- SF's massive spending on the needy would seem to attract more needy people, so the point of comparison to the rest of the bay area could be misleading. SF also has a more consistent climate than the rest of the bay area, useful if you're homeless and sleeping on the street.
- Whole sections of the city are overrun with homeless people (tenderloin, golden gate park near Stanyan) such that passers by may be attacked, etc. I am aware of 3 people who have been attacked by homeless people.
- The MUNI system is decent, but there is little enforcement of fare violations. Not sure if this is really a problem.
- The mom and pop restaurants in SF are the best I've tried in any city, including New York.
- The level of tolerance in SF is fairly remarkable. You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.
- I agree that rent control is a big problem. It's just bad policy and unfortunately it plagues lots of big cities.
- I don't know why there is a housing project in Hayes Valley. It's hard not to feel poor in SF if you earn over $100K Per year, and so one can imagine how it must feel to actually be poor.
You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.
Ah, but try wearing a "Bush/Cheney 04" t-shirt and see what kind of reaction you get. One should not underestimate the importance of this kind of intolerance. Who cares about wearing nailpolish when you'll be ostracized for having political opinions which anywhere else would be perfectly mainstream?
I think the homeless and gay populations reveal that SF has an above average amount of tolerance for differences (in general, but with heated disapproval by vocal minorities) but that certainly doesn't mean that if you choose a SF resident out of a hat and show him a GWB t-shirt, that he won't reveal himself to have utterly un-nuanced (even boneheaded) views on topics such as the differences between the parties, relevant details of the Bush administration's policies, even things that he ostensibly supports like gay rights, clean environment, and nationalized healthcare.
I think the bottom line is that there are some very dumb people who thoughtlessly parrot what they perceive as "enlightened" views, who couldn't explain why if asked... essentially "dittoheads" of the left.
Note: I'm a libertarian (small L) so I find fault with a lot of ways that people reason (or more often bleat) about political issues.
This last item hits me rather personally. Last year I was paying $1,500/month for a room in a tiny apartment to live across on Laguna and Hayes, right across from the housing project. It was like somebody drew a big line and put all of the yuppies on the Octavia side of the street, and all of the drug addicted permanently unemployable old women on the other side of the street .. Quite a dichotomy.
- SF's massive spending on the needy would seem to attract more needy people, so the point of comparison to the rest of the bay area could be misleading. SF also has a more consistent climate than the rest of the bay area, useful if you're homeless and sleeping on the street.
- Whole sections of the city are overrun with homeless people (tenderloin, golden gate park near Stanyan) such that passers by may be attacked, etc. I am aware of 3 people who have been attacked by homeless people.
- The MUNI system is decent, but there is little enforcement of fare violations. Not sure if this is really a problem.
- The mom and pop restaurants in SF are the best I've tried in any city, including New York.
- The level of tolerance in SF is fairly remarkable. You can dress however you want, men can wear nail polish, etc., and nobody bats and eyelash. One should not underestimate the importance of this sort of tolerance.
- I agree that rent control is a big problem. It's just bad policy and unfortunately it plagues lots of big cities.
- I don't know why there is a housing project in Hayes Valley. It's hard not to feel poor in SF if you earn over $100K Per year, and so one can imagine how it must feel to actually be poor.