
America’s Havana: Thousands Say “Ciao” to San Francisco - jseliger
https://www.city-journal.org/thousands-leaving-troubled-san-francisco
======
necubi
This is a weak rant that has little business being on HN. Just a bunch of
random complaints that poorly reflects the totality of SF. Some hits are
totally misplaced, like this one:

> 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.

~~~
bhupy
> 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...](https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-
francisco/article/bay-area-exodus-fleeing-moving-cost-census-13778557.php)

~~~
necubi
That's not what your article says?

> 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.

~~~
bhupy
If you'd read the immediately following paragraph, you'll note that this
distinction between domestic and international migration is extremely 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.

------
ransom1538
I spent 15 years in SF. Experience: Paying $4100 for a 2 bedroom, being
assaulted on the muni multiple times, trying to explain to my parents why
needles litter the sidewalk, going through a detective witness interview
(after my neighbor was violently attacked and had her home ransacked). I was
willing to stay. I love SF. Once I realized things would only get worse, I
left :(

~~~
101404
How can a city with so much income and smart inhabitants become such a #$*@&?
What happened?

~~~
coenhyde
Existing property owners have too much control to prevent new construction.
Consciously and subconsciously they restrict new construction to boost
property values. IMO most of SF's problems can be traced back to this. And
it's a vicious cycle. Once you're in debt up to your eyeballs for your home,
you do not want to see the problem fixed. SF city doesn't want it fixed either
because they want more property tax dollars.

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.

~~~
mixmastamyk
That’s the housing crisis, yes. While related, it is not an excuse for shit in
the street and high crime.

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

~~~
cameronbrown
Nah.. housing crisis causes the poor to have nowhere to go. It's the root
cause.

------
Pfhreak
This piece seems to be a political hit piece on SF. Don't get me wrong, there
are plenty of critical analyses on the failures of both the city and the
citizens of SF, but this is not that.

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.)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Yes, you could feel the seething behind the words. Still tended to agree with
it.

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.

------
jdhn
>Oracle, for example, has moved its yearly conference to Las Vegas.

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.

~~~
derision
I think it actually is a good example, I think your argument would make sense
if they were moving to a new growing location, but the fact that they're
moving to a place they could have moved all along exactly shows that now there
is some incentive that didn't exist before

~~~
jdhn
I think that the Schwab example is much better, as they could stay if they
wanted (they have the money), but decided to leave anyways.

------
Lammy
> Even the sights and sounds of the city suggest a certain derangement. When
> the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was first built in the 1970s, its
> designers failed to understand the acoustics between wheel, track, and
> tunnel. Since the nineteenth century, competent railroad engineers have
> known that a tapered, flanged wheel will handle turns better and generate
> less noise. For some reason, BART designers ignored this design in favor of
> a cylindrical wheel with a straight edge.

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://i.imgur.com/hVT6fya.jpg)

~~~
mc32
Isn’t BaRT going ahead and tapering the wheels time reduce the noise? I think
I heard there was one measure they were taking.

~~~
necubi
They already did, a few years ago. It's much, much better than it used to
be—you can now have a conversation in the transbay tube. And the new cars
("Fleet of the Future") are actually quite pleasant, although they've been
rolling out very slowly.

~~~
mc32
The worst if it wasn’t the tube so much as the MacArthur and the Berkeley
interchanges as well as the civic center- 16th street dogleg.

------
nostromo
I've noticed in Seattle how differently Covid-19 has impacted the city core vs
the suburbs.

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.

~~~
notyourwork
Downtown is great for running and biking due to lack of foot traffic and
pedestrians. Otherwise downtown is a ghost town as of late and it’s eerie at
times.

------
enoreyes
It feels a bit misleading to immediately attack Boudin for his work in
Venezuela. He was a translator there between undergrad and law school. His
leftist background is certainly quite interesting but I felt that the early
attempt to attack his character by associating him with Chavez comes across as
a bit of a stretch that I think hurts the credibility of the author.

~~~
bosswipe
Yea that was my hint that this is just an ideological rant.

~~~
trowawee
I was curious what the City Journal was, so I looked it and the Manhattan
Institute up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research).
Worthwhile reading for anyone wondering where the original piece is coming
from.

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.)

~~~
refurb
Care to list everything they take a position on and been wrong about?

That's quite a claim.

------
qppo
I kind of want to write a dystopian novel where to solve the housing crisis,
the state of California contracts private businesses to build out rapid
transit underground. But instead of paying them any money, the excess earth is
dumped into the Bay and the tunnelers are granted land rights to anything
above water. The Bay is only 12 feet deep anyway.

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?_

~~~
RhysU
I have a silly fictional notion that California's way forward will at some
time require being annexed by Oregon so that they can wipe away oodles of
historical legislative choices in one swoop. Followed quickly by a "civil war"
in which "South Oregon" secedes.

------
jedberg
Most of these complaints aren't really city issues. BART isn't run by the
city. PG&E provides power to 1/2 of the state.

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.

~~~
starik36
> Right now, it makes sense not to prosecute petty crime

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.

------
not_a_moth
Left SF after 8 years. Many other world cities have what SF offers, including
the beauty, restaurants, quirky bars and cafes etc. but the thing that stands
out most is the concentration of talented, smart, ambitious people in tech.
Tech scenes in other cities don't compare. Something in the air that will push
you to be better.

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.

------
wyclif
I think it's fair at this point to say that any HN submissions that are
critical of SF are going to be immediately flagged. Every single submission
I've ever made that talks about these issues has been immediately flagged.

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.

------
droopyEyelids
Analyzing the demographic flux of a metropolitan area can be really
interesting.

That is not what this article is about.

------
gorgoiler
The article brings up BART wheel/rail noise, which is an interesting window
into SF’s unique and some might say self inflicted issues.

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.

~~~
Gibbon1
The flat wheel thing is a mistake that was made what, 60 years ago. Everyone
involved is dead. They've been finally working on fixing it. Yeah BART could
be a better built systems if only people long dead had made better choices.

------
AtlasBarfed
The property values and city taxes probably keep going up, so the powers that
be and the NIMBY donors won't care about any of the little people problems.

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

------
tjr225
A milquetoast hit piece of a beautiful city.

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

~~~
mc32
Because for decades liberalist idealism hasn’t effectively addressed the
issues and people keep on thinking that the problem is they’re not liberal
enough and double down on it(DA Budin). Although if ND is any representation
some people are experiencing buyers’ remorse... We’ll see.

~~~
refurb
Reminds me of the US during the Vietnam War. Things weren't going well and
when asked why, the answer was always "We need more. More soldiers. More
bombs."

Never even entertained the thought the entire approach was wrong.

