Why San Francisco Is the New Renaissance Florence 250
waderoush writes "Despite legitimate concerns over sky-high rents, Ellis Act evictions, Google Bus traffic, and the like, the San Francisco Bay Area is perhaps the most prosperous, comfortable, enlightened, stimulating, and generative place to live in Western history. For satisfying parallels, you'd have to look to a place like Florence and a time like the Renaissance, argues an Xconomy essay entitled From Cosimo to Cosmos: The Medici Effect in Culture and Technology. Today's coder-kings are working to reinvent economic structures in much the same way Renaissance painters, poets, architects, and scientists were trying to extend the framework they'd inherited from classical Greece and Rome. And in the role of the Medici family, long Florence's most powerful rulers and art patrons, we have people like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Seth MacFarlane. Wait, what — Seth MacFarlane? Yes, the reboot of Carl Sagan's Cosmos starring Neil deGrasse Tyson (itself a tribute to the rise of science) wouldn't have happened without the involvement of a California media mogul. It's true that Silicon Valley can feel like Dante's Inferno if you're stuck in traffic on 101, or working 70-hour weeks as a code monkey at a doomed startup. But 'It would be unthinking, and ungrateful, to overlook the surplus we're reaping from the tech boom,' the essay argues."
Humble as always (Score:5, Insightful)
At least they don't have an over developed sense of their own importance.
Re: Humble as always (Score:5, Funny)
"the San Francisco Bay Area is perhaps the most prosperous, comfortable, enlightened, stimulating, and generative place to live in Western history"
WOW, just WOW, I'm sure they believe all this too.
Re: Humble as always (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem like maybe they went one complimentary adjective too far?
Cheese and frickin' rice. There is nothing sadder than a group of tribalist asshats who believe in Zip Code superiority.
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Cheese and frickin' rice
I've heard of sticky rice before. not sure what frickin' rice is. maybe that's what rice-a-roni is made out of??
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Indeed. Our way of establishing tribal superiority is superior.
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The collective strength of a bonded group of humans increases the chance to pass along genetic material to future generations.
The need to belong, and do well relative to other members, ensures both strength in the group and wariness of those outside it.
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Since when does the author of an article speak for the whole of a population? Come now, you can't be that daft. Most people are not elitist douche bags in the SF bay area. Sure there are some, and yes they tend to gravitate to a select few companies, but the overwhelming majority are down to earth regular people. I tend to see as many since I moved to the bay area as I did when I lived near Detroit. Obviously a less crime and nicer weather here, but people are people where ever you go.
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I'm wondering if they actually believe that there are just so many Google buses clogging up traffic that they MUST do something about it, or if it's all in their head and they simply don't like paying rent.
I mean jesus, the paint that they had to use to make those bus stop markers must have been REALLY expensive to warrant Google now paying for free bus tickets for students.
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Over the last year, the SF city government has rejected 95% of requests for building permits. A major reason for the high rents is the artificial restrictions on the supply of new housing. The same jerks that are protesting against Google, also voted for the "progressive" city council that is the root of the problem.
private Tennis Camp using public court (Score:3)
You seem familiar with the language of the Google Bus debate, but you don't exemplify any higher intellectual analysis beyond just agreeing with whatever in-group you *feel* closest to
It's not about comparing paint cost.
It's as if one of the biggest private tennis academies in the city decided to use all public courts for its tennis lessons.
A 'bus stop' isn't just a coat of paint...it's a ***NODE IN A SYSTEM***
Google is using public property (bus stop) as if it was its own infrastructure...it's similar to t
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It's as if one of the biggest private tennis academies in the city decided to use all public courts for its tennis lessons.
Are there buses at these stops 24/7? Do the Google buses occupy space at the same time that public buses would otherwise occupy? No? Then how the fuckin shit is that a valid comparison?
Pardon the language, but your argument is beyond absurd, effectively just grasping at straws.
happens with cabs all the time (Score:2)
no
yes...i mean 'no'...the right answer to the first question you posed was answered correctly by you: no
b/c those aren't the criteria for misuse/abuse of public property...***cab drivers have all kinds of rules & limitations for using public roads and bus stops***
cabs can't line up at bus stops for the same reasoning...
it
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it's part of a **system** and it taxes **other parts of the system**
Ok this should be good: Tell me, in what way does it tax it?
If anything, it is very much doing the opposite: Where you have upwards of 10 or maybe 30 cars driving around, you've replaced them with a single bus. That is reducing the strain on the public roadways, effectively doing the opposite of taxing them. In other words, Google is helping make traffic less problematic for the city.
But anyways I want to hear this, how exactly is Google bogging down the public transportation system in SF?
"same reasons as cabs" (Score:2)
it's the same as taxi cabs lining up for pick ups at a bus station...they are not allowed & neither should google busses
***but i wrote that in my previous comment*** and you didn't actually respond
if you want to start make demands in the conversation ***YOU HAVE TO ENGAGE AS WELL***
just like i pointed out in my last comment, you're being selfish and myopic...the community of *this conversation* is
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I think you'll find the reason is that a taxi isn't a bus, you dribbling biffwit.
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Having recently experienced SF as an outsider on vacation... Honestly, after a week, I got used to some of its quirks. I could see it as more or less basically habitable as a permanent resident.
But my impression for the first half of that week? "You fucking savages call this shithole home??? Google couldn't pay me enough to put up with this!"
In hindsight, yes, Google could pay me enough - But for similar money, they could also pay me enough to take
for comparison (Score:2)
I read your comment b/c it got up-modded, but I'm not sure I know where you're coming from...
I don't disagee with you...it's your opinion...but I just don't know, comparatively, what would not be a "shithole" to you...and it's not evident by context other than the types that vacation in SF are usually from the midwest.
So what's **not** a shithole?
I live in Por
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Oh, no mistake there - I apologize if I suggested that as a problem unique to SF.
I meant only that SF, despite its reputation, doesn't get a pass on the "cities suck" vibe. It did have a few nice neighborhoods; and I'll even admit I felt relatively safe walking around at night (though I stayed on the "good" side of the hill). But beyond that, it has the
unintentional self-parody (Score:4, Insightful)
today's coder-kings !!!
what is almost as hilarious is that 'Soulskill' posted the summary without a HINT of irony!
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what is almost as hilarious is that 'Soulskill' posted the summary without a HINT of irony!
did it need it? I thought it was a joke when i started to read it.
"from the X dept" (Score:2)
did it need it?
yeah...it did..otherwise Soulskill looks like a shill or loses credibility...he looks like Tom Delay when he mistook a parody show for a real show [colbertnation.com]
the little "from the X dept" area is completely neutral..."left my pants in SF" ???...that's where the /. editors *always* get cute...even if they just quote TFA for their summary
i'd have looked askew at this article as presented even ***if*** the "from X dept" was sarcastic...but we don't even have that
Having lived in Sausalito and Mill Valley, let me (Score:5, Insightful)
...just say STOP BLOWING YOURSELVES.
I love the Bay Area, lived there as a kid, lived there as an adult. It's beautiful, fun, and hideously expensive.
All that other crap you ascribe to it could be said about most large cities throughout the world.
Get over yourselves FFS.
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Thank you. I have been seeing this bull shit about the wonderful city of San Fransisco blahblahbalh... for the past couple of weeks on various tech sites and it is getting to be fucking annoying. Especially while the same danm sites report on the Luddite bullshit they have been doing.
You want to know what San Fransicso really is?
San Francisco is city that pushes a go green eco freindly message thats people protest when a tech company tries to create a mass transit system to cut traffic and emissions. The ci
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San Francisco is peopled by the self-entitled and the disenfranchised and very little in between. This is a natural factor of the immense property values. Sooner or later there will be a big earthquake and it will all slide back into the sea and we can all have a good laugh. In the meantime they will continue gentrifying the last vestiges of personality out of it.
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Thank you for making me choke on my soda with unexpected laughter -- I'm from the North Bay (Sonoma County), andmost of the longtimers are tired of both hearing how awesome SF & the wealthier parts of the South Bay are and with having outsiders assume that we share their belief. Insipid articles over-glorifying SF that use "Bay Area"as a synonym don't help.
It's also... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most smug, pompous and expensive place to live....
It's the land of the have and have nots.
Want you kids to go to good schools in the area? Get ready to either send them to private school or fork out $1m plus for a 1600 sqft home with no land that was built in the early 60s.
If you didn't make in a killing in the previous dotcom bubble or the one we're in (Snapchat, i'm looking at you), enjoy mediocre housing and schools.
Re:It's also... (Score:4, Insightful)
Plenty of people choose to avoid the goldrush mentality of California. That's why most people live other places. There's just lots more of "everywhere else". So supply and demand works out in our favor.
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Those rabble, all theyre good for is providing the food you eat and manufacturing the goods you use.
bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me guess the city where the writer lives...
I'd argue that it is nothing like classical Florence, where the artists had sponsors. There's no analog in Silly Valley for that, none of the new rich are sponsoring great art, whether for themselves or the public.
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Well you can go to a ballgame at 3 com park. You can go to go to a museum, which is generally corporate sponsored. You can go to a free concert in the park, where a local company advertises in exchange for monies given.
And of course most of the art in classical Florence was private. There are indeed rich people in the Bay Area with private collections of art.
Re:bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Software is our current societies' Steelcase Desks and Pendaflex binders. But this is Slashdot. Sorry for being so impolite.
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Sure 3 com park, and free concerts exist, but nearly every large city in the world has that.
Just an FYI, 3 com park is slated for destruction. Mainly will be replaced by houses.
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The rich in Florence were actually rich, as in being able to afford palaces, servants, and all that. A bunch of Facebook stock doesn't buy you that kind of wealth anymore.
SF zoning and planning means nobody can build shit in the c
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So would I. I classical Florence, the rich could do whatever they wanted. They could tear down entire blocks, build palaces, and display their vast wealth in whatever way they wanted. In San Francisco, you can't even chop down a tree without getting lynched by the mob and raped by the planning commission. In fact, the people San Franciscans complain about as being "wealthy" are Internet millionaires who have just barely enou
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none of the new rich are sponsoring great art, whether for themselves or the public.
However, if you've ever been to a Californian art gallery, you'd know that they do sponsor plenty of really crappy art.
Fuckin' hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, finding new ways to rent out your car through an iPhone app is not any kind of Renaissance.
If anything, it's the decline of computer science from world-changing to trivial amusements for trivial, pointless people.
Paging Girolamo Savonarola (Score:2, Funny)
It's time to have a bonfire of the vanities!
Give me a fucking break (Score:5, Funny)
You must have used Dragon software to write this article because you were obviously patting yourself on the back with both hands.
De Medici (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, SF ist great for the US, but just for them (Score:4, Insightful)
The most prosperous, comfortable and enlightened place in Western society is Scandinavia. And quite clearly so. You get all the liberalism of SF and more (most of their churches even conduct homosexual weddings), and far more prosperity and comfort due to the fairer distribution of income. Sure, there are less Zuckerbergs and whonots there. But the average guy, the guy cleaning the street or working at the butcher's is far more educated, content and wealthy.
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The most prosperous, comfortable and enlightened place in Western society is Scandinavia.
Scandinavia seems to you like the 'lost valley' or Shangri-La or something, the mythical place that does everything right and everything is perfect.
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You're just measuring prosperity by how far left the government is with its policies. That's hardly the only relevant measurement. The terms 'progressive', 'xenophobic', 'education', 'solidarity', and 'compassion' are so heavily loaded in your statement (and in the statements of most leftwing politicians) they are essentially meaningless. The left routinely violates the real definitions of these terms when it comes time to tolerate those that wish to live by differing views (that aren't on the white list
Haha (Score:2)
If you like everything being expensive and high crime then I guess San Francisco is the place for you. Don't forget about the awful weather and huge homeless population. Actually it sounds like a liberal paradise.
Who's ole Nick then? (Score:3)
Which one is Niccoló Machiavelli?
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Diane Feinstein?
Awful (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should I have to make over $125,000/year to live comfortably when I can make under half elsewhere in the country and be equally content? Why should I be forced to rent unless I can afford a million dollars for a house? How am I supposed to lay down roots? Why should any home short of a mansion cost a million dollars in the first place? Silicon Valley is pretty close to my idea of hell. The only thing I like about it is the City of Berkeley and the surrounding mountains and national parks where you can get away from the people living there on the weekends. San Francisco is bleak, dirty. There's nothing I like about it. It was good in the 60's but that was 50 years ago. Why would I want to surround myself with 99% ghetto rich (making a lot of money but having to spend it all on rent and expenses) men mostly struggling, thinking that their website will be the next Facebook.
For the 1% of people living there, I bet it's great. Those same people would be happy anywhere, because they're very wealthy.
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Why should I have to make over $125,000/year to live comfortably when I can make under half elsewhere in the country and be equally content? Why should I be forced to rent unless I can afford a million dollars for a house? How am I supposed to lay down roots?
Why should you expect that cost of living should be the same everywhere? Why should owning a house always be within your means? I live in SF and make six figs just to pay back my grad loans and pay rent. I'm still happy with living here because I like to hang out at the beach (I almost said swim in the ocean) then drive up to ski in Tahoe, weather permitting. Compare that with central Kansas. Nothing wrong with Kansas but I don't see people flocking to it.
It's expensive because lots of people recognize
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Have you never heard of telecommuting???
Its not like the smog of the southern Californian metropolitan area helps you to code better so you can do that from anywhere. Besides there are other cities with lots of tech businesses. Ever heard of Seattle? Has this little company know for its cloud servers Its called amazon. Or Microsoft heard of them? They're there as well. I could list more, for this and other cities and more all over the country. There is no rule that says you have to be from cali to post on /
Ive lived here for 15 years. Its bad-Getting worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Things are getting worse and worse in SF, SiVal/Peninsula and bay area in general.
The public schools are terrible, the cost of living is outrageous even with the high salaries, all families are dual income so most of the kids are latch-key, and my kids - we have to work overtime to protect them from how bad the kids are in general. There are a ton of richie rich kids who have money and they do bad things, drugs, etc. Cupertino, supposedly a great school district, polled kids and found that 75% had tried illegal drugs by 12th grade.
Also most of the universities here have non-California kids in ever increasing numbers. That means the land of milk and honey is not producing high end high school graduates.
I have a plan to relocate out of here within 18 months now. I refuse to say where because I can only hope that others wont follow and bring the pain and suffering and horribly low standard of living with them yet again.
And I've recently been to japan and switzerland. The public transportations STINKs here, the quality of life is far lower than either of those two places and in they have better primary/grade schools in both those places.
This is not living here. There is also little room for a family lifestyle. And the facebook pop has caused a lot of places to be one-percenter-only. All houses under 2 million are horrible, shabby and full of asbestos and mold. Built in the 1950s/60s to a very low standard.
Roads are fairly in poor repair despite there being no winter. Certain areas are crime ridden but the houses are 700K+. Schools - even greatschools-10 schools and blue ribbon schools - are a joke. They are a shadow of schools Ive seen in other places.
Please, never come here thinking you will be better off. Coming here is just like playing the lottery. Dont even think being smart will make you wealthy enough to get a real life here. you have to be either very lucky , or smart and lucky. Nobody earns their way to the top. Also there is a big time old boys club mentality. Inferior people will be much farther than you even if you work 80 hours a week and bleed for work.
The bay area is no longer about technology anymore. its about big gigantic pan national business and the monetization of the internet.
Google has the best, smartest, most driven brightest people in the world working day and night to not cure cancer, or invent new things (they bought a thermostat company for 3billion) but to Shovel Ads in Your Face. Thats it. Same with F-book
Hardly noble.
Welcome to SillyCON Valley.
not telling anyone where you're going? (Score:2, Informative)
Don't worry, everyone isn't in the Bay Area because you're here, you egotistical asshole. They're not going to follow you just because you leave.
I think your 18 months timeframe is too long. Why torture yourself with asbestos and mold any longer? Get out now.
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Also most of the universities here have non-California kids in ever increasing numbers. That means the land of milk and honey is not producing high end high school graduates.
It actually means out-of-staters pay more. Sometimes a lot more.
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Enlightened? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean "enlightened" like this coder-king?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/ha... [gawker.com]
And prosperous? Well, I guess if you don't count the homeless human "trash" or the "degenerates" he and his enlightened friends complain about. Oh, those pesky poor people... if it weren't for them, SF would be even more of a "comfortable, enlightened, stimulating" city. Why must he and our other coder-kings be forced to look at them? It is thoroughly uncomfortable, I tell you! It completely ruins his stimulating experience of driving a BMW to Fisherman's Wharf for an enlightened lunch!
Can something be done to help this poor Medici-esque man-mogul? I hope he or one of his fellow coder-kings is even now "working to reinvent economic structures", as you say. I'm certain there is a Bitcoin solution to all this. After all, if we dispense with dollar bills entirely, the computer-less poor won't have any way to beg for cryptocurrency and they'll have to return to wherever they came from.
But there I go, being "unthinking and ungrateful", as usual...
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I don't understand your point. Is it that I'm being intolerant of his intolerance of the poor, which makes me intolerant, so I'm just as bad as he is? Or am I just not being suitably deferential to the magnificent apotheosis of technology and culture that is the City of Saint Francis? Next time, don't post AC, and we can discuss.
Either way, my post was not about the city itself; it was responding to the self-congratulatory hyperbole in the original summary, and judging by the other responses to it I don't
Nice place to visit (Score:2)
Bullocks (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish them well... (Score:2)
But given that they're doing everything in their power to kick out google and face book... I don't see it.
Not seeing this (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not seeing this. It's a dull period for San Francisco. The first dot-com boom was more fun. Connecting up everybody and everything was important. This boom is all from ad-based companies, and most of what they're doing is rather banal. So are many of the people doing it.
Almost all the artists who need more than a desk and a laptop moved out years ago. SF used to have lots of big empty warehouse and factory spaces that were used for art projects and wild parties. That's what SOMA was. Those are gone, replaced with "live/work lofts" or giant bullpen workspaces.
I do not get why tech people want to live in the Mission. I've had friends there for years, and it's tolerable, but not a place to live in by choice. Wednesday I went to a stand up comedy improv thing in the Mission where people tried to put together presentions from random PowerPoint slides. Heavy bouncer presence outside because it was right next to a service center for homeless people. The comedy sucked, too. That's what the tech crowd is bringing into the area.
Here's a typical Mission location [google.com], one which also happens to be a Google bus stop. "Cafe la Boheme" has crappy food, and it's had crappy food for years. The place with the graffiti is an upstairs dance studio which is hanging on. "Chinese Food and Donuts" isn't very good at either. That corner has looked the same for many years. There are some decent restaurants a few blocks over on Valencia, but not at this corner. There are cool places to live in SF, but this isn't one of them.
Hooray! (Score:3)
Our tax policies have made our most rapidly expanding market sector resemble the 1500s. I, for one, welcome our new economic lordship. Give most of the money to a very small number of people, and let them decide if and when to parcel it out through patronage, buying electric sports cars, and financing asteroid mining projects. Surely the broader income ranks wouldn't do any better with it. I mean, think about it; other than the 1950s to 1960s in America, when has a far more progressive tax policy ever been correlated with broad-based entrepreneurship, small business expansion, and a nation rising to superpower?
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I mean, think about it; other than the 1950s to 1960s in America, when has a far more progressive tax policy ever been correlated with broad-based entrepreneurship, small business expansion, and a nation rising to superpower?
We had a boom in the 50s *in spite of* our tax policies because the rest of the world was either piles of rubble or the "Red Menace".
hubris (Score:2)
cronyism
That's all I need to say...
San Francisco's turning into Upper East Side (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been living in San Francisco for 10+ years. Sorry, Wade Roush & Ed Lee, but San Francisco doesn't need tax breaks for startups or 1/1/1 programs. We need the rich people in this area (including myself and my wife who are both in tech) to pay way more taxes so that we can balance things out a little bit and make the city livable for artists, waiters, musicians, etc. Awesome breakthroughs typically happen when fields intersect, and people bring experiences and impressions from one field into another. San Francisco's power has come from its diversity.
Ed Lee & Ron Conway, the entire San Francisco city is turning into Upper East Side New York. It's madness, and I can't imagine it's going to work out well long term for anyone, including the tech companies and startups that the current economic policies appear to be optimized for. How much awesome creative work is coming out of the Upper East Side? Zero.
Twitter is a great example of misguided policy. I love the service that the company provides and have many friends who work there, but why the hell are they getting tax breaks? It's lunacy. If they don't want to "give back" they can set up shop somewhere else. If they'd rather move to Fresno where they get a tax break, or Austin where there's cheaper talent they can do that. The reason they won't is that they want the stuff that makes SF awesome, its diversity. By creating these types of unnecessary economic incentives you're eroding the very thing that makes SF great to begin with. Why try to compete in cost when the competitive advantage is creativity and diversity?
m
Generative? Really? (Score:2)
Doesn't look like it ...
Look for the lowest number on the list ... [kidsdata.org]
Cosmos vs. Boba Fet (Score:2)
Am I the only one that watched the show and thought, "Neil deGrasse Tyson stole Boba Fet's ship!"?
circle-jerk nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pompeii, maybe.... (Score:2)
After all, when the big one hits there won't be much left...
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San Francisco earlier than the mid-90's. Yes. Sorry you missed us...
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From my point of view, what is special about
Re:You can't have it both ways... (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus, your quote about "struggling artists can live elsewhere" is what makes people in SF really hate "techies" -- it's that attitude that is contrary to SF culture.
Disclosure: I live in San Francisco (proper)
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Palo Alto is Spanish for "perpetual traffic jam" (Score:2)
Yes, traffic flows so slowly through Palo Alto (including Highway 101 on weeknights where drivers slow to a crawl as soon as you enter Palo Alto) that you can always find parking. You see, the entire city of Palo Alto is one big parking lot!
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San Jose is on Light Rail and Caltrain, and near the BART terminus. Downtown San Jose is getting its own BART station next year.
Yeah. It shows. Please stay there.
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One thing for sure, if they're starving and won't move to someplace with lower rents, they have no reason to complain about starving.
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But if they weren't dirt poor then they wouldn't be the cliched starving artist they would just be another talentless libral arts major that asks do you want fries with that at work for the rest of their life.
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A lot of the creative folk are now moving over to Oakland, which has a bit of a cost of living advantage over both Berkeley and SF as well as a pretty thriving cultural scene. It's also rather conveniently located between the two on BART.
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Back when my folks moved us back to their native California in 1981, I asked my dad about his favorite city: San Franciso. He said, "Don't tell your friends, or everyone will want to live here." He was right.
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I'm missing something. Are you implying that London or Paris are pleasant places to live? If so... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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Depends where. I live in SF most of most years. London is wonderful, if you got a bit of dosh, and I'm there a few months, pretty regularly. Back in Portobello area...
Paris is just a train ride away. Two tubes and a Eurostar? Downtown Paris, from your Kensington door step. Freakin' great town, if you've French friends. I don't think it would be livable, unless you spoke very good French, 'tho.
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As someone who lived around London for many years, in Paris for many months, and now near SF, I'll take the bay area over London or Paris *any* day. It's infinitely more pleasant to live in.
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You know very well, you can have a knob on your head, but speak good French, and get about. No French? Even Raquel Welch would have been dissed with a brush off.
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No. St. Pancras is a Circle Line trip from Notting Hill Gate. That's my doorstep. :-)
I don't know my Metro, that well. By Christ. Gare DuNord is a shorter ride than that, to Pere Lachaise. That the step of a friend...
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Holy crap you must have had a really horrible time there for you to become this abusive over some guy's opinion of a city. Sucks to be you, I guess, because with that attitude you'll probably end up hating SF as well. Pro tip, if you're not a total twat (your words) and are willing to learn about the local history and people, you'd feel at home at almost any place.
But if you act like some people do (American and otherwise) expecting the locals to welcome you as their savior born anew, you will find many ci
San Francisco is overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
Ozymandias (Score:5, Interesting)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The Seconc Coming (Score:2)
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhe
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San Francisco has a very large amount of technology companies, certainly more than San Jose. Sure Mountain View is the epicenter, but San Francisco is a very large part of it.
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I've always thought of San Francisco as the new Sodom and Gomorrah.
That's a decade or two out of date. Maybe more. Here's this weekend's list of sex and fetish events in SF. [sfweekly.com] There's a nostalgia tour for tourists of SF's sex history, and a screening of porn films from a Berlin festival. Yawn.