I like to make broad, sweeping statements that go against the grain for the class of folks among which I live -- or rather, lived. These generalizations usually raise eyebrows, if not hackles. This habit is not just a conversational gambit or bit of showmanship: I always believe what I say even if I know full well that I have overstated my case. My point is only overstated, not distorted.
I have often been heard to say in conversation with well-heeled tourists just returned from a jaunt to Thailand, say, or Patagonia: “I don’t like travel. Why should I haul my sorry ass half way around the world to look at ruins and monuments and works of art when I seldom cross the street to look at the ones we have here?”
I have been heard to say “I don’t like children. I didn’t like them when I was one, and I don’t like them any better now. They are cruel, selfish, mean-spirited, and have no conversation at all.”
I have been heard to say among San Franciscans who wallow in self-congratulatory declamations about the grandeur of “The City’s” beauty, restaurants, museums, and successful companies that
“San Francisco isn’t really a city. Sure it was one once, but nobody works here any more, nothing is made here, and no one in Los Angeles or New York would mistake it for a hub of anything. San Francisco has become a resort, an elegant ocean liner docked permanently in a grand harbor, a gated community for the very rich, who own houses and apartments here for convenience when traveling far from their homes in New York, Geneva, Paris, or Milan.”
This latter sentiment is one I subscribe to more strongly every day. With the nascent “improvement” of the Tenderloin, the work will be complete: no one not in possession of a fortune or earning a six-figure income annually (at least) will be able to find a home here any longer. And then the death of San Francisco will be complete, what began around the time the Hippies held a funeral service of the Haight-Ashbury will be done.
Here is the latest essay from Mark Ellinger, one of the most important, insightful, and eloquent chroniclers of this sad history:
I have often been heard to say in conversation with well-heeled tourists just returned from a jaunt to Thailand, say, or Patagonia: “I don’t like travel. Why should I haul my sorry ass half way around the world to look at ruins and monuments and works of art when I seldom cross the street to look at the ones we have here?”
I have been heard to say “I don’t like children. I didn’t like them when I was one, and I don’t like them any better now. They are cruel, selfish, mean-spirited, and have no conversation at all.”
I have been heard to say among San Franciscans who wallow in self-congratulatory declamations about the grandeur of “The City’s” beauty, restaurants, museums, and successful companies that
“San Francisco isn’t really a city. Sure it was one once, but nobody works here any more, nothing is made here, and no one in Los Angeles or New York would mistake it for a hub of anything. San Francisco has become a resort, an elegant ocean liner docked permanently in a grand harbor, a gated community for the very rich, who own houses and apartments here for convenience when traveling far from their homes in New York, Geneva, Paris, or Milan.”
This latter sentiment is one I subscribe to more strongly every day. With the nascent “improvement” of the Tenderloin, the work will be complete: no one not in possession of a fortune or earning a six-figure income annually (at least) will be able to find a home here any longer. And then the death of San Francisco will be complete, what began around the time the Hippies held a funeral service of the Haight-Ashbury will be done.
Here is the latest essay from Mark Ellinger, one of the most important, insightful, and eloquent chroniclers of this sad history:
