The New York Times has an interesting story on how social media companies are ruining San Francisco today. And one of the photos demonstrating how the city is being given over to private interests was taken on my old corner! Like, that might be my mom’s Prius. I guess, more accurately, it would be my parents’ corner. So proud!
When I was last in San Francisco, Facebook’s IPO was about to happen, and the buzz around town was exactly this: what are these paper millionaires going to do to the city? My twin brother, Max, complained that you can’t throw a rock in the city without hitting someone making some idiotic mobile or social app. The topic of Bar None, some shitty bar in the Marina, came up when we were making fun of our older brother for going to shitty bars in the Marina, and Max mentioned that Bar None now has a camera in it, with facial recognition technology, thanks to an idiot with a social media app. It’s called SceneTap, and it allows for people to check in on “the ratio” before they actually go out to a bar — god forbid you stumble into a sausage fest, broh! (Bar None actually backed out of the deal with SceneTap after a customer backlash.)
Later, we went to catch the 24 Divisadero from our corner, and thought we saw a bus, but it was the very one pictured above, shuttling Our Brogrammer Saviors back to Noe Valley and the Mission from Milpitas or Campbell or wherever the fuck. The 24 came soon after, but that still really rubbed me the wrong way.
I’ve been screaming at fools about how nerds are ruining this town. Bunch of fucking dorks trying to ball out like Chad from sales. People are lining up for shitty apartments, landlords are taking bids on rent for studios in the mission, ping pong on everything, and holy shit has the dancing at clubs got worse. It’s heehaws everywhere. Polk street is all barcrawls. Kimo’s is now a douchebar that plays asshouse. Valencia is all vomit. People stand in line for 2 hours to have brunch in a spot that has FOUR 2 person tables just cause a nerd yelped about dolls on walls. Black people are like ufos, people claim to have seen them but no one really believes they have. 3rd street now looks like San Jose, beige as far as the cubicle can see. People read pieces on how to date fucking techies?!
I don’t expect SF to just go back to whatever bullshit dream people have of it but goddamn there needs to be some balance this shit is gonna spiral out of control or shit on some greedy dreams hard. The move to the east bay looks more tempting everyday, it’s that or I’m leaving for Texas.