Thanks to commentor PirateDan for the rousing music.
.
Alison Arieff, “editor and content strategist for the urban planning and policy think tank SPUR”, complains in the NYTimes that “Tech Hasn’t Learned From Urban Planning”:
…Tech companies are scrambling to move into cities — there are rumors that Google is going to move here, to San Francisco, from Mountain View. VISA and Akamai have ditched the suburbs to come here. Tech tenants now fill 22 percent of all occupied office space in San Francisco — and represented a whopping 61 percent of all office leasing in the city last year. But they might as well have stayed in their suburban corporate settings for all the interacting they do with the outside world. The oft-referred-to “serendipitous encounters” that supposedly drive the engine of innovation tend to happen only with others who work for the same company. Which is weird.
There’s been no shortage of published laments on the changing nature of San Francisco over the past several weeks, so I’m loath to add another complaint to the list. And yet … I keep coming across instances where the tech sector flocks to the city and talks of community yet isolates itself from the urban experience it presumably couldn’t wait to be a part of. The other week, for example, I had an appointment at Hills Plaza, a waterfront complex that quietly houses an ever expanding Google outpost. A year or so ago there was a Starbucks at street level, and while that in itself is of course not unusual, there weren’t any other cafes in the neighborhood, so I’d often walk the two blocks from my office to get coffee there. It was a nice excuse to take a walk and interact with the world outside my work space.
Today, that Starbucks is gone. So is the popular brewery that was next door to it. The sandwich shop across the plaza is closed, as is the salad bar. It’s not that any of these businesses were particularly distinctive or delicious, but they provided a valuable service — lunch — and also some social connection among the building’s tenants and people in the immediate neighborhood…
Ms. Arieff seems to have missed the latest Tech Bubble Inhabitant Outrage, as explained by Will Oremus at Slate:
… Greg Gopman, founder of an outfit called AngelHack that claims to run “the world’s largest hackathon competition” in cities around the world… apparently returned to San Francisco after some globe-trotting and hackathon-ing and decided to weigh in via Facebook on his disappointment with his city of residence. He’s since taken the post down, but Valleywag has reprinted it in full. Here are some choice excerpts (emphasis mine):
Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue.
…
The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.
…
You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different …… Gopman… apologized [Wednesday] on Twitter and Facebook.
But wait—Gopman’s friends aren’t having it! Below his Facebook apology post are a series of comments from fellow techies defending Gopman’s original homeless-phobic rant…
Y’know, I get the suspicion that Greg Gopman and his fellow Makers(tm) aren’t really interested in “serendipitous encounters” with people who are not exactly like Greg Gopman — or at worst humble serfs who “sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way”… but maybe I’m just a cynic. Who remembers reading remarkably similar plaints written during the last Gilded Age — or, rather, the progressive rejoinders to such plaints.
***********
Apart from noting, bitterly, that some people will never change, what’s on the agenda for the day?
NotMax
Gopman?
G-o-p-man?
C’mon. Pull the other one.
Tim in SF
I worked at GoGrid in Hills Plaza from 2003 to 2008. I loved that Starbucks. My work-wife and I would go down there every night at 4:30 with a cup-and-a-half of Bailys and a half a cup of Jamesons and the manager would steam it into a couple of boozy-lattes for us. Sometimes, she’d join us. Ah, good times.
It was sad when that Starbucks closed in 2006, but it had nothing to do with Google, which moved into the space across the way six months afterwards.
Yes, Burr-Eat-Os closed. Good fucking riddance. That place sucked. We always walked up the street a couple of blocks for lunch anyways.
Ditto Gordon Bierch. Ugh. We went there maybe three times the whole time we were in that building. Pedestrian food at its blandest. There’s better eats at Hooters.
The Googlers would come down to Palominos downstairs every night and drink. We’d drink with them. Some of them were standoffish with non-Googlers. The ones that were not were ever-so-slightly snobby, but we figured that had more to do with age (we had at least a decade on most of them). Palominos is still going strong but then again, Palominos is awesome: the food is top notch and they have Guiness on tap. And it’s gorgeous: They have Chihuly lamp glass hanging down from the ceiling everywhere.
San Francisco has always been changing. Other than the influx of hipster beards, I don’t see much of a downside.
Trivia: there’s a scene in Sneakers (1992) that was filmed in the courtyard of Hills Plaza.
wasabi gasp
The cold and the snow.
Alela Diane – White as Diamonds (Live)
mainmata
Stuck in Amman, Jordan for the moment where two heavy snowstorms have deposited about 4 inches of snow. So, the objective today is to get home. Period.
As for Gopman, seems as if he lives in a real bubble world. People selling trinkets are not degenerates; they’re just trying to get by even if as micro-entrepreneurs. If Gopman were more empathetic, he would try to imagine how he and his fellow well-off techies could create opportunities for these people. For most of them, all they want is a chance.
raven
Nostalgia for a fucking Starbucks, wow. Wonder what the fellas in La Mission think?
Amir Khalid
So this kid tech-CEO Greg Gopman is a snooty elitist. Big surprise. Now, saying it in public — that was stupid. Flaunting your contempt for the Untermenschen justt pisses them off.
Keith G
The recent (and now disappearing) socio-economic geography of many important American cities was not perfect but it had important utility.
The CBD was often ringed by housing stock that very affordable to the both the working poor ($18,000 and $23,050 per year) and the lower middle class ($23,050 to $32,500). And spread throughout that ring were those chronically living in deep poverty.
Besides affordable housing, these mixed residential districts had advantages for their inhabitants such as being adjacent to numerous service jobs in the CBD, nearby transit hubs, and proximity to centralized social services.
In cities like Houston, that ring of affordable (a ambiguous term, I know) housing is being upgraded as entire blocks of low density housing is being replaced by mid-rise mixed use residential behemoths. Quad and duplexes and small apartment complexes renting for $450-$700 are being replaced by units with rents starting at $1500
I know Gopman’s San Francisco went through this process much earlier than other cities, but the story remains the same: Finding ways to manage growth and change without casting out those citizens of lower economic status and making their lives even more difficult.
Oh, and Fuck Gopman and his apologists.
OzarkHillbilly
Why do I suddenly have the urge to lay my rattiest clothes out in the mud and snow, spend the next 2 days using them for my personal urinal, the donning them on Monday morning, buying a couple boxes of pencils to put in an old cigar box, then heading for downtown St Louis, or better yet, downtown Clayton?
It is almost irresistible.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I remember going to a Cardinal game in the 70’s, only place besides DC I ever saw the liquor stores where the dude put the booze in a sliding drawer after you put the dough in the same. Rough place in those days.
OzarkHillbilly
An apt read for this thread.
But the man who is best known as Pepe says those who consider him poor fail to understand the meaning of wealth. “I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live,” he said. “My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I’m the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress.”
Matt
My office is across the street from Twitter.
There are a ridiculous number of excellent cafés and restaurants if you just walk a couple blocks. One of the best coffee shops/wine/beer bars in SF is half a block away. Amazing pastries and Japanese food are three blocks away. These are not hard to find and they sit amongst many other good bars, restaurants and cafés. (I’m very food oriented. )
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: In some neighborhoods, they still do that. I have to say tho that St Louis is a far different place than back then. A better place. I grew up in Kirkwood but had friends in the city. Moved there in the late 70’s and there I stayed until the early aughts when my ex finally went totally whacko.
Back then there was an edge of violence that under ran everything, almost everywhere. Vigilance was the price of life. Lost a # of friends the hard way. I watched it change while I was living there, but I never could lose that edge, that uncomfortable wariness. Nowadays, on the occasions when I do head up to St Louis? The atmosphere is…. Relaxed. Comfortable even.
Some of that change is me, but St Louis has changed too. A lot. At times, I am even a little envious of my friends who live there.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: and then there is East St Louie
Raven
The author also noted:
Aimai
@OzarkHillbilly: i read thst as “i would have been happy just to have a mistress.”
chrome agnomen
@raven:
hell, that’s de rigueur in the bronx where i hang out. guys stand behind thick plexiglass, you point at what you want, they put it in the drawer, or on a carousel….after you pay, of course.
Botsplainer
Want to know how to successfully rebirth urban spaces? Shoot any politician or developer who even hints at doing anything designed to make the area “competitive” in order to lure in chain retail, chain restaurants or existing businesses from other cities. Focus on local economy, quit giving away tax base, and discourage long distance landlording, as those distant landlords have zero interest in anything other than maximizing rent.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: For what it’s worth, the East St Louis rap is far worse than the reality. Yes, people there tend to be poor, some of them desperately poor, but as is so often the case, 95-99% of them are just trying to get by. I worked there off and on for years (commercial work) and never once had any kind of incident.
East St Louis got hit by white flight worse than just about any place else and it left them with a collapsing tax base. Hard to enforce laws when you can’t put gas in the cruisers tank. (an exaggeration but not by much)
danielx
Cold. And snow. Although it does give me an excuse to drive the spousal unit’s Outback, always a pleasure in weather like this. Any excuse will do, since that goddamned car has cost us approximately 3500 in the past six months. Granted that 2700 of that was replacement of head gaskets, water pump, etc…I’d like to go through like 90 days without having something else go wrong, like the power steering pump we had to get replaced this past week. Another 300, but who’s counting?
Ash Can
What the elitist assholes (of whom Gopman is only one) really hate to be reminded of — and refuse to believe — is that if they want their worlds to be free of such riff-raff, they have to pay for it: welfare that pays people enough that they don’t feel they have to resort to desperate measures to provide for themselves and their dependants, funds for government jobs that can fill in for what the private sector can’t provide. Unless and until our society grows the hell up and gets it through its collective head that if you want something you have to pay for it, all the Gopmans out there can STFD and STFU.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aimai: Maybe you’ve seen his wife?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I work right next to Google in Mountain View. What a weird place, even by Valley standards. It seems most of their employees are desperately clinging to the collage experience and spend most of the day walking back and forth between the buildings with backpacks on. (Honestly, how much movement does one make on a typical work day during one’s duties and why would it require a back pack?)
Anyway, Google isn’t relocating to San Fransisco – Google has eaten all of Mountain View it can so it’s looking for fresh places to expand in (they are going to buy the building work is in, so work will, saddly, have to move close to were I live)
Betty Cracker
I’ve got a full day planned that should be fun for the most part. First, I’m taking a couple of teenage girls to breakfast, then to see the “Desolation of Smaug.” After that, we’re going to a baking / cooking specialty shop to get some new cookie cutters and other ingredients you can’t find at a grocery store. Then we’re going to a grocery store for loads of flour, sugar, butter, etc. Then we’re off to my sister and SIL’s house to bake cookies for about 15 hours straight.
We do this every year, always at my sister’s because she has the most counter space. When it gets late and the kids nod off, my sister and I bust out the martinis and package up the cookies. She is in charge of getting fancy boxes and tins to package the cookies as well as martini makings, wine, etc. It seems like every year we have to start earlier and stay up later to make more cookies due to rising demand.
Schlemizel
http://www.gocomics.com/theflyingmccoys/2013/12/14#.Uqxa7lWzKpg
merry xmas
Botsplainer
Here’s how it looks in one locally focused Louisville neighborhood, from this month’s Conde Nast Traveler.
http://nulueastmarket.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/conde-nast-traveler.jpg
We may move back in to the city. I could walk to work, and we could pare down to one car. Several things have to happen, but it is feasible.
satby
I think there are city people and there are… people who aren’t. When I moved to rural Michigan from Chicago I knew I was leaving convenience and hustle behind, but I didn’t really realize how different (and closed) the mindset seems to be in the sticks (and yes, I know that’s a generalization). People in the city generally take other, different kinds of people in stride, country folks find “different” strange or frightening or both. I moved here because I had accumulated too many unadoptable rescue animals; when the herd thins I’m heading back to the city ASAP. Yeah, I have friends and a social life here of sorts, but even the concept of just an impromptu gathering in the evening for drinks and conversation was met with puzzlement by my neighbors. Because they each have their own circles, and see no real need to wander outside them. And I find that bizzare, but I’m the outlier. They’re not unfriendly, just inert.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: This. One of the most… vibrant (I hate that word but everyone will know what I mean) areas of STL is the South Grand neighborhood. While always attractive because of Tower Grove Park** (my favorite park in the city), it has had it’s ups and downs over the years. But now it is “International Food Row”. Everything from Nicaraguan to Nigerian to Thai to Lebanese to etc etc with an eclectic mix of specialty stores and not a chain to be found from Arsenal to Gravois. There are a lot of such neighborhoods scattered throughout STL and spending a Saturday in one of them is never a waste.
** Little known “fact”: I was always told that when Henry Shaw bequeathed the land that became TG Park to the city of STL it was with the proviso that blacks would never be allowed to enter it. I don’t know that this is true, but considering the times he lived in, it would not surprise me.
Botsplainer
Sorry Megyn, but that shit don’t play anymore. Ann Coulter may have been able to lob a verbal turd while sneering “it’s just a joke” in 2003, but people are on to that act to a greater extent nowadays.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/megyn-kelly-white-santa-claus-apology
big ole hound
@satby: Absolutely right. I did it the other way by trying the city life and hated it mostly because everyone is in a hurry with no time enjoy life. We narrow minded country folk have time to raise our families, take care of our animals and be polite. The country smells of life not fumes from the masses. Lots of lefties out here too.
srv
The local blogs are quite amusing to troll. Hipster googlers and all describe their encounters with the homeless as ‘being accosted’, ‘harrassed’, ‘threatening’, and having to deal with this ‘every time’ they go out doors. Not to mention the pooping on the sidewalks, which they point to being the homeless (generally, it’s not).
Now we have some pretty non-crazy rough folks out there who can mess you up, but in 8 years I would never consider myself having been harrassed or threatened. Some encounters would be differenent for the female gender, but the techies I meet are pretty universally male. This is a city where thousands of lone women walk the streets after dark (not in a demeaning way)
And oh, the butthurt over their rent-prices because of the holocaust of rent-control. And if the city would just build eleventy-billion new homes the problem would be solved. Except for the little detail they all want to live in a couple of square miles around Mission (Googleville).
I doubt Larry or Sergei will allow a move to SF. The SF office expansion has been very controversial within Google, everyone wants in, which is what the Mountainview folks were afraid would happen and mess up the valley mentality.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
There are a several important factors that are in that statement.
1. These are people who are making a living doing something they like, within their skill set, thus there is significant satisfaction arising from it.
2. They’re not in competition with each other, per se. More complimentary than anything else. I’ve been to places when chefs from other good eateries come in, always a good sign. Most recently, I was eating late at one local place when Edward Lee came in and sat at the next table (Lee has a top notch local restaurant, was a Top Chef contestant and was on Iron Chef). That’s a positive sign about the experience.
3. Wall Street is locked out on those. If Wall Street was involved, there would be three hostile restaurants in a block striving for the same bland menu and maximized efficiency, proportions, purchasing and methods for a profit line that would drive all competitors out. Then, they’d start Borg-ifying other chain product lines into their menus in order to compete, until the whole thing fell apart due to customer abandonment and the inevitable Chapter 11.
4. People like quirky and local.
satby
@big ole hound: I said I realized I was generalizing. But I had plenty of time to raise my family and enjoy life in the city. I think the point I was trying to make (and probably badly) was that if you aren’t raised in a country setting you have a hard time fitting in unless you marry into a local family or join a church, at least around here. You were raised in the country, so it seems like “home” to you; I was raised in the city, so that’s “home” to me. I think you learn how to interact with a wider set of people when you are exposed to a wider set of people. My neighbor accross the street just asked me the other day exactly where a mutual neighbor lived. 4 houses away, and they’ve lived that distance for over 20 years. They say hi to each other all the time at the store, but unttil we had a power outage and I brought the one to the other’s house as we made a water run, they had never been up each respective driveway. That’s just fucking weird to this city girl, and it happens all the time here. I know more of my neighbors than many of them do, because I talk to all of them.
I never called anyone narrow minded either.
Amir Khalid
@Botsplainer:
Many of us saw the video. If it was indeed a joke, I saw no attempt to make that plain. And anyway humour on any sensitive topic is best left to experienced professionals working in a forum where the audience knows it’s comedy, which isn’t where she said it.
Keith G
@Botsplainer: The magazine article that you link to shows what are in some cities the beginning of the end of economically mixed neighborhoods and affordable housing.
As neighborhoods transcend from tattered to tattered bohemian, to boutique bohemian, to upscale you see once affordable dwellings replaced with clusters of multi-storey town homes and those will be replaced with block sized multi use mid rise developments.
The working poor get dispersed to rundown older suburbs – places ill-suited to meet their many needs.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: @big ole hound:
There is truth in both these statements. I lived in the city for better than 20 years (mostly because of work, I didn’t want the commute) and now that I don’t, I miss the hell out of the variety and the convenience. But now I live way out in the boony woods and wouldn’t have it any other way. Starting with the night time serenades to the air redolent with the scent of living things. I can not imagine going back to the city for anything more than a day. Just the thought of driving in that traffic sets me to grinding my teeth.
JoyfulA
@satby: i grew up in a small town (which the Saturday Evening Post once zeroed in on as “small town USA”), and then my parents moved to a suburb (really an exurb then). I am much more at home in a city than elsewhere. I think it’s the people walking around on the sidewalks, just mingling.
Botsplainer
@Keith G:
Change does happen; society isn’t static. Urban land use policy has never been about locking in function.
For example, go to a place like Cincinnati. Outside of the immediate downtown area, the place is crumbling with a high vacancy rate and visuals in some areas that remind me of Detroit just ahead of its latest series of tumbles. There are useful, restorable spaces that could be repurposed to something neat, revitalizing neighborhoods and providing an incubator for local artisans and innovators. Do you seriously believe that the deterioration should be allowed so that Fred the Alcoholic Bum can have a place to subsist in squalor, or that Earl the Paranoid can continue to operate his flea market (that he pays no taxes on) in ugly shop space?
Sprawl has been killing us as a society. The only way to combat sprawl is to draw back in to urban spaces and restore the collar agriculture that used to be – local dairies, truck farms, local poultry and eggs, even local meat production. This would enhance the economy in the middle and expand opportunity. There will always be Freds and Earls from my example – they can put down roots anywhere. Thing is, they don’t drive the economy, and don’t make life better for anybody. You’d defer a truly positive development to their weird whims.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you! I think you get what I was trying to say. I like a great deal about my life in the sticks, especially the stars at night, which I couldn’t see as well in the light pollution of the city. The deer in my backyard (when they aren’t in the garden). Even an early morning cyote sighting.
There are many nice things about country life, nothing is a zero-sum game. It’s about the choices in how we want to live. I was just talking about how people interact, in line with that Google goof’s distain of the lesser mortals that cross his path. As a city kid, all kinds of other people are part of the landscape, and when you sit and talk to a homelss person, a chance for an education on life sometimes. It’s something that you get comfortable with seeing (as much as you may despise the injustice of it).
satby
@Botsplainer: Nobody suggests that things should be allowed to deteriorate just to provide squats for the homeless. Again, life isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s perfectly possible to revitalize an area without completely throwing away the humans who currently are occupants, but not as long as that revitalization is driven solely by profit. We all benefit when there’s a mix of people around us, not just clones of our own socio-economic caste.
Botsplainer
As to the homeless, I don’t romanticize them, because I know what they are from my public defender days.
Nowadays, I regularly encounter about a half dozen to a dozen a week. A few are regulars who I occasionally flip a buck to because they aren’t pushy – they know me by sight, and I’ve never seen them rush up on a woman, families or tourists. Others, I’d sooner wish they’d be gone; I’ve run those off from time to time when I’ve seen them hit up secretaries.
Elizabelle
@satby:
Interesting comment.
Anoniminous
In the high-techy-tech business world “serendipitous encounter” means two techy-types meet in a bar, strike up a conversation, and – ta-dah! – the next Google is founded. “Serendipitous encounter” means going to a TED talk. “Serendipitous encounters” means never having to learn anything about anything outside the things already known and never, ever, experiencing life or learning something outside of the narrow techy-tech cocoon.
Ruckus
@satby:
Sounds like my experience of moving to relatively small town midwest from so cal. Was nice and quite at first then…
cyntax
One thing worth noting: Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires are one of the least philanthropic groups going.
Tim in SF
I’ve SEEN guys crap on the side walk within one block of my house. Who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes?
cyntax
@Tim in SF:
Yeah, I’ve only ever seen homeless people taking craps on the sidewalk here. I’m sure some uber-drunk hipsters do this too at 3AM but come on…
Big R
@Betty Cracker: Your sister, the cockroach?
Goblue72
@Keith G: its already happening. Poverty in the U.S. is growing fastest in inner ring suburbia.
satby
@Elizabelle: That actually was a comment by one of my neighbors, talking about his inlaws, who live 3 miles away and have never felt the need to travel anywhere farther than South Bend. But it totally rang true to me about a number of the people I’ve met. Not meant as a left-right political statement,more about the complacency of everything always being the same. There are almost no younger people here, no jobs. The kids grow up and leave.
When John talks about his small town life and friends, he could just as easily be talking about the way it was in my neighborhood in the city. Where lots of us left doors unlocked, knew everyone for several blocks around, gathered for impromptu barbques, and helped each other out. Last winter the houses on the other side of the block were without power for several days because the transformer or something blew, and the neighbors on my side of the street ran outdoor power cords over to the other side to keep their neighbors from losing the food in their fridges.
Being neighborly is not exclusively a country or small town thing; it has to do with feeling connected with others.
Nutella
@Anoniminous:
That’s this clown Gopman’s business plan! His company AngelHack bill itself as the largest organizer of hackathons on the planet. Public* hackathons are exactly that kind of “serendipitous encounter” you mention. Maybe he’s upset with the actual serendipitous encounters on the street because he can’t monetize them?
—–
(*) And private, corporate-sponsored hackathons are ways for rich corporations to get free labor from programmers while pretending to be public-spirited.
mclaren
The good news?
Boston Dynamics has some quadruped robots that will do a dandy job of hunting down and shredding those pesky poor people.
I have no doubt I’ll end my days scrambling frantically into the hills as packs of these things chase me while the wealthier members of this forum stand by sipping Merlot and shouting “Tear his arms and legs off before you rip off his head!” and “Look at that meatbag run! Hahahahaha!”
billB
mclaren, you said it, goog is going to be skynet, and we will be hunted down. In my up-trending PDX hood they have just built a 4 story doggie hotel that has floor-to-ceiling windows in the doggie stalls, that look out on the homeless sleeping under the freeway. WHAT an embarrassment the rich are. All that money and no ethical or moral character. Why be rich if you have no soul.