From Boom: A Journal of California, an interview with the author Rebecca Solnit on the troubling changes in San Francisco's public sphere, as the city becomes home to the largest tech corporations and its longtime local residents, artistic culture, and affordable lifestyle fall by the wayside. As Solnit comments (in this unsettling but terrific discussion):
"You think of so many individual people who have been absolutely amazing and done wonderful things. And I don’t see that in the new San Francisco, where it just costs so damn much to live here, you either have to have a trust fund or be working really hard at making money. You can’t be doing what people have been doing in my tenure in San Francisco, which is to do something part time for a living, but do for free with no expectation of return what you’re passionate about, whether it’s human rights or environmentalism or painting or poetry or scholarship. That scope to be poor and idealistic no longer exists, and it was those poor idealistic people that made the great culture of San Francisco. They are portrayed as slackers in the mainstream conversation, and there have always been slackers, but also people working on AIDS issues, on environmental justice, on human rights, on after-school programs for at-risk kids, and not getting rich at it."
A must read.