Good snapshot!<p>SF, in the post IPO-3.0 glow is sure a short place. It's in transition.<p>The big battles to IPO and get paid for all that delayed gratification, are over.<p>These unicorns are made real in all their off-white reality, trailing glitter scintillae as they trot in fresh mud. Of course, not all the IPOs are mainfest, but all can see them coming.<p>It's like waiting outside the classroom for your friends after your last final of the year, in that early evening light of May, but before they are out of theirs'. The party is coming, but you are very tired from cramming, and your friends are still crunching away. So you sit, watch others plop out of the test, have a cigarette to pass time, enjoy the sun-warm concrete seep into your feet and thighs, and take a nip out of the flask.<p>That's the feeling I get out of SF now, out of this article. The exhausted biding of time.
Most of the problems described in the article are the direct result of the city's refusal to allow adequate housing construction to keep up with demand.
"The store displayed high-end kitchen and grill tools, sets of cheese knives, truffle-flavored potato chips, wine, small-batch chocolate, Wagyu beef jerky, buckets of flowers, and a variety of small, high-design jars containing the sorts of transactional condiments and ephemera that often circulate as hostess gifts: preserved lemon paste; pork lard; red-pepper jam; hand-poured candles. Chunks of pink Himalayan salt were packaged with miniature graters near a Scandinavian-looking guacamole press."<p>San Francisco has become a parody of civilization. This paragraph reads like a description of an Earth-themed tourist stop. A collection of shallow signifiers of what it's like to be a human, that you can take home and show your friends and family to prove you visited.
I think the title is a little misleading, I was expecting an article demonstrating that there is little correlation between top salaries or stock payouts and happiness; seems more just a nostalgia rant for the way SF used to be.
Ooh she spoke with a 15 year resident, at the pie shop, the twee pie shop that took over the flower shop that had been there for 50 years. I got mine, now everyone else leave.<p>And in passing she name checks Philz as part of her listing all that is gone is replaced by start up millions spiel. I’m not a fan of Phil personally, but thats between me and him. Whats interesting is the story of Philz. He had a corner store on a corner with 2 other corner stores. His wasn’t doing any business. Phil, I assume he’s an immigrant, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He experimented with coffee and figured out the whole pour over deal. He got a good mention in the SF Weekly back when weekly papers were still vibrant. Word spread. I went to Philz to see what the fuss was. He had one pour over station. The store still had metro racks with canned goods and a cooler with soda pop. Phil made my first drink at Philz. The interesting part is how Phil turned a dying corner store into a growing business with backing. In the passing example of Philz by the author, she shows how shallow and superficial her article really is. She knows nothing really about Philz. She only knows he’s backed by millions. Philz is a classic american success story. And so are many of the tech businesses.
This felt like a dispassionate ramble on San Francisco's roots in 60s counterculture while also ironically offering no help to the problem of big money flowing into the Valley (and in a way, being part of the problem she identifies from the technocrats). I found it difficult to get through.
A fair amount of my friends are on a way to become IPO-millionaires this year. All of them live in SF, obviously. I'm curious to see how this flood of new-made riches will affect the city and its socio-economic and political issues.
I've never understood the line: money doesn't buy happiness.<p>Yes, money sitting in my bank account doesn't make me happy.<p>However, my Porsche makes me quite happy. The townhouse I lived in brought me peace on the weekends. Buying plane tickets to wherever on a whim makes me happy. Buying nice clothes and wearing them makes me happy. Spending money to further my knowledge just because makes me happy.