Bay Area Sentiments
7th February 2019
My high-level impression… Suppose that a dystopian science fiction novel published in the 1950s had imagined a city in which fabulously rich people lived in new gleaming towers, getting marijuana delivered to them by runners on electric skateboards. The rich people who work stroll on sidewalks that are half covered in tents in which the “homeless” (but not “tentless”) reside. When they get to work they’re in a bullpen that is packed tighter than a commodities trading pit. If they need to make a phone call while at work they’ll duck into a soundproof transparent pod.
People who read a book like that circa 1950 would have said “This author has a great imagination, but none of this could ever happen. Even in the Great Depression people didn’t simply pitch tents on downtown sidewalks. And an employer wouldn’t have valuable workers distracted by noise and crowding.”
Yet that imagined future has been fully implemented by San Franciscans today! What are people saying as they live and visit this unusual place? Some miscellaneous sentiments gathered from around the Bay Area during a recent trip…