

Things San Franciscans Should Be Thankful For - dereksteer
http://blog.modeanalytics.com/post/68372535153/10-charts-san-franciscans-should-be-thankful-for

======
ENOTTY
If TFA is meant to say San Franciscans should be grateful for the
gentrification of the city, then it's pretty insulting, and frankly,
emblematic of the entitlement and lack of awareness in the tech community. If
anything, TFA proves that life is getting better for a small segment of the
population of San Francisco.

1\. Chart does not discuss why unemployment is down. Is it down because
there's a ton of tech workers moving in while the unemployed poor are priced
out of the city?

2\. Same argument for #1

3\. Data comes from self-reports on Glassdoor, which polls mostly from white-
collar workers. So this chart should really say "Job Satisfaction Scores by
City for White Collar Workers."

4\. This chart measures against the national income distribution, which is a
comparison that makes no sense, given San Francisco's insane cost of living.

5\. Yes, San Franciscans should root for sports teams that are given money
from municipalities to rich owners to build stadiums. This is money that could
have been used to fund initiatives that actually improve the lives of low
income families. The chart talks about playoff games that most people can't
afford to attend, or if it's on cable, most people can't watch.

10\. You can fly to a vacation destination. If you can afford it.

TFA reminds me of the saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies,
and statistics."

~~~
pbreit
What's TFA?

~~~
benologist
Acronym for "The Fucking Article" although in this case the 'a' is an
advertisement.

~~~
steveklabnik
For extra context, this was (originally, I think) used on /. because people
would comment without reading the articles. The 'fucking' is used to
communicate annoyance that it wasn't read in the first place.

An example, for this article:

OP: "Yeah, there's a lot to be thankful for, but I get delayed out of SFO
because of fog almost every flight."

Reply: "TFA actually has a chart that shows that flight delays due to weather
are not a problem, at least compared to other cities."

~~~
benologist
Urban Dictionary agrees with /. as the source but derived from RTFM -> RTFA ->
TFA which makes sense:

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA)

------
brianmcdonough
I lived in SF for four years and I loved it, but the one thing that always
bothered me was the smug sense by some people of how great they are compared
to the rest of the world just because they live in San Francisco.

------
mililani
I want to see the list things San Franciscans should NOT be thankful for. Let
me think of some things:

1) crazy high rents

2) lots of homeless people

3) urine smell every where

4) horrible parking and traffic

5) foggy cold summers -- maybe a plus in your book

~~~
dylz
6) poop in addition to urine

7) public transportation that goes on strike several times a year

8) 2) except with untreated mental issues due to lack of UHC and others

~~~
jurassic
9) Clouds of second-hand drug smoke. And I don't mean cigarettes.

------
lquist
_San Francisco has nearly 40 restaurants per 10,000 households, which is 40
percent more than the second highest city._

Is this the right way to determine the variety of restaurant options available
to a city resident? I think maybe a better metric might be restaurants per
square mile? As somebody who has lived in both SF and NYC, I'm a bit confused
by a result that says that SF has more restaurant options than NYC. Just a
thought.

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fiatmoney
I kind of have an instinctive dislike of the notion of "thankfulness", like
these are pure grants of fortune we shouldn't look too deeply into. The truth
is that policy & other things that are _actually changeable_ have a hell of an
impact on where and who prospers. You might be "lucky" in a Rawlsian sense to
be born in a wealthy area, but the fact that money has been dumped into the SF
Bay area for 70 years or so, for vacuum tubes to integrated circuits to
microprocessors to AI research to social media startups, has been the result
of choices specific people have made.

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dannsfw
This is the sort of self-righteous, living-in-a-bubble article you could only
count on San Francisco to churn out.

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aliston
The Loma Prieta was not "the big one."

[http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/seismologists-say-
bay...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/seismologists-say-bay-area-is-
due-for-major-earthquake-that-could-cripple-region/Content?oid=2172405)

------
ruswick
This piece is incredibly myopic and somewhat appalling. A more appropriate
title would be "Things affluent tech workers should be thankful for."

The list doesn't offer any sort of context for the numbers presented, nor does
it demonstrate causality _in any way, shape, or form._ In all likelihood, the
reason that life is so good in SF is that all the people for whom life is
difficult have been forced out of the city or into homelessness by entitled,
privileged tech workers.

In my opinion, there is no reason to be thankful for gentrification.
Gentrification destroys cities, and is responsible for the wholesale
homogenization of culture. If you are thankful for the state of affairs in SF,
you are part of the problem.

------
brianmcdonough
I lived in SF for four years and I loved it, but the one thing that always
bothered me was the smug sense by some people of how great they are compared
to the rest of the world just because they happen to live there.

------
michaelochurch
There are four demonic elephants (named Housing Prices, Cultural Erosion, Age
Discrimination, and Limousine NIMBY Leftism) the size of tanks in the room.
They're all shitting _highly_ radioactive nuclear diarrhea by the truckload
per minute and you can actually taste the alpha particles. But this article
came along to say, "look, 10 cute kittens!" In fact, the kittens are all dead
of asphyxiation from the vapors coming off the putrefied elephant feces, and
covered in liquid shit, which makes them a lot less cute.

This article ignores the demonic elephant-monsters and tries to bring
attention to the kittens. Poor kitties.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> Limousine NIMBY Leftism

Are you able to elaborate on this one?

~~~
michaelochurch
Sure. New York and San Francisco have a lot of people that are total assholes
to everyone (especially their subordinates and colleagues at work) but
consider it OK because, after all, they're Democrats. They're not "those
people" who overtly espouse economic inequality; they're couth enough to
_covertly_ support it. They also tend to be the people who (a) keep housing
prices high in places like San Francisco and New York by pushing NIMBY
regulations that block housing deveopment, and (b) choose not to vaccinate
their kids on pseudoscientific grounds and are singularly responsible for the
resurgence of third-world childhood diseases in places like the Bay Area. It's
all OK, though, if you're working on a "world changing product" and promise
God to "help Africa" (price discriminate with said product) once you've made
it to the top.

You know how potheads lose motivation because when you're high, even goofy
stuff feels like real accomplishment, and some eventually lose that need to
experience substantial achievement? That's why limousine liberals are
poisonous. They and their acolytes and their inefficient nonprofits (often
with top executives making $350k on a 10-to-3 workday) give a bunch of people
the satisfaction that comes from helping people-- the feeling of having done
something-- without actually helping people much.

We need real liberalism and real environmental protection and a real social
safety net, not fuckheads using phony environmental arguments to push NIMBY
policies that keep their houses overvalued.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Cheers mate, that explains it. I was struggling to reconcile the Bay Area's
famed leftie tendencies with the realities of inequality on the ground.

------
smtddr
I wonder what all the non-tech job holders think.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification)

We should all know how good we have it. I know I'm making more money than I
ever considered possible writing code and I know I love my job. What I want to
read about is what happened to everyone who was in SF before this tech thing
started and what's happening to all the people who are not part of the tech-
wave & startup-parties. All those coffee-shops, bars and restaurants that the
tech-crowd hang out at; how are the employees of said places making ends meet?
Do they live near their jobs? Does half their salary go to transportation
to/from work? When I worked at Gamestop while in school, that was the case for
me. Those were the days; a paycheck that was less than $400 =/ I really don't
know how my co-workers who didn't live with their parents or going to college
were living on that or what they're doing nowadays.

Speaking of which,
[https://foursquare.com/v/gamestop/4a29d524f964a520e4951fe3](https://foursquare.com/v/gamestop/4a29d524f964a520e4951fe3)

How in the world can Gamestop afford that store on Market street? I walk by it
almost weekly. Doesn't look very busy to me. What must the rent be there? How
many games, consoles, controllers, etc. must they be selling a month to make
that worthwhile? What are the employees salaries? Where do they live??!!!

~~~
asveikau
One day I was waiting to meet somebody and I ended up loitering by that
GameStop for a good chunk of time on a weekend afternoon, as such I watched a
lot of people window shopping or making occasional purchases.

First thing that surprised me: they seemed to sell more used iOS devices than
anything else.

I don't know if it's always like this, but most people I observed in there did
not look all that well-to-do. They seemed like mostly local kids (not kids of
yuppies) who just hopped off muni and aspired to save up for months to buy a
refurbished 3-generations-ago iPod touch. I saw a few kids of that description
make purchases. Nobody all that ostentatious, or anything like all the
"playground for the rich" stuff that people in SF rail against. It was
actually refreshing to see kids excited about what most HNers would consider
"unusable" tech.

