> But the culmination of local incompetence and misplaced priorities has to be the blackouts and fires. The monopoly utility, PG&E, began rolling blackouts this past autumn to prevent sparks in dry and windy weather. Millions went without power for days.

What on earth does this have to do with SF? PG&E is a state-wide utility over which SF has no particular authority, and SF wasn't even affected by the rolling blackouts.

Certainly SF has problems with property crime, homelessness, housing costs, and NIMBYs. But clearly people still love living here, as evidenced by the continual inflow of people to the city and the region. Articles like that this attempt to paint it as a wasteland feel completely out of touch with the actual reality of living here.

San Francisco, objectively, has a net-outflow. This is not a normative statement.

https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/bay-a...

> The overall population of San Francisco County increased by 78,121 people between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2018. Besides the annual thousands of deaths and births that occurred within that eight year span, the county had a total net migration of 52,066 people.

They distinguish between domestic and international migration, but that's not relevant to whether SF has net inflow or outflow.

> The discrepancy between international and domestic migration in the Bay Area can likely be explained by what economists call "gateway cities." These cities, often planted along the coast, serve as entry points for foreigners moving to the U.S. The immigrants will register in the gateway city, but often move to other parts of California or the country within months, according to Phuong Nguyen, a research specialist at the California Department of Finance.

Once you control for this variance, San Francisco, objectively, has a net outflow. That's the conclusion of the linked article, as well.

It's understandable to be biased against admitting a mistake, most people are, but eventually most see objective reason.

> The discrepancy between international and domestic migration in the Bay Area can likely be explained by what economists call "gateway cities." These cities, often planted along the coast, serve as entry points for foreigners moving to the U.S. The immigrants will register in the gateway city, but often move to other parts of California or the country within months, according to Phuong Nguyen, a research specialist at the California Department of Finance.

And while it might be statistically "insignificant" in the absolute, you have to look at how it compares to other cities to really understand how healthy that number is. A contrast: the net domestic migration of Sacramento County was +15,224. -2500 looks far less healthy next to that.

That’s way more than -2,500, maybe you should have written articles about those counties.

2) If your argument is that Santa Clara and San Mateo counties are also bad (if not worse), I don't disagree...

I challenge you to do the following:

- Define what your assessment of the article as a "weak rant" means in objective terms.

- Pick a random sample of op-eds from major news outlets and measure them using your chosen metric

I claim no reasonable definition of weakness/rantiness will disqualify the OP while allowing more than 20% of opinion pieces. But maybe you can prove me wrong.

You might argue, "well so many people continue to live here and love it" — and that's true...except most of the people that happily live in SF are rich tech workers that are comfortably in the top quintile of the income distribution.

The tech worker might love SF, and indeed it might even be a beautiful city — but what of the teacher, police officer, firefighter, janitor, and waiter? Is SF really the beacon of progressivism it claims to be if it's (quite possibly) the only city in the US where a teacher can't afford to live within a 30 minute commute of their school without roommates?

Of course there are other problems too but they would be easier to solve with cheaper property prices. California should tax property at their current market values instead of purchase price. This would fix the tax sort fall and put downward pressure on property prices.

They could probably improve tourism by providing mental and homeless help outside downtown. Maybe break even or profit. No political will apparently.

Just hang around outside a public school in SF when it lets out. The vast majority of people who live in SF are middle to lower class in terms of income.

Why do you think there is so much hate for tech in SF? Because most people who live in SF have zero contact with tech workers, but they hear all the stories of throwing money around their city.

https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/san-francisc...

I certainly can't speak to _intentions_, but I can observe the result of how basically every decision taken since the '60s has worked to maintain the segregation that used to be legal at the time: http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea

This appears to be someone who is mostly interested in just complaining. (And with a clickbait headline that isn't backed up in the article.)

One nitpick, Chavez is a favorite punching bag for the right. Most don’t seem to know Vz was pillaged for decades by corrupt capitalists before that. If you ever wondered why folks choose communism when it’s never worked at scale this is why. After the experience you’d probably rather watch the world burn as well.

This is kind of a bad example to show that San Francisco is losing its place as the US's premier tech city, as Vegas is a huge conference city and already hosts tech oriented conferences like CES and Defcon.

The "some reason" was to withstand the crosswinds on the Golden Gate Bridge. We only use the top of the bridge's two possible decks, and the bottom deck was slated to carry the BART Marin line: https://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/06/08/bart-makes-headway-aga...

I’m assuming that wind is taken in as a factor when deciding what stock to send where though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind-related_railway_a...

Interesting stuff!

Suburbs seem almost normal. People are out. They are shopping. There are kids around. People are in parks. The big difference is nobody is drinking at bars or restaurants.

The urban core seems like something out of a zombie movie. It's dead. Everything is closed. There is almost nobody out and about. Few people are on transit. If you do see someone they have a mask on.

If I lived downtown right now I'd really be regretting my choice. Not having a yard, a car, and a home office right now would be awful.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/chavez-life/

Personally, looking over their history, I think their interest in publishing a piece like this is likely rooted in ideological issues rather than actually looking at anything meaningful. (I also think they've been wrong about...very nearly everything they've ever offered a position on, so I'm skeptical about this claim that SF is on the brink of tipping over into a Mad Max set.)

That's quite a claim.

An ecological disaster resulting in the construction of a neo-feudal society in the new county of Rancho Musk. Everything between the Bay bridge and San Jose, suburban sprawl.

Hey kid, did ya know Treasure Island used to be an Island?

The housing issue is one that the Mayor has some control over. But not a lot. There are too many landowning moneyed interests to get anything done with zoning. Even the non-moneyed interests work against themselves by supporting policies that actually hurt the poor.

Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime. Those folks really have nowhere to go, so they could be arrested, then released back to the streets, and now they can't get a job because they have a record.

SF needs to make major strides in up-zoning the entire city. That alone would solve a lot of the problems. Then they can start worrying about petty crime with all that extra tax money they would have.

SF isn't even the biggest city in the Bay Area (San Jose is) so if anyone is going to push on PG&E it should be a multi-county effort, not just rest on SF.

Right now, ok, maybe an argument could be made for it. But petty crime wasn't being prosecuted before CV either. CVS Pharmacy downtown was keeping many products in the back (as opposed to the shelves) because police don't do anything about thieves that were stealing stuff in broad daylight. You literally had to ask the cashier to go and look for some items.

I do hope said concentration diffuses to other cities, because in retrospect it's clear to me SF is a mess... the generally low quality overpriced housing, filth, and general anxiety walking on sidewalks in most parts of the city (not unfounded, been harassed many times). Goes for most neighborhoods. Was still fun experience in my 20s, but I wish I hadn't been so attached to the idea of living in SF.

I've often wondered why people are so touchy about SF, but perhaps it's simply because startup people have a lot invested in SF. They live there, and they want to promote a certain fairytale image of the place that doesn't reflect the reality of shit-covered sidewalks, lack of police presence and public safety, crack dealers, discarded needles, and aggressive barking mad homeless people. But the danger is that it makes HN look like a place where vigorous debate and exchange of ideas and criticism is not welcome.

That is not what this article is about.

It’s my understanding BARTs screech comes from statutorily over-powered brakes grinding flats into the wheels.

The power rating didn’t take into account the fact that BART is both an all weather outside and an underground (dry) system. On wet outdoor tracks the indoors-only power brakes lock up and wear the wheels flat.

In turn these flats grind periodic indents in the tracks, and the whole thing has a feedback loop which ends up in the entire track being corrugated and no wheel ever being truly circular. Solid axles (no differentials) don’t help either.

Screeching and howling ensues to a level that is damaging to the hearing of passengers and staff alike.

So in economic techtopia, will it be decline be a myspace, or a facebook?

We’re all aware of SFs problems, not sure why this article is worth even a glance.

Are you disagreeing with Nancy then? Since the 60's SF has had a continuous (60 years!) progressive rule and this is what we end up with.

Looking at the major problems in SF, I see a direct link to SF government policies:

Crime - stop locking people up!

Homelessness - we just need to spend more money!

Schooling - we just need more money!

Housing - unless it's subsidized, we'll block it every time

Never even entertained the thought the entire approach was wrong.

I find it absolutely astounding that people somehow think that SF's problems weren't caused by a specific set of policy proposals and politics. Yet, if anyone brings this up, even in a nonpartisan manner, all of a sudden the criticism is supposedly nullified because it's not coming from "our people". I find that more than a tad self-serving and duplicitous.