
The little things I learned in the valley - aqeel
http://www.gigpeppers.com/the-little-things-i-learned-in-the-valley-may-2014-edition/
======
legohead
My first impressions of San Francisco were quite opposite of yours -- it was
ugly, dirty, smelly and scary. I went for a conference and was in a nice hotel
downtown. I went out to grab some dinner at night and couldn't wait to get
back, lots of weirdos out on the street. I've been to cities all over the
world and never felt as uncomfortable as I did in SF. Maybe I just got unlucky
that night...

~~~
nlh
What the others said. I had similar experiences for basically the first 10
years of my visits to SF - I never really got beyond the Moscone Center / The
W Hotel / 3rd Street and that 10-square-block area was my impression of SF.

But having lived here now for almost 2 years, that impression is just so
wrong. It's a TINY fraction of SF, and that is not what SF is about. Next time
you're here, find a boutique hotel in the Marina, or Pacific Heights, or
Russian Hill, or the Mission and Uber over to your conference/meetings (the
city's small enough that it's $10-$15 each way).

That's the SF that people love (or hate ;)

~~~
throwaway13qf85
So your advice is - to enjoy SF, stay in the expensive areas, and get a taxi
if you need to go through the poor areas, or the parts where there might be
homeless people?

~~~
ritchiea
Do people ever go to poor areas to enjoy themselves? Wouldn't that be some
form of poverty tourism? I don't see any reason to lash out at the comment
you're replying to. Saying "these are fun areas in SF (or any city)" is not a
political comment. For all you know the commenter you replied to volunteers in
shelters, and donates to charities that aid the homeless.

~~~
throwaway13qf85
> Do people ever go to poor areas to enjoy themselves?

Absolutely! There are many poor areas in London (Whitechapel, Brixton or
Dalston, for example) but the idea that you would have to avoid them is crazy.
In fact there are great reasons to visit them - the best Indian or Pakistani
food in the city is in Whitechapel, the music scene in Brixton is amazing,
there are great clubs in Dalston if you don't mind the hipsters.

How has SF let things get so bad that there is a major area of the city that
people are told to actively avoid because of all the homeless people?

~~~
malyk
Some of the best clubs in the city are in the Tenderloin. Some of the best
music venues are in areas that are "questionable". Same with the various
theaters, the symphony, the opera, etc. They are always packed with people.
People who live here don't have an issue going to those places.

------
kyro
What was most off putting on my last trip to SF was the juxtaposition of the
yuppie and homeless worlds. It wasn't uncommon to see long lines for local
chic coffee shops full of young, well-to-do individuals while the homeless
begged, urinated and defacated on the same stretch of sidewalk to often no
acknowledgement by the former group.

I live in NYC so I see homeless people every day, but here you don't see such
an unsettling and stark contrast between them and the non-homeless.

~~~
debt
That seems to be largest complaint I hear from tourists. SF takes care of
their homeless. Matter of fact, SF programs are so good we have a problem with
other states sending their homeless specifically to SF[1]. I'm from Chicago
where the homeless don't have nearly the same advantages as they do here in
SF(particularly the weather).

There were encampments in Grant Park in Chicago and they were forcibly removed
by the police both in '68 and just a few years ago[2]. Which, again, is in
stark contrast to something like Golden Gate Park here in SF where there has
been a large homeless encampment for at least as long as I have lived here and
probably longer[3]. That shit would just not fly in Chicago but I do like that
SF actually takes care of _everyone_ and not just the people that know the
_right_ people.

[1][http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-
franc...](http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-francisco-
sues-nevada-patient-dumping/)

[2][http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-16/news/chi-
occup...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-16/news/chi-occupy-
chicago-protesters-relocate-to-grant-park-20111015_1_chicago-protesters-
chicago-police-grant-park)

[3][http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/despite-
improvement-5...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/despite-
improvement-50-people-still-live-in-golden-gate-park/Content?oid=2477222)

~~~
tptacek
I don't understand your second graf; you seem to be referring to an Occupy
protest as an "encampment of homeless people", but those two things obviously
aren't equivalent.

San Francisco differs from Chicago on homelessness in two significant ways:
the weather and environment is amenable year-round, while Chicago is
inhospitable for 1/4 of the year, and San Francisco's politics regarding
homeless people are "hands-off".

Based on the last spot counts I could find, Chicago and San Francisco have
roughly comparable homeless populations, despite the fact that Chicago is more
than 3x larger. That difference is _not_ simply because Las Vegas busses
homeless people to SF.

I dispute the notion that SF does a particularly good job taking care of
homeless people. It's indeed possible that SF does a better job of this than
Chicago and NYC, both of which see clusters of indigent people on the streets
as a quality-of-life problem for residents. But if you can find a source that
says SF is doing a good job of actually delivering services and getting
homeless people off the streets and into society, I'd like to read it; the
sources I've found say the opposite.

~~~
debt
The CPD definitely makes it a priority to treat people as "blight" in the more
touristy areas(Grant Park, Loop, Navy Pier, North Ave. Beach, etc); be it
protestors or homeless people, they're quick to, literally in some cases,
_extricate them_ from the area. The Occupy protests in NYC turned into an
encampment of people for some time. They weren't homeless people, but I fail
to see the difference between an encampment of homeless in a public space vs
an encampment of protestors in a public space. If there's nothing from
stopping the protestors, I assume they will protest indefinitely, thus they'll
be "living" in Grant Park for some time.

Someone on here had mentioned something I never thought of before, and it
might be a cop out I don't know but "quality of life" isn't something for
people of authority or higher societal status to figure out for another
person. To put it another way, just because a person is living on the street
doesn't mean that person _doesn 't want to_ live on the street and you, as an
individual, shouldn't make such assumptions. They may seem to be in a bad
state, but, perhaps, that's their lifestyle. SF is hands-off for that reason.

The services exist in SF for those who want treatment; a homeless person may
subsist on the nice weather and any government social services alone if they
choose that lifestyle. People go in and get their treatment, food, medicine,
blankets, etc. and then they're on their way back to their living area.

Is it right for me to judge them based on their lifestyle? Should the
government insist that they're living incorrectly and explain to them that
they're messed up in the head and that normal people don't want to live on the
streets?

~~~
tptacek
Three things:

1\. The difference between an Occupy encampment and a clustered homeless
population is that the Occupy encampment is there to disrupt the surrounding
area (that's the point: to generate awareness) and the homeless cluster is
there for safety and convenience --- in other words, for the intrinsic benefit
of the people in the cluster. Policy responses to those two different
circumstances aren't comparable.

2\. I do not disagree that displacing organic, emergent clusters of homeless
people to improve optics and quality of life for residents and tourists is an
unfriendly and probably unhelpful policy response to homelessness. It is not
my contention that shuttling homeless people out of the Mag Mile in Chicago is
a positive step. This is, however, the _standard_ policy response to
homelessness in much of the US (not just Chicago), because the overwhelming
majority of urban residents want it to be.

3\. The relativism underpinning your sentiment about not judging the lifestyle
of the homeless is disquieting. Homeless people aren't hobos. They aren't
deliberately living a different lifestyle. They are an underserved population
of mentally ill, substance-dependent people continually victimized by their
circumstances through lack of medical care, death by exposure, and crime. Let
me help you out: it is OK to judge homelessness as bad. Homelessness is bad.

~~~
debt
1\. Regardless, I believe the Occupy movement in NYC wasn't very disruptive.
It was more of a peaceful protest. So I was going off that.

3\. While I agree a large percentage of the homeless _in Chicago_ are as you
describe; it seems, at least from what I've read, SF contains a large enough
percentage of homeless people that also seem to choose the lifestyle _.

_[http://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/22/homeless-by-
choice/](http://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/22/homeless-by-choice/)

Read the comments for more insight into the mindset.

~~~
tptacek
The belief that homeless people in SF _want to be_ homeless and _should be
left alone to be_ homeless does a pretty good job of encapsulating the qualms
people have about how SF deals with homelessness.

------
untog
_There is hope on the streets. The cogs of the American economy seem like
moving.

[...]

A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I am
using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this._

~~~
cryoshon
Seems like he's missed the elephant in the room.

The tech sector's cogs are moving at an increasingly rapid pace whereas nearly
everyone else has been jammed to a standstill or losing ground since 2008. The
proliterian hatred of the tech sector is based on jealousy and misplaced blame
for the fallout caused by gentrification which follows higher incomes.

The homeless are the most blatant casualties of a depressed economy, but rest
assured, there are countless others who suffer without falling onto the
streets.

~~~
throwaway13qf85
I don't think you understand what the phrase "elephant in the room" means. If
lots of people are talking about something (and certainly, a lot of people are
talking about the tech sector vs the rest of the economy) then it's not the
elephant in the room.

~~~
untog
_(and certainly, a lot of people are talking about the tech sector vs the rest
of the economy)_

I'm not sure they're talking about it _in the tech sector_ , though.

~~~
dllthomas
Sure they are. Whether arguing for or against it, they're talking about it.
Not everyone, certainly, but enough that "elephant in the room" seems an
inappropriate description.

------
ar7hur
> Palo Alto, Mountain View etc. are no more part of Silicon Valley

Seems somewhat exaggerated to me. There's definitely a shift from the valley
to the city (and Palantir eating up all available space in PA sure catalyzes
this process), but I wouldn't say PA/MV are "no more part of SV".

~~~
orky56
The sexy, consumer-focused startups are in SF and where people want to be.
Down in Mountain View & Palo Alto is where the VCs, unsexy B2B startups (Box),
and accelerators (YC/500) are thriving. 20 something bachelors & DINCs want to
live in the city where it's fun and happening whereas mothers/fathers would
rather raise a family in the suburbia of the peninsula. I won't deny the trend
towards SF as VCs and accelerators are making a presence there but most are
not replacing their HQs in the peninsula.

~~~
GregorStocks
for reference, DINC = double income no children

------
supahfly_remix
> A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I am
> using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this.

Does he mean a startup to help him avoid streets with homeless, or a startup
to solve the homeless problem?

~~~
brixon
Probably avoid streets since his next bullet is "A lot of socially driven
business is just pure BS."

Solving the homeless problem would be a socially driven business and that
would make it BS and not worth doing.

~~~
icebraining
I think you're reading it wrong.

What he's saying is: many socially-driven businesses are pure BS. That doesn't
mean he doesn't believe that a genuine socially-driven business can be built
to solve that problem.

------
at-fates-hands
>> But the increasing divide in between the rich and the poor and the nouveau
riche will only hurt in long term. History has taught us that. I hope my
American friends will learn this for the larger good.

Every time I hear this, I wonder if people just don't know that we lift more
people out of poverty every year, or its just such a common misconception that
is now engrained in our culture.

[http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/10/land-of-opportunity-
almost-...](http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/10/land-of-opportunity-almost-93-of-
all-new-millionaires-worldwide-in-the-last-year-were-americans/)

"Land of opportunity: Of the 1.8M net increase in global millionaires last
year, more than 9 out of 10 were Americans"

[http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/17/2633881/poverty-...](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/17/2633881/poverty-
data-shows-importance-safety-net-programs-millions/)

"The official poverty rate was essentially unchanged at 15.1 percent in 2012,
and alternative measures show that safety net programs like food stamps,
unemployment insurance, Social Security, and tax credits for the working poor
keep tens of millions of Americans out of poverty each year, the Census Bureau
reported Tuesday."

Maybe we have different ideas of what poor is?

[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-
pov...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty)

"“The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest
persons a hundred years ago.”[3] In 2005, the typical household defined as
poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the
household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and
a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a
game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation.[4] In the kitchen, the
household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other
household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans,
a cordless phone, and a coffee maker."

------
JackFr
TFA struck me as mostly harmless anecdotal observations of a twenty-something
living in a bubble. But

 _A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I am
using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this._

indicated a whole new level of bubble-induced cluelessness. If we take him at
his word, that he really is 'surprised' by this, his incapacity for any
thoughtful awareness undermines the whole piece.

------
josefresco
"Quite a few companies are built by people who have no passion for that
business. They are in the axis mundi to strike gold. It makes me sad."

Worked or is working for Tony Hsieh @Zappos who couldn't give a crap about
shoes.

I realize the author is actually talking about start-up founders and not CEO's
of successful corporations, but we should be weary of the advice that you must
be passionate about your market/product to be successful.

~~~
beat
You don't need to be passionate about the product of your business. Tony Hsieh
may not care that much about shoes, but he cares tremendously about customer
service and employee satisfaction. He's not making happy shoes, he's making
happy customers and happy employees.

Frankly, lots of businesses don't require "passion" in the eros sense about
the product. One doesn't become passionate about dry cleaning, or transmission
overhauls, or phlebotomy. The vast majority of jobs pay _because_ they're
necessary but not interesting. Products that inspire deep passion, like music
or farming, rarely pay well, _because_ passion is its own reward.

If you want to make money, become really good at doing something that doesn't
inspire passion, preferably something that most people really hate or fear.
Get rewarded with pride in quality work, and the pay that comes with doing
something that sucks for people who need it done.

~~~
smacktoward
_> If you want to make money, become really good at doing something that
doesn't inspire passion, preferably something that most people really hate or
fear._

Excellent point. The British have a saying for this: "where there's muck,
there's brass." ([http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/where-
the...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/where-there-s-muck-
there-s-brass))

------
bluetidepro
> "This future is “only” mobile. I thought it is mobile."

I wouldn't mind seeing more expansion on that thought. Maybe it's because I
spend so much time on the computer for work, but I still think there is a LONG
ways to go before you can have the same experience with applications or sites
on your mobile device that your desktop gives you. I will never want to be
locked down to such a small screen for everything. And things like touch
screens (at any size) are far from perfect verse the precision you can get
with a mouse.

Yes, I think the future is mobile, for certain categories of business. I just
think we are still very far from saying that statement applies to everything
in the tech industry, or any industry for that matter. I think a better
statement is the future is "mobile enabled" meaning you have to have a way to
use the site or app on the go (mobile), but that doesn't mean it's the ideal
way to interact with the product 100% of the time.

~~~
potatolicious
The "future is mobile" thought isn't saying that mobile experiences are
superior to desktop experiences. In fact it's almost a tacit acknowledgment of
the opposite.

Think about it this way: Google Maps on desktop is IMO much, much more useful
than Google Maps on my phone. I can fit a lot more search results, things are
much easier to see at a glance, I don't have to zoom in so far to see
important map features, etc etc.

But ultimately I still use Maps on my phone a lot more than I do on desktop,
because I _need_ maps a lot more while I'm out and about than when I'm sitting
still.

Ditto shopping. Surfing Amazon on a desktop is probably always going to be a
superior experience to doing it on mobile, but as smartphones get better and
connectivity improves, more and more people are going to want to quickly buy
something (e.g., notice you need a pack of razors as you're heading out the
door - use your phone instead of sitting down at your desktop).

And what we're seeing - at least from the few companies I've had the
opportunity to watch this from - is that even traditionally "desktop" use
cases are increasingly mobile. Looking for something to do with your
significant other this weekend? That used to be a desktop use case, but it's
increasingly mobile as well, even though it is of course not an intrinsically
or obviously mobile thing to do.

"The future is mobile" means "people want to use this on mobiles, even though
it's going to be strictly worse than the desktop experience, so you can either
try to close the desktop-mobile UX gap as much as possible or watch your users
bleed off to your competitors". The corollary to that is also "you should try
to find actual mobile-centric use cases for your product so that your mobile
product isn't just a slightly crappier clone of your desktop product".

------
pzaich
>>>`A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I
am using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this.`

[https://handup.us/](https://handup.us/) is tackling the challenge of direct
donations to homeless.

------
tzs
> Palo Alto, Mountain View etc. are no more part of Silicon Valley. SF is the
> happening city. Cent percent of my meetings were in SF. The last time I was
> here its was distributed between University Ave, PA, Castro Mountain View
> and SF

The big Silicon Valley companies apparently haven't gotten the message yet.
The Wikipedia article on Silicon Valley [1] has a list of 32 Fortune 500
companies headquartered in Silicon Valley. Only one of them is headquartered
in San Francisco.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silicon_Valley&old...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silicon_Valley&oldid=607496532)

------
gingerjoos
>>>"Ironically there is a lot of hatred among the locals about “tech” but I
was honestly surprised since the west coast is largely transient population."

It's interesting to note the parallels between SF and Bangalore in this
aspect.

------
Balgair
San Fransisco is a dirty, two-fisted drinking town.

I grew up in the Bay and my family has been there 4 generations now. The tech
sector is a small part of SF and SF is a small part of the Bay and California
as well. There are millions of teachers, janitors, dentists and accountants
that live in the Bay too. Most of these people couldn't care less about tech.
They care about Prop 13. The care about the police; my town was a This
American Life special [0] on corruption. They care about traditions and
family; Pittsburgh is owned by old mafiosi from way back [1]. They care about
stable jobs; Telegraph is nothing but burning out asians and burnt out hippies
[2][3]. They care about fun and freedom; SF clears out for the Burn every year
more and more [4]. Tech, though rich, is a fad and we can all see it. The
impression I get is that it's a bunch of trustafarians and credit cards
playing around because there still aren't any good jobs left over from 2008
and no-one knows what to do 6 years on.

SF will be who lives, works, goes to PTS meetings, runs for Geary
Revitalization seats, goes to A's and Raider's games, and cleans the streets.
Not doughy guys staring at screens and pretending they can make Soylent real
(really, how uncool can you be?) Unless it's got bourbon in it, most people in
the Bay could care less.

[0][http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/447/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/447/transcript)

[1][http://mafia.wikia.com/wiki/San_Jose_crime_family](http://mafia.wikia.com/wiki/San_Jose_crime_family)

[2][http://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-
data](http://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data)

[3][http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Council_4/Elected_Officials_and...](http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Council_4/Elected_Officials_and_Collections/Homeless_Task_Force.aspx)

[4][http://blog.burningman.com/2013/09/news/black-rock-
city-2013...](http://blog.burningman.com/2013/09/news/black-rock-
city-2013-population/)

------
a2kadet
> A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I am
> using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this.

Do we really think startups are the silver bullet to solve all of the world's
problems?

