I don't know how you crazy Cal-i-fornia types do it but here in East Bum**** when we see a bus, we just use one of the other lanes!"

Yeah, this.

SF ranks quite respectably in comparison to other global cities, especially for its size.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

You also seem to be confusing "culture" for economy, or market share, or whatever. Nobody is going to give a **** how the Bay Area acquired its wealth 100 years from now, but they will know of SF culture.

Before you contest that, tell me what Paris' leading industries were during its Belle Époque around the turn of the century. Tell me how Medici-era Florence paid the bills. What did St. Petersburg manufacture under Catherine?

hmmm. Maybe if the google buses added some piss-soaked bums for ambiance...

Seattle gave us grunge and changed the way the whole country drinks coffee. What has San Fran given us since the Haight-Ashbury days of the 60s? Besides rice-a-roni.

During my only trip to SF a tranny grabbed my dick, his buddy tried to do the same, but I'm athletic. I think one of the things I did ponder was how I'd rather have a bum next to me pissing himself.

That's a really weird thing to choose to support your contention that your city is cool.

Ikes will stick to "cities" like Kenosha and Novi, thank you very much. Places where you can park an RV in a bus stop overnight and no one will get bent out of shape.

I guess that's part of living in SF cause I read suzzer's post and was like "right on".

lol I lived in Chicago the 5 years before I moved to New Orleans, and didn't live in a suburb. Tell me all about what big cultural center you live in.

Oh that's bull****. Guy peeing down his leg next to you on the bus would piss you off and for good reason. Someone like that on a bus would lead to everyone getting as far away as possible from that guy... and I've been in that exact same situation. No one thinks, wow, it's really cool us young professionals sit near a guy who has clearly pissed himself.

That's just bull**** liberal yuppies say to one another.

Third-Eye Blind?

You started humming Semi-Charmed Life didn't you? SF says you're welcome.

Third Eye Blind was pretty legit.

Keep in mind, earlier in the thread ikes said he wanted to make New Orleans look like Grosse Pointe.

Entertaining story on what a douche the lead singer of 3EB apparently is. http://www.avclub.com/article/singer...very-per-99379