San Francisco – A City of Parties, Parks, and Protests

The vestiges of the hippie movement are everywhere as I walk down Haight Street in San Francisco. It’s the 41^st Haight-Ashbury Street Fair — the annual fair where people come together to remember and celebrate the “Summer of Love.”

Pop-up stores peddle psychedelic wear and trinkets to middle-aged tourists who are here to relive the past and reminisce about peace, love, and music. Stores such as Piedmont Boutique and Rasputin Records have been through iterations but have managed to survive over the years. The influence of the East is evident in the eclectic wear that adorns the shelves of “The Love of Ganesha,” and the nearby store selling henna.

“Peace Man!”

The storekeeper with the ponytail flashes the peace sign as he takes my money. Twenty dollars in cash for a “Haight-Ashbury” T-shirt. For a brief moment, I consider picking up a shirt with psychedelic print but decide against it.

That would be overkill.

As I walk away, the blended smell of barbecued meats and marijuana smoke wafts through the air.

It’s party time in Haight-Ashbury!

The lyrics of an old song come to mind.

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.

San Francisco has changed.

If you wear flowers in your hair, you will stand out. You are more likely to fit in if you sport a backpack and zip around on an e-scooter. And, if you walk around the Union Square area of San Francisco, you are likely to encounter some not so gentle people.

San Francisco is a victim of its own success — its success as a tech hub.

The dot-com boom and bust, Web 2.0, the rise of social media, and the growth of the sharing economy have all contributed to San Francisco’s economic success and its troubles. The influx of highly-paid tech workers willing to shell out big bucks for housing in prime locations has hurt the average San Franciscan. Protests targeted at tech companies and workers would indicate that the anti-materialism sentiment is still prevalent in pockets of the society.

Activism is not new to San Francisco.

From the Summer of Love to gay liberation, freeway revolts to skyscraper protests, tech bus blockades to anti-gentrification rallies, there is always something to protest about in San Francisco.

The recent introduction of unregulated rent-by-the-minute e-scooters has provided fodder for another protest. The convenient leave-it-anywhere model of e-scooters has become an instant hit with the younger commuters. But the illegal use of the scooters on sidewalks and the general increase in the litter have added fuel to the simmering anti-tech fire. The activists have responded by trashing the scooters and using them to block buses carrying tech workers.

First-world problems!

Seven out of the top ten companies in LinkedIn’s Top Companies 2018  are located around the Bay area. The tax dollars and the boost to the economy that these companies provide are not small. The ecosystem of services that thrive on the tech boom cannot be discounted either. Dreamforce — the annual four-day event organized by Saleforce.com — alone brings over 170,000 attendees and their wallets to the city.

So you can either love the tech companies or hate them.

As an occasional visitor, it is difficult to see past the city’s socio-economic challenges despite the beautiful parks and beaches that make living here so appealing to many.  That’s the thing about San Francisco, it has many attributes that metropolitan cities would kill for — a major port with proximity to Asia, a booming tech sector, low population, perfect weather, wine country, and beaches.

And yet, the city is dogged by homelessness and its related fallout. The higher cost of living triggered by the tech boom and the gentrification of poor neighborhoods have not helped the situation. From the rhetoric spouted during the recent mayoral race, it is clear that the seven thousand or so homeless people pose the biggest challenge to the city’s administrators.

With a high-income tax base and a small population, it is hard to believe that San Francisco’s problems are due to the lack of money. So how can the city and county officials of San Francisco solve such an intractable issue?

London Breed, the first African-American woman elected as the Mayor of San Francisco, clearly has her work cut out for her.