Cities always go through changes. These changes are viewed in broad strokes like the tide. It rolls in and out and somehow all the details are lost in the generalities. Here are some of the details with the tech invasion of 2015 in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, one thing is for certain. In 2015, it is very expensive to find a place to live. Busloads of young tech workers have moved to San Francisco and everyday they ride the large, usually plain white, employer-provided buses back and forth to Silicon Valley. Their generally high wages have pushed rents up in San Francisco to insane levels. The local folks have been hanging on for dear life but many have been pushed out to Oakland and beyond. Rent increases. Shady landlords. Better housing opportunities inland. If you are an artist or musician scraping by a living, it is really tough.
These “Google Buses” have many consequences. Besides the increase in cost of living they have the effect of turning places like Valencia Street into something like Walnut Creek. Bedroom communities where people do not actually live in the neighborhood but basically just sleep there, come home exhausted to their modern million dollar 600 square foot condo, then occasionally go out to eat at one of the fancy new restaurants with white table cloths that have sprung up. Maybe hit a SOMA bar.
From a telephone pole in Potrero Hill in San Francisco
It is indeed a strange irony that the tech workers actually have little understanding of the actual history of cultural dynamics of the neighborhoods they have invaded. I know this from simply going to Carnival in the Mission and seeing very few of them. Or witnessing “The Box” try to schedule out the local kids out of their pick up soccer games at the Mission Playground. The tech workers have yet to bring anything culturally to the equation. But with all the building, if you are in the trades, you are doing well.
Not a Tech Worker in Sight Here at Carnival 2015
What I also find very interesting about these new tech workers and these buses is just how vanilla every thing is. The commuters stand in line waiting for their bus, staring morosely at their iPhones, rarely interacting with one another. They then get in their massive buses, like the tour bus B.B. King would ride, but it is all white and definitely does not say B.B King on the sides. The fact that these buses do not have any marketing on the sides is indeed strange. Companies like Google have made their billions by marketing and advertising. You would think a bus going down the roads and highways of one the most expensive places in the world would garner some advertising revenue. But in the end Google and LinkedIn probably decided to that being incognito with the buses was more important. Keep peace with the natives. But there is no hiding. When you ride your bike down Valencia during commute hours, these Google Buses travel in herds.
Furthermore, I do not find anyone of these commuters documenting this commute. Do a Google search. Nothing. No one is blogging about this who actually does the commute. With all the publishing tools at their disposal, what a bunch of bores.
A few months ago a friend asked me what I would recommend to some newly arrived tourist who were interested in touring Silicon Valley. You see, for outsiders there is this sense that Silicon Valley and billionaires being made in this very dynamic environment. I told him it probably is not that exciting. It is usually a lot of people not interacting with each other, simply staring into computers in a nondescript office building. Perhaps in meetings trying to figure out how to position a product that does very little as something you absolutely have to have. I suggested to my friend that their visitors should simply try to sneak on to a Google Bus and get an inside view. Anyone done that one yet just for kicks?
San Francisco Carnival 2015 and some folk who have been holding down the neighborhood for decades.
