Patricia Calfee Picache says pronouncements of the death of San Francisco are premature.
I was a teenager when my family moved to San Francisco, a city that comes with mythical stories of boom and bust. Admittedly, I fell hard for the City, like a boyfriend my mother didn’t like. San Francisco quickly became my forever home, but these days the city feels like a punching bag.
Our art scene is pathetic. Our downtown is dead. Washed up and vainglorious, San Francisco is plainly over, the headlines shout.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there is even a particular brand of shoes that the Tech Bros won’t wear anymore, lest the rubber-padded soles remind them of our geographical presence.
As a near-native, I don’t take the disses personally, probably because I’ve watched our city ebb and flow, and now I have the gilded gift of age: Perspective. San Francisco has been through good times and bad because, as both scientists and spiritualists agree, there is a cycle to life.