Plenty, I’m sure. But Sarah Lacy’s diatribe on TechCrunch isn’t going to get us anti-chain coffee drinking, hoodie-wearing nihilists into a seminar on what might help us help ourselves any time soon.
Lacy, a sometimes controversial tech journalist, titles her post “Calm Down Hippies: What San Francisco Needs to Learn from the Valley“. Yes, Sarah, that got our attention. And there is some truth in the general gist of the post, that calls out people who live in San Francisco and work for web startups (whether they are here in the city or down in the Valley) not to hate on Blue Bottle Coffee for wanting to park a truck in front of Dolores Park and sell individually brewed cups of fair trade or to take too much pride in your actions for keeping Trader Joe’s from opening a new store in the Castro. Stop the insanity already, people. You must not have gotten your official hippie memo when you first came to town (two years ago? six months ago?). Blue Bottle and Trader Joe’s equal good. Home Depot and Walmart equal bad.
But where Lacy loses the argument with anyone who really cares about these 49 square miles is when she complains that the $270 million it would cost the city to upgrade its ports in order to host America’s Cup is “nothing for this city.”
While she has a valid economic argument – the investment would create thousands of jobs – one need not live in San Francisco more than six months to know that $270 million could be used to improve a lot of what is already here (like filthy streets, lack of affordable housing and a battered public transportation system).
Hippies – which any San Franciscan worth their organic broccoli and car share membership – don’t always think linearly. We don’t see things in black and white. Pluses and minuses and bottom lines. We go with the vibe. It’s not always about common sense. It’s about the vibe common sense sometimes brings with it. A coffee truck parked in front of Dolores Park, even one that dispenses beautiful Blue Bottle coffee is going to block someone’s view. A Trader Joe’s in the Castro, even if it’s closer to my home, is going to create more traffic and make it harder to get to and from my home to Trader Joe’s. $270 million? Down in the Valley, a state of mind by the way, not a real place, that’s just a drop in the bucket, but up here in the real live city, baby, that’s a lot of bread.
Read the whole story at TechCrunch. Photo by KazzaDrask Media.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
