I have been living in San Francisco for three years, and, while I want to love it, I encounter hurdles at every turn that inhibit my wanna-be romance. I have a hard time getting beyond and over what I call “the arrogance of the city” that seems to be unlike the arrogance of any other place where I have lived, from Mexico City to Manchester, England and Antwerp, Belgium. San Francisco, “Baghdad by the Bay,” Herb Caen called it, is unique. It’s perched on the western edge of the continental US, facing the Pacific Ocean and looking over its shoulder at the Rockies, the Great Plains and the cities of the Midwest and the East. It boasts glorious Golden Gate Bridge, the grandeur of Golden Gate Park, and world class museums such as the de Young, to say nothing of its big banks and financial institutions that fleece the wretched of the earth and enrich the coffers of the wealthy.
San Francisco citizens seem to believe that their city is avant garde, innovative, progressive, liberal and at the forefront of artistic and intellectual ferment. They might be living in a bubble, though it is true that the Castro District was once the gay capital of the US and that the city once had a vibrant labor movement led by communists and socialists and an Australian-born organizer named Harry Bridges.
Recently, I attended a panel discussion at the Harvey Milk Photo Center (named after the assassinated gay activist and politician) on the edge of Duboce Park where dogs mostly run free and humans lounge. The panel was held in conjunction with an exhibit titled “SF_Retake” that featured the work of 22 photographers tasked with capturing on film the “picturesque yet problematic post-pandemic locale.” How the locale is problematic no one said; the photos didn’t suggest it either.
The host for the panel told the audience that “nowhere else in the world would you see photos like these.” A glance around the room, followed by close inspection suggested otherwise. One photo depicted a man and a woman kissing and that seemed reminiscent of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square, New York in 1945, at the end of World War II. Another portrayed a fellow with a long beard wearing a tie-dyed T -shirt, and another of a man playing host to a flock of birds who perched on and around his body. It was titled “The Bird Man” and reminded me of the “Bird Man of Alcatraz.”
None of the photos in the Milk Center struck me as particularly representative of San Francisco. Photographers in other cities and at other times have captured couples kissing, hippies wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and humans with birds. What was curious about the panel was that with one or two exceptions the participants spoke in a whisper or mumbled as though talking to themselves and a small circle of close friends.
The presence of the audience seemed to be irrelevant to them. I had to lean forward and strain to hear a word. My friend Jeanne, a SF photographer who documented the punk world in the city in the 1980s, could barely discern anything that was said. Curiously, the only participant who spoke clearly came from New York where the citizens have no trouble projecting their voices over noise. The other participants didn’t seem to want to communicate. They were in my view ambassadors for the arrogance of a city that thrives on arrogance which the dictionary defines as “an attitude of superiority manifested in anoverbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions.” That’s San Francisco.
Why arrogance has taken root here and flowered magnificently is an interesting question. It probably has something to do with history that goes back to the Gold Rush, when the world “rushed in” to get rich, when the nabobs built mansions on the hills, the 1906 earthquake, which was news around the world, and the rapid rebuilding of the city in the aftermath of devastation. Also, SF was a key port in WWII and once was both a destination and birthplace for beats, hippies and do comers who helped to drive up property values before the pandemic and before the financial melt down. There is also the view that if you can make it in SF you can make it anywhere, with the city as a Darwinian laboratory where the fittest survive the fog, the wind, and the summers which are notoriously winter-like.
When I ask San Franciscans how they feel about their city they say invariably, “I love it.” Of course I don’t ask those who live in the streets or the permanently unemployed and disenfranchised how they feel about the place that’s 49 -square miles. I have concluded that SF isn't so much at the forefront of innovation today as it is an archeological site that preserves the music and the culture of the past. That pattern is evident at “The New Farm” which is located near the edge of SF Bay and where on most Sundays ageing hippie guys with guitars take the stage and play loud rock ‘n’ roll before audiences of aging hippies who drink beer, smoke pot and dance. The sessions are outdoors and they’re free. You might think you’re back in the Summer of Love, or that the Summer of Love never ended.
My view of San Francisco as an archeological site and as a place of arrogance was reinforced by a night at the San Francisco Opera where I saw and heard a spectacular performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. It was staged elsewhere before it was imported to SF. Also, I recently viewed a show at the de Young of the magnificent photos of Irving Penn which had been exhibited in New York in 2017. True, the de Young show featured photos not seen in New York. But they depicted experimental SF dancers, Hells Angels and figures who belonged to the counterculture in the 1960s, when the city could boast of its uniqueness and not be arrogant. If you want the past come to the city Herb Caen called “Bagdad by the Bay.” If you want the future, stay home and watch Netflix, or Amazon Prime and dream your own dreams of a brave new world. But I haven’t given up all hope. In an hour I am going to Black Bird, a local bookstore, to hear Malcolm Harris, the author of Palo Alto and an Occupy activist, talk about his “hopes for the future.” Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Hello, Jonah, and thanks for your honest appraisal of San Francisco, where I have lived since 1974. I couldn’t agree with you more, it’s very discouraging to see what this city has become, after the bombardment of the uber rich and right-wing ideology over more than three decades. All my friends have long moved on, creative artists and eccentric personalities, typical of the city in the past. It just got too damned expensive to stay here! Fortunately, rent control kicked in and has kept me securely homed ever since. But I DO hope you are presently surprised by Malcolm Harris. I can barely relate to anyone living here now, but with rare exception.
Hey Zeke
Great to hear from you. What surprised me most about Malcolm Harris’s talk was that he proudly called himself “a communist.” I was surprised. I have also noticed members of his generation both Black and white defending communists of the past in the USA and leaning toward communism now. We shall see. Jonah
Hello again, Jonah. Communism was unjustifiably turned into a scary word during the McCarthy era. Here is an article by Mr. Harris, pub’d in 2016 in The New Republic, called “Who’s Afraid of Communism:”
https://newrepublic.com/article/133132/whos-afraid-communism
And here is a recent forum featuring him, about the history of Silicon Valley:
Hey Zeke. Thanks for the links. I’ll read and watch. Started to read “Reds” subtitled “the tragedy of American Communism. If there’s tragedy maybe it has more to do with anti communism and America itself than with communism.