Leave The Mission District Alone
Photo Courtesy of Author.
In a perfect world, everyone can coexist peacefully. I would love to live in a place where the presence of one group doesn’t threaten the presence of another, but we don’t live in a perfect world. And in the Mission District, one of San Francisco’s few (kind of) working class neighborhoods, big money is a big problem, and it appears the neighborhood is poised to go through another round of hyper-gentrification at the hands of the A.I. boom presently occurring in the neighborhood.
The history of tech and the Mission District goes back further than you think. The Mission District’s first wave of tech-imposed displacement actually goes back to the late ‘90s during what is now known as the “the Dot-com boom.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the Dot-com boom, let me provide a bit of a summary: You know all those websites and shit that are big now like Google and Amazon? Well, those behemoths emerged in the early 2000s primarily in and around San Francisco. Which isn’t news, but back in the day, the workers of those companies and many other companies that failed, decided the tacos are good and they wanted to live near where the good tacos were made. Do you know where good tacos are made in San Francisco? Oakland. Just kidding. Well, not really. Oakland has better food than San Francisco. But, in San Francisco, the good tacos are made in the Mission. So they came to the Mission, and they talked about how cool the murals were, and how the neighborhood was “gritty” and “hip.”
But these workers led to skyrocketing costs in the neighborhood and a lot of people were evicted.
Here’s a video summarizing what people in 1999 were dealing with in the Mission:
A ton of people protested, politicians said things, rich people pretended to care and then suddenly the bubble burst, the dot-commers went back to wherever they were from and prices were down a bit, but not as low as they were before the boom.
You would think this would be a learning experience for San Francisco, but then around 2010, tech started creeping in from Silicon Valley and by 2012 the Mission District was ravaged by a new wave of taco-loving tech nerds. This lasted a decade, and then the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the tech party in San Francisco. Some companies got big, a bunch failed. Basically the same shit happened.
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And now, with the A.I. boom underway in the city, the Mission District is suddenly home to several A.I. startups, including OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT. And considering San Francisco is incapable of building homes, it is likely that the Mission District will experience another round of displacement.
So, with that being said, I’m asking anyone of means, who wants to move to Mission or any other low-income part of the Bay Area, don’t. I’m not saying that in a rude way, but San Francisco is pretty much entirely for rich people. Move to the Marina or Hayes Valley, those neighborhoods are full of rich transplants. No one will be mad at you there. Go do yoga in the open air gym on Fell Street or complain about homeless people despite there being none on Chestnut. You have options. The world is yours. Maybe come across the Golden Gate and live in Marin so you can say things like “the City isn’t what it used to be, I like my own space” even though you’ve only been here three months.
You can even come across the Bay Bridge into Oakland, and when SF people complain about crime, you can scoff at them and say “you think you have it bad, I live in Oakland!” You don’t have to tell them you live in Rockridge. SF people never cross the bridge. They don’t know anything about the Bay beyond San Francisco city limits. You can literally tell them 2Pac is your neighbor and they might believe you.
But whatever you do, don’t go to the Mission District. Leave it alone. Because you have a choice. Most of the people there don’t. And when the A.I. boom ends, and you fuck off back to Arkansas or New Mexico or Delaware or whatever place you thought you were too interesting for, the people you displaced are likely gone for good.
Just something to think about. Even though I know you’re not going to listen.
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Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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