#91 San Francisco
March 23, 2008 by clander
San Francisco is one of the top US destinations for white people in terms of both travel and living. It is universally agreeable and is a safe discussion topic for any situation.
The city is considered one of the world’s premiere locations for white person research.
White people like to vacation in San Francisco because it has beautiful architecture, fantastic food, and it is near the water. They like to live in San Francisco because of its abundance of Non Profit Organizations, Expensive Sandwiches, Wine, political outlook, and most importantly its diversity.
Since many white people either live in, plan to move to, or closely identify with San Francisco it is imperative that you know how best to deal with them.
The City of San Francisco has a very multicultural population that ranges from white to gay to Asian. Within white culture this known as “ideal diversity” for its provision of exotic restaurants while simultaneously preserving property values. The presence of gays and Asians is imperative as it two provides two of the key resources most necessary for white success and happiness.
However, it is important to be aware of the fact that regions outside of San Francisco feature many people who are not white, gay or Asian. They are greatly appreciated during the census, but white people are generally very happy that they stay in places like Oakland and Richmond. This enables white people to feel good about living near people of diverse backgrounds without having to directly deal with troublesome issues like income gaps or schooling.
Still, the presence of other minorities are welcomed by white people for so many more reasons than just statistics! Much in the way that white people in Brooklyn feel a strong and unfounded connection with The Notorious BIG, white people in San Francisco feel the need to identify with rappers from the East Bay. Interestingly enough, the further they venture from San Francisco, the stronger their need to represent their region.
“Oh man, I went to the Too Short show last night. So hyphy man, so hyphy. You should come by some time and we’ll ghost ride the Prius.”
When you are presented with statements like this, the best response is to say “Berkeley is close to Oakland,” and the white person will likely nod and throw up some sort of west side hand sign.
Though it is exceptionally easy to put someone from San Francisco in a good mood, there are some caveats. When talking to a white person who lives in San Francisco, it is best not to bring up New York City. Though they live in a world class city, San Franciscans have a crippling inferiority complex about New York and even hinting at that will make them very sad or very defensive.
Fortunately, there is a fool-proof method for quickly returning the conversation to a positive, trust-building tone. No matter how much you have offended someone from San Francisco, you can always make them feel better by asking them how they feel about Southern California. They will instantly talk of how it is filled with crime, pollution, hegemonic culture, and the wrong kind of white people: “I swear California is like two separate countries, and I am so thankful that I live in the cultural center of the West Coast.” This will allow them to reassert their superiority and leave the conversation with a positive feeling about themselves and about you.
Castro Photo by bkusler who has done an excellent photo essay on Stuff White People Like. Dancing Photo by amynugget.
Volvos are also acceptable for ghost riding.
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I have come from Hamburg, Germany. Born and happily germanic raised. In 2007, I have come to San Fransico, California to enjoy the difference in cultures. San Fran- is definately different from where I was raised. Real Germans do not seperate minorities. Instead we ( Non- Us) Germans love difference. The same flowers get boring after looking at them for so long. Different flowers is what makes a beautiful bonatical garden.
I hope San Fransicico natives learn to really love and appreciate who they really are by not debasing someone else based on irrelevant unkindness.
Yea! San Fransico natives may not care about what others think. But if you really love your city, you would not make it difficult for others to come there.
Pissing on someone else’s corn flakes is truly not thee answer. GROW UP PEOPLE! GROW UP!
True about the lack of serious racism in Germany, in part of the tragic lessons of Nazism maltreated fellow Germans of the Jewish faith, heritage or ancestry in the name of “Aryan racial pride”. Why can America learn seriously about racism is dangerous, in this case fellow Americans of color, African descent or non-Caucasian appearance?
Germany went through the process of reunification to unite a similar ethnic group, but evolved two subcultures: East & West, the East took about 20 years to recover from the communist era and the West, “moneyed” or “snobs” by the so-called “Ossies” portrayed as backward or docile under indoctrination of Communist rule.
America is on its way to break apart, turn against each other and fall into the authoritarian trap to solve problems, the very things Germany has gone through and paid the price dearly to never get into racism, authoritarianism and to restore a divided country by tearing down the wall. +
“You obviously haven’t LIVED in LA. There is a big difference between living here and visiting. I wouldn’t want to visit here either.”
Very true! I was born and live in Southern California. However, I also lived in the Bay Area and worked in (though never lived in) San Francisco proper for 5 years. San Francisco is a very small city with a lot of quaint neighborhoods, great architecture and beautiful scenery. However, a lot of times the weather is bad (cold and windy) and you’d be surprised how much of the city shuts down after hours. It’s nice for tourists because they can feel like they are in a city without really being overwhelmed, although SF is a lot more dangerous than people realize (higher homicide rate than LA, for instance). I love to visit SF and makes for a nice vacation. I liked living in the Bay Area, too,
and would consider moving back.
However, I far prefer to live in Southern California. The weather is warmer (my preference), the people are less pretentious (unless you get caught up in the model-actress-whatever scene), and the mountains and hills are so close by. You can’t really claim Monterey, Napa, Tahoe, or Yosemite as belonging to SF anymore than I can claim Santa Barbara, San Diego, or Las Vegas for LA, but if you want to do so notice that Southern California has its own Napa just 90 minutes from LA in Santa Barbara and Paso Robles, except it’s much more like Napa *used* to be (which is a good thing).
When you live in (or near) SF you realize that the city empties out after work and that there’s not much to do. I went to a lot of good shows at the Warfield, SF has a ballet company, and the SF MOMA is becoming less of a joke, but there’s not really all that much happening. Whereas in LA there is not only a thriving music scene but arts and entertainment in general is much more vibrant. In the last week or so we had the World Baseball Classic, the World Figure Skating Championships, the Kid’s Choice Awards, Alvin Ailey, and more. I often find myself having to make hard choices about how to spend my entertainment dollars or which events I want to attend. The amount of things going on at once is ridiculous. In the last year I saw the Terra Cotta Warriors from China, medieval art from the Cleveland Museum, one of the most important biggest gem collections in the world, a Georgia O’Keefe exhibit, one of the world’s four known large red diamonds, the Kirov Ballet, an exhibit highlighting Vanity Fair portraits, a Vermeer on loan to Norton Simon, an NBA playoff game, an MLB playoff game, a modern art exhibition highlighting Cold War Germany, an exhibit of Old World mosaics, a showing of “The Jerk” introduced by Steve Martin himself, and Wicked (which finally opened up in SF and a person in SF – not realizing I was from LA – went out of her way to tell me was coming in a prideful manner). That was in one year and I missed a lot of things I wanted to see and do like Coachella, Oakenfold on New Year’s Eve, and more I just can’t remember right now.
SF just cannot compete and a tourist would not realize that. You really have to live here to be able to experience all of the positives of living here. There’s not a lot of benefit to being a tourist here compared to more scenic places and unless you spend time here you will not be able to soak in what is going on around you. The LA Phil and Opera are world class, lots of trend-setting fashion is moving from NYC to LA, the music scene has *always* been strong here, the art community here is thriving, and add to that world class shopping, good food (not just pretentious gourmet fare), and lots of nature (if you look for it).
To be fair, LA has a lot of big city problems SF does not have and its sprawl means it lacks a civic center. The large numbers of immigrants pose problems and traffic is horrendous. I am not sure I see myself living here for the rest of my life. I will hopefully retire somewhere more quiet like Santa Barbara (but not so quiet as Carmel) and get into the city when I want to see something. However, for a younger person who still has energy to get out and do things and who also doesn’t much care for rain (or any weather except sunny and mild) I can’t imagine being anyplace else. SF is upset because it was once the preeminent city in California and it lost that title some time ago. I wouldn’t say it is fading into irrelevance, but I find it interesting that SF’s biggest claim to fame lately is the Silicon Valley while SF has all but disowned the South Bay (for some good reasons). So the biggest contribution came from an area SF would prefer didn’t exist. The person who mentioned that San Franciscans do not venture to the South Bay or East Bay was dead on. In spite of perceptions as being smart and worldly many of them are just ignorant and smug. After all, how could anyone of equal intellect, taste, and sophistication possibly live anywhere else?
A most excellent commentary on LA vs SF.
I lived and worked there in the Financial District at California and Kearney from ’67 – ’70, and I was struck, as you are, by the provinciality and irrationality of the mindset of many San Franciscans. An example: People would castigate you with great anger and hostility for using table sugar, but these same people had no problem with shoveling massive amounts of cocaine up their noses.
Many of these so-called “San Franciscans” who mount the most vociferous defense of SF and extol its superiority over LA were born and raised somewhere else and have never been to LA.
I didn’t read the rest of your Story because it was longer than the 3 sentences i’m capable of reading.
Anyhow, I lived in San Francsico around Octavia/Sutter, nice rich neighborhood. and i lived in a luxury hotel for a couple of months. I tell u ,i wouldn’t be caught dead in the other bay area places, actually if i’m there, i’ll probably be found dead, that is how bad it is.
My sentiments exactly. SF seems to pride itself on being so diverse and open minded yet when it comes to people who are different from them – for example someone who may not drive a prius, doesn’t work for a non-profit or public sector, or if you come from a small town – they can be extremely bigoted. Whenever I go to SF it also seems to be stuck in the late 1990′s.
i live in SF and i lovee it here.
the people are the most friendliest, nicest and happiest people on earth!
i never hear honking here.
and you can talk to any possible stranger. theyre very helpful and friendly.
its depressing being in LA really. people are very impatient. i think they are more individualistic people. theyre in hurry all the time. the honking, the traffic jam. oh god.
sf is definitely for people who likes to relax.
it is about culture really. if you make eye contact to people in the streets, most of them smiles at you or says hi or complement you on something. trying to make conversations.
they are veryy patient, i dont get it sometimes.
when i go to LA, im like used to make eye contact to other people and smile to them. but in LA, nobody does that. haha
and im like used to doing that, so thats weird
Making eye contact and smiling is kind of spooky. Are you a stalker?? stalker!
Are you fucking deaf? How is it you never hear honking? What hood do you live in?
People honk here just like the do everywhere else. And it sounds as though the fire trucks just roll around in circles, never going back to the firehouse.
(knock knock) Hello? (tap tap) Anybody home? Taime is fine, she likes to write just like I do. Ok, catch you later Taime. Btw, nice long story on being San Francisco proud. +
I lived NYC for many years; recently moved to Portland. It use to be when I’d be in SF, people would remark about the beat poets being from there, which I found funny but sadly incorrect. This stopped a while ago, no one cares about them anymore. People in San Francisco are smart, but they always seemed to be trying too hard. A lot of their artwork consisted of little robots, LEDs and lasers. Like Paris, it is essentially a city futilely trying to maintain a cultural legacy that is dying.
LA the first times I REALLY visited it was provincial, not very sophisticated. I remember being in silver lake, exene cervenka had a store on this street, it was somber. But in the last couple of years, man, the LA has developed a great music scene! Fashion is flourishing. Its has an art movement but its very dalieques, not good. The artistic neighborhoods are more vibrant than in the bay area. Yes, the day is coming very soon that LA with its better arts (the getty) and everything else will be the cultural center of the west coast, if not now. People from SF have lamented this to me with tears in their eyes…
You lost me with you Paris comment and I strongly disagree with that assessment. I live in NY and my mother’s family is from Paris and I have been going there my entire life and have lived there, though briefly. Paris and France in general are always looking to modernize, for new views on how to better their city, looking toward the future. They are definitely NOT stuck in the past. NY on the other hand, in many ways is a city that is full of nostalgia and I see it as culturally declining in so many ways. People come here searching for the NY they read about in novels written half a century ago or from an old movie or a black and white photo taken in the 1950s of 2 celebrated people dancing at a night club. My European and Australian friends who have lived here for at least 6 months have all said how sad and rather pathetic the scene is here. And I have to agree to a large extent. When I’m in Paris I look around and think, “Fuck NY! This is where it’s at!”
OMG, San Francisco has a superiority complex over Southern California? What a bunch of kooks. I’m from LA and have been to the bay area multiple times for business and once with my Chinese wife siteseeing. Once was one time too many for her. She didn’t like and I just barely tolerate San Francisco. It’s not really that I don’t like it, it’s more that it’s on par with some easily forgetable and second class “city” like Las Vegas which barely qualifies as a city at all. I mean Market steet has that ‘feel’ in much the same way that the strip in Vegas has that feel but I’m bored after about a day and a half. I need that LA graft fix like heroine. It’s hard to explain, even though almost no place in LA has that real city feel, not even downtown to me, the sum of LA does, whereas the area around Market in SFO has that city feel, the sum of it does not. SFO has it over, say, Costa Mesa or Irvine but is on par with perhaps LA’s San Fernando Valley. Sorry, but it’s true. The only redeeming qualities about SFO is the weather, I love fog, and all the hot Asian women, that’s kinda my thing. I’m not alone, a colleage who is from sfo and lived there most of his life has the same sentiments. SFO is vaacid and forgettable, and it’s the nicest part of the Bay area. Don’t get me started on Walnut Creek. New York is over-hyped but much more livable than SFO. LA is probably the greatest city to live in for the US. Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Paris, London, those are real, all around, ‘cities’. If you’re from SFO, don’t leave, you might find out that there is a better world which would only depress you. Ignorance is bliss.
Seriously. You compare SF to Vegas? Are you serious? You obviously haven’t spent any time more than 1/4 mile from the strip, and not more than 400 feet from Market St. San Francisco has all the positives of a big city (culture, food, shopping, etc) without having the garbage to deal with like you do in, say, LA (gridlock traffic, choking smog, etc). There’s a reason why housing in SF has fallen a relatively small amount, whereas its fallen off a cliff in LA. All the fakers pretending they had money when WHOOPS…now I don’t.
Oh, and nevermind that within an hour and a half of San Francisco, you have:
Napa – the wine all the posh people in LA pay big money for in restaurants. Yeah, its in our back yard
Tahoe – Next to Whistler and maybe Sun Valley, the best ski area on the west coast
Monterey – When you see beautiful pictures of “California”, they’re not of the dirty and disgusting coastline of LA, they’re of Monterey, Big Sur, Carmel, Pebble Beach, etc. You have…what…Newport Beach? Nice.
So let me speak for San Francisco when I say, I hope you and your wife Sightseeing enjoy your lives together in the armpit of America. Stay there, and don’t bother coming back up here.
Yes I am serious, I’ve been all over the city of San Francisco and the Bay area and .. me want nap now. You obviously haven’t LIVED in LA. There is a big difference between living here and visiting. I wouldn’t want to visit here either. It’s a city that takes some getting used to but you grow to love it. SFO, day two visiting, bored. Maybe living there is different, I don’t know and don’t pretend to. But I wouldn’t want to live there or Vegas, or Phoenix for the same reasons.
BTW, the market of homes where I live has gone up, not down so stick to subjects you know something about like how all the attractions are in your back yard. Why live close to where you want to be, I chose to live where I want to be. BTW, Newport Beach? Why not just mention El Segundo? That’s not LA.
C
Charles r u even white))?
the southern california part is priceless
The diversity angle is really off base. The two hippest neighborhoods in SF for white people are the Mission which is the largest Hispanic neighborhood in the City and the Lower Haight which has a large African American population. The heavily Asian neighborhoods like the Outer Sunset and the Outer Richmond are among the least desirable neighborhoods for white folks.
The City is 33% Asian, 14% Hispanic, 7% Black, 46% White. Considering that many of the White people are GBLT or homeless, I would say it’s a pretty diverse city.
To an upscale white person, San Francisco is “whiter” than L.A. despite Hispanics can be “white”, because east Asian-Americans included as “white” by some demographers in terms of cultural assimilation and socioeconomic status of 3rd or 4th-generation Americans of Chinese descent.
Los Angeles is 48% Hispanic (some say over half at 58%), 11% (5 point inaccuracy) Black/African-American, 15% (may go up to 20%) Asian-American and 5% Native American (may double to 10%). White Anglos should be 21-25% of the city’s population, though the US census stated anyone can mark more than one race/ethnicity. Note Armenians, Arabs and Iranians are in the white Anglo category.
San Francisco is less Asian now at 26%, with Hispanic goes down to 10%, Blacks at 5% and the rest “other” are 3% like Hawaiians of Polynesian origin. White Anglos are 50-54%, thus became half of the city’s population in recent years due to gentrification and high apartment rental prices has pushed out large numbers of non-whites out of town . +
spoken like a loyal white person LOL
can you say: Beach front property in Nevada?
the big quake is just around the corner….
My gosh- who in their black soul does not love San Francisco? I mean- sure it’s swarming with panhandlers, it’s over-priced, and it’s full of rich, elitist yuppies, but it’s also absolutely gorgeous, there are great restaurants and shops on every corner, as others have mentioned there are beautiful state parks and forested areas in every direction (including the Highlands), tons of neat buildings, museums and historic landmarks. One of my all-time favorite places to visit.
Talking shit about Asians again? F* you again.
San Francisco is beautiful. There’s a reason its so expensive. I aspire to live there someday – don’t care how white it makes me
i… can’t tell whether or not you’re being ironic.
I live in the Bay Area. San Francisco sucks….it is a shell of its former self. San Francisco was better in the 70′s and 80′s when it wasn’t elitist.
Berkeley, Oakland, and San Jose are so much better.
San Francisco is where someone goes for a concert or some other event, or venue. Many “native” San Franciscans don’t even come over here to the East Bay and it’s only 30-40 minutes by car or BART. They don’t go to San Jose either and that’s only 1 hour away. It is pathetic. San Francisco people and Marin people are in the same category: pretentious, think they’re cultured-but they’re not, and educated but still very ignorant.
While visiting well-to-do a friend in SF, I spotted a box of Tuna Helper in her cabinet. That was really deflating.
We call them “bridge and tunnel” for a reason. Manhattan folks feel the same way about those from the boroughs.
umm, sorry Ishtar, i live in marin…you do realize that people like you are probably the reason i try to avoid the east bay don’t you? yeesh, i thought the city was full of assholes, i guess i forgot about the east bay…icky!
Ishtar, the reason native san franciscans don’t come to the east bay is because trash like you live there. Wash your ass loser!
Do you realize that you have proven his/her point?
Probably not. How sad
Honestly, can anyone explain why you can not say “Frisco” or “San Fran”? To a native of Philadelphia, it seems rather uptight. I and every other Philly native do not get upset when we hear The City of Brotherly Love (that’s what it means in Greek) called “Philly”.
Give me a better explanation than “It’s disrespectful”. That always came off as a pompous load of bullocks.
Here’s the deal:
Frisco sounds like a cleaning solution. Nobody wants their city to be equated with that, myself included. It would be like calling Philedelphia “Phia.” That is the shittiest name I’ve for a city I’ve ever heard.
I have to admit, however, that the San Franciscan’s allergy to calling their city San Fran is a little bit of overkill. People from here like to have something to boast and/or complain about.
We’ve a lot of SF pride.
anyone who doenst call SF Frisco is not from frisco, same folks (ie white fucks from Missouri that couldn’t make it in NYC) that call people from the east bay bridge and tunnel people. its funny really. just cause u live here for 5 years dont make u native. FRI$CO MISH. FN
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