tech boom
Leave The Mission District Alone
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
Why Downtown SF’s Decline Feels Like Karma
It’s not a secret that San Francisco sacrificed nearly everything for tech. There were tax breaks for companies like Twitter in an attempt to “revitalize” the Tenderloin/Mid-Market area, but there was little local intervention when landlords increased rent prices to levels even six figure earners couldn’t afford in historically low
This New Literary Magazine is a Gift to the People of San Francisco
I’ve got some awesome news! We received a grant from the Civic Joy Fund to put out a literary magazine celebrating SF and acting to counter the stupid “Doom Loop” narrative. It’s a gift to the people of San Francisco. And after months of working on this project it’s now available
The Second Dot-com Bubble Is Bursting
“Irrational exuberance” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan first uttered the phrase in 1996, describing what he considered an alarming economic trend. The rise of home internet usage was spurring several investors to stake digital claims like an online Oklahoma land run. Tech companies sprang up overnight, each hoping to
What San Francisco Felt Like at the Start of the Tech Boom
I moved to San Francisco in 2002, a time I like to call “between gold rushes.” The fervor and swagger of the first dot com boom had not so much burst as it had flown around the city like a balloon with the air let out, taking down everything it crashed into. San Francisco had ridden the dot com monster into the 21st century on a wave of optimism and massive change, and not unlike the original gold rush that created this place, more than just a handful of people ended up with obscene wealth. And then like anything too good to be true, it ended with a whimper, causing those who hadn’t managed to strike a vein of digital ore, left to pick up the pieces and create something of their own.
San Francisco: Before the Tech Boom, and Now
Look at these side-by-side pictures of what San Francisco looked like just ten years ago compared to now. Google Maps provides Street View images dating back to the 2007-08 Great Recession and financial crisis, so we we dug up some not-even-that-old photos to compare how San Francisco looked in the
Growing Up, & Out of San Francisco
To look back at San Francisco is to see my father and a long history. I never knew the Dot-com Boom,
but in understanding its progeny I can see the traits, genetics, and make a mold of its
predecessor.
The Secret, Longhair, Radical Activist History of Mayor Ed Lee
Get this — SF Mayor Ed Lee was once a radical tenants’ rights activist back in the 1970s. Yes, I said tenants’ rights activist. The same Ed Lee who currently presides over a stratospheric real estate boom that’s evicting unprecedented numbers of ethnic working class families and elderly people once dedicated his life