This article is from WeChat official account:Nine rows (ID: jiuxing_neweekly) , author: old artists (Huang Po), original title : “
Is this city of America collapsed? Don’t say it too early”, head picture from: Visual China
Old artists rarely write about the United States, but today this city is indeed worth talking about because it is weird, absurd, and charming. Perhaps you have already guessed the answer-Speaking of the first American city that Chinese people know well, it may not be New York or Washington, but San Francisco.
More than a century ago, countless Chinese crossed the oceans, either for gold or labor, and settled down and thrived on the west coast of the United States, which is full of sunny coconut groves.
Just like “Fusang” written by Yan Geling:
“The prostitute, the police gentleman, the white child and the nobleman, the braided Chinese workers and the kind nuns, the three religions and the nine generations gather together to create a lively setting for the troubled love in the early last century.”
But time has changed. San Francisco has long since stretched from a place of three religions in the past to a city cluster in the Bay Area that shines with science and technology. Some things are constantly being born, and things are constantly being crushed by history.
Because of this, after a hundred years of inaugural development, San Francisco, which has always been a “all-in-one” and inclusive image, is also facing criticism from everyone: no tolerance and diversity, loss of soul; no more hippies, more and more rigid Catering to the elite; high housing prices; more homeless people; people feel unable to survive…
San Francisco, is it really no longer “San Francisco”?
1. San Francisco, have you changed?
The terrain of San Francisco is dominated by hills. Whether tourists or locals, whether driving or walking, you can experience the 3D magical outline of the city through the ups and downs.
The San Francisco natives who came from the gold rush era of ancestors like to have a drink at a restaurant called sinbad on Pier 2. The writer John Belushi is one of them:
“My friends often laugh at why I came to this place. The old decoration, martinis and large steaks are full of old ideas from the 1920s.”
But now, Sinbad restaurant has also been permanently closed. In San Francisco, countless dust like the sinbad restaurant is caught under the giant wheel of technology and crushed every day.
△The memory of a generation in San Francisco, sinbad restaurant has permanently closed / EATER
Perhaps, San Francisco has changed a long time ago. This “change” is first of all in a geographical sense.
The San Francisco people mentioned today no longer refers to “San Francisco(San Francisco)” in the narrow sense, but “San Francisco Bay District (San Francisco Bay Area)“.
The free and affluent North Bay, the pleasant climate of the East Bay, the South Bay, commonly known as “Silicon Valley”, the peninsula where the middle class lives and the city of San Francisco, form the San Francisco Bay Area that the world looks up to.
△San Francisco Bay Area/ wiki
San Francisco is very contemplative, and the San Francisco Bay Area is very rich.
Since the beginning of the gold rush, San Francisco has been advancing all the way: from the past gold mining, smelting and manufacturing industries, it has turned into service, finance, and technology industries.
In 2015, the total GDP of the San Francisco Bay Area ($721 billion) surpassed Sweden on its own.
In the summer of 2004, Zuckerberg listened to the song “Six-pack” by singer Baker in his dorm room (six-pack) At that time, I felt I should go to California’s Silicon Valley to stay for a while.
Unexpectedly, this treatment turned Facebook into a super giant with a valuation of over US$100 billion. It was Jobs’ Apple that came to San Francisco earlier than Facebook.
The San Francisco native born in 1955 looked more “righteous” than Zuckerberg, who was born in New York State: Jobs liked Bob Dylan and the Beatles, continuing the sloppy dressing style of his school days and putting Apple The slogan was changed to “Think Different(Think Different)” with a hippie meaning.
△Jobs in San Francisco in 1995/ tumblr.com
Everything is flourishing, but if someone gets mixed up in San Francisco, someone will leave naturally.
Pawlowski, the painter and photographer who went to San Francisco to dream in 1996, saw this place for the last time at the age of 37 and decided not to stay anymore:
“San Francisco is no longer an art-friendly city.”
Perhaps he was right. In 2015, the San Francisco Art Council (SFAC) conducted a survey of 500 artists, and the results showed: more than Seventy percent said they have left their workplace, home, or both.
△The artists in San Francisco are planning to escape from SFGATE
What drove them away was the high prices, housing prices or rents brought by technology capital.
According to data from the rental website Zumper, in May 2019, the median market rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco reached US$3,700 per month. (approximately RMB 25,808) ) The highest level in history.
A new study conducted by the financial website GOBankingRates found that to live comfortably in San Francisco, you need to earn at least US$110,357(about 770,000 RMB).
△Comparison of housing prices in San Francisco (blue line) and California (red line) and the United States (green line)/ COMPASS
Musician Erica Zappia who has moved to Texas (Erica Zappia) said:
“Unless I give up music and switch to the technology industry, I will never live comfortably.”
Not only do artists feel that life is unsustainable, but it also indirectly affects the catering industry: the fast-paced life makes specialty restaurants unable to survive in the local area, and they are forced to become a Mexican burger chain fast food restaurant, even a top chef with two Michelin stars. When I came to San Francisco, I decided to make a vegetarian burger.
△The chain restaurants in San Francisco are opening more and more EATER
The assembly line is approaching, and the diversity is fading.
Has the coldness of technology conceal the colorful and charming San Francisco in the past? It’s too early to say. Perhaps people cannot accept this kind of San Francisco because of the summer of 1967.
Second, the unchanging is the background color of San Francisco
It is difficult for you to define that summer: an experiment? Is it sports? Or is it both? But what is certain is that no summer is more restless than the San Francisco summer of 1967.
△San Francisco in the 50s and 60s, hippies flooded the streets of San Francisco
In 1967, an American young man smoked the “acid agent(LSD)” bought for $5, wandering in the San Francisco Sea On the streets of (Haight-Ashbury) in the Ashbury community, listening to Bob Dylan, the Beatles, “Thank you dead”, the psychedelic rock of the Jefferson Airplane Band, go to the “digger” at four o’clock every afternoon to receive a free meal and immerse yourself in the utopian commune built by myself.
Like him, there are 100,000 young people from all over the United States who gather together in the summer in San Francisco and call this movement the “Summer of Love.”
△The “Summer of Love” in 1967 has become a lingering memory for many people/ WHERE TRAVELER
This moment is the spiritual climax of the hippies. However, San Francisco is not just the hippies.
Since the discovery of the gold mine in San Francisco in the 19th century, millions of people have poured in here. They gathered together with various accents and different skin tones to create a cultural melting pot.
San Francisco since the weird people: 16 years after the discovery of the gold mine, Mark Twain went to San Francisco to work as a reporter for the Morning Post; the “weird” Norton proclaimed himself emperor in San Francisco and made equal comments…
△San Francisco in 1949, people from all over the world came here after hearing about the gold mine/ wiki
All these laid the foundation for the “openness, tolerance and diversity” of San Francisco, which became popular in the United States.In the 1960s, San Francisco became a participant and joined the historical torrent:
At that time, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, black affirmative movements, sexual liberation, women’s movements, and homosexual movements were one after another in the United States.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Apollo Moon landing, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the assassination of President Kennedy, and hippies, each can become a key word of that era.
△The United States was surging in the 1960s, the picture shows the anti-Vietnam War demonstration in 1968/ Associated Press
In the 1950s, San Francisco’s “City Lights” bookstore became the headquarters of “Beat” literature, with Alan Ginsburg’s “Howl” and Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and “Beat” “Generation” will become the spiritual food for hippies in the 1960s.
In 1966, on the other side of San Francisco, in Oakland in the East Bay, a black party that became frightening afterwards was quietly rising-the Black Panther Party.
They preach “justice” and do not hate whites, but whenever the police interrogate blacks, members of the Black Panther Party will observe from a distance with guns. Once they find excessive behavior, they will load the shotgun.
In the end, they were violently wiped out in 1969, and their lives came to an end.
△The Black Panther Party, which originated in Oakland, San Francisco’s East Bay, was once famous/ courant.com
When the timeline was pulled to the 70s, the “Rainbow Flag” came. Not far from Haight Street, the home of the hippies, is the Castro neighborhood (Castro), the birthplace of the gay movement in San Francisco.
After World War II, American gay veterans were scattered all over San Francisco because of their greed for the sunshine of California. Until 1963, after the first gay bar opened on Castro Street, LGBT people from all over the world heard the news and found a safe haven ever since.
By the early 1970s, there were 200,000 same-sex people in San Francisco, accounting for a quarter of the urban population.
Hippies, homosexuality, black movement, sexual liberation, San Francisco is like a sponge, absorbing everything that is incompatible with the world.
When you walk into the streets of San Francisco today, you can still see the roofs painted with rainbow paint. People are parading in strange costumes, even if they do weird behaviors, they will not attract the attention of pedestrians.
In San Francisco, weirdness becomes a habit.
Three, change and the same, this is San Francisco
When we were discussing San Francisco’s “changing and unchanging”, Taiwanese writer Han Lianglu said in the book “If the City Has a Soul”: “San Francisco exists to allow us to see the reality and the psychedelic.”< /p>
That’s right, when you think that the unattainable San Francisco is driving people, some people will come to San Francisco.
Vanessa is a transgender wanderer. Two years ago, she was invited by a friend from Denver to San Francisco to wander around. “Our friends in the subcultural circle are all here.”
△April 18, 2020, the homeless on the streets of San Francisco / Reuters
In San Francisco, homeless people are also a group worthy of careful observation, because while they are talking about themselves, they are also talking about the United States.
Nick, who is in his sixties this year, is a homeless in Oakland. 20 years ago, he never thought he would be on the streets because he still owned millions of net worth, two houses and Three boats.
But in the 2008 financial turmoil, after a huge wave hit, the bank that gave him the trusteeship sank. Nick’s decades of hard work vanished overnight. He has tried several times to make a comeback, but he was helpless. Failed, wandering is the only option.
△The Homeless of San Francisco/Youtube
59-year-old Dwayne is a disabled veteran. He worked in the Marines for 16 years. After two divorces, he lost his house and wandered in San Francisco for six years.
The 58-year-old Juan experienced the murder of his son, unemployment, imprisonment, and divorce of his wife, so he was depressed and lived on the streets of San Francisco for 20 years.