Culture Clash

[Guest comment]

I found this article on San Francisco's old and new attitude to be quite interesting.

SAN FRANCISCO - An effort to clean up some of the city's seedier neighborhoods and rid the streets of junkies, hookers and runaways has run headlong into San Francisco's free-to-be-who-you-are ethos.

The entire story can be found here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061209/ap_on_...efending_blight

[Guest twinklover]

Well, being a native and long-time resident of SF, I don't find it "intersting" or amusing at all. The reference to younger vagrants sitting on the streets with their pit bulls in the Haight indicates Sf is getting it's own brand of "dog people" , just like Montreal.

These people should not have their dirty filthy buttholes licked by the rest of us. Fuck them. They are total assholes who enjoy being nasty to themselves and others. I'm for a total crackdown. One violation of law, anything, and SF should move these assholes out of our city. Most of these people refuse or abuse generous public assistance and want to be inconsiderate assholes to others. This isn't what it means to be a "liberal," isn't "revolutionary" and is antithetical to everyhting SF stands for, inculding its "Summer of Love."

[Guest Conway]

What can you say? Big Cities are in again as a result of the job that guys like Rudy Giuliani and Ricahrd Daley Jr have done making them more livable for productive citizens.

When I first moved to New York, 15 years ago, one could find a comfortable place to live in Manhattan at not too steep a price. Now, its nearly impossible.

Chicago, with its larger land mass is springing up brand new million diollar condos in neighborhoods that one wouldn't have dared to go into 15 years ago.

In my professional life,I work with a number of boomers who, after they put their kids through college, are following through with their desire to move back into the city from the burbs. Thery have a lot more money to spend than their folks did in the neighborhoods that they grew up in.

As a result, places like the West Village, and now Chelsea have been transformed from "gay ghettos" to some of the most desireable places to live in Manhattan. Here in Chicago, Boystown is now more aptly described as "Babystrollertown". In place like New York and Chicago, the gay ghetto moves, although in New York it appears to be outside of Manhattan for the first time in my memory. Here in Chicago, the new ghetto seems to be Uptown.

San Francisco is different. The Castro was a classic gay ghetto in that it was truly working class neighborhood until the tech boom of the mid nineties drove those who couldn't afford to rent or own in it into neighborhoods less well defined by sexual oriebntation. In essence, except for the aging population of the Castro who now owns, the gay ghetto is dying a slow death because a younger generation of gay San Franciscans cannot afford to live there. In San Francisco, it seems that there is no other place to move due to the geographical restrictions of that city.

Ultimately, I suspect that the Castro will go through the same transformation that the West Village did, if it hasn't already. It seems to me that it has. The owners of Castro real estate, or perhaps even their estates, will be unable to turn down the very lucrative offers for their properties that real estate developers are or will be willing to pay them.

Whats happening in many big cities today is simply the evolution of that city as the trend of white flight to the suburbs has now completely reversed itself. That too will end one day, and the shift will return abck to more affordable living opportunities in big cities.

Maybe it will even happen in our lifetimes. Who knows?

[BigK]

>Well, being a native and long-time resident of SF, I don't

>find it "interesting" or amusing at all. The

>reference to younger vagrants sitting on the streets with

>their pit bulls in the Haight indicates Sf is getting it's own

>brand of "dog people" , just like Montreal.

>

>These people should not have their dirty filthy buttholes

>licked by the rest of us. Fuck them. They are total assholes

>who enjoy being nasty to themselves and others. I'm for a

>total crackdown. One violation of law, anything, and SF should

>move these assholes out of our city. Most of these people

>refuse or abuse generous public assistance and want to be

>inconsiderate assholes to others. This isn't what it means to

>be a "liberal," isn't "revolutionary" and

>is antithetical to everyhting SF stands for, inculding its

>"Summer of Love."

I wholeheartedly agree. I am disgusted when I hear things like homeless people faking illnesses in order to get a shower in the emergency room and a warm bed for a few hours.

I am very sympathetic to the plight of people who have become disadvantaged. I hear San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome has been experimenting using HUD funds to aid in providing housing for the disadvantaged in lieu of cash handouts that is often spent on booze. I think that its certainly better use of our nations wealth to help these people out more aggressively, especially if it puts less strain on other things like our health system.

In a similar vein, I would legalize all drugs, tax them, and use those taxes to build "Fruit Farms" where we could house those who abuse drugs and alcohol to the point of mental retardation. Lets get the bums off the streets! Economically, this would cut the foundation out from under much of our organized crime.