Wacky San Francisco Bay Area News

Who said we don't support MLS? I support LA, Knave supports DC. And like I said, I like San Jose (unlike probably every other LA fan in the world), but they're not my team, and I'm not gonna go glory hound just because they're kicking ass right now.

I might try to make it down for more games once they get the new stadium, Buck Shaw's a pain in the ass (literally).

Growing up in the North Bay I can count on one hand the number of times I went to San Jose in all those years ... and still have fingers left over. San Jose just wasn't part of my regional identity growing up. But The City most certainly was.

Funny thing is since I returned to California after MLS got its start I've been to San Jose plenty of times, always to see DC United.

Actually, I do live in the East Bay and BART into "the City" for work everyday.

And I understand the "etymology" of the City. I've read Armistead Maupin. But whatever its origins, you are not being honest if you can't see how the term is just one part of the superiority complex that has come to define SF. Don't get me wrong, like all cities, most of the people who are born and raised in SF are pretty cool. It's the self-righteous rubes who've moved here from some small po-dunk hamlet in the Central Valley and swear up and down that SF is better in every single way than Seattle. Or Portland. Or Chicago. Or NYC. And then come to find out they've never even lived anywhere else. How INFURIATING!!!

As far as liberal hypocrisy, it's not bitching and it's not a prop. How can you not laugh when these same people who harangue you for not using compost properly only buy imported French and Italian cheese from the Whole Foods that put a local market out of business? What about the man-hating lesbians strapping on their Asics Tigers made in Mexican sweatshops where women have been sexually harassed? Or the socially conscious yuppies buying homes in the Mission for millions of dollars and driving up home prices so much that Latinos are being forced out? I could go on and on.

So even though I may not have the answers to gentrification, globalization and the homeless problem, at least I recognize cognitive dissonance when I see it while the stereotypical liberals in SF either don't or won't.

And one more thing. The next asshat who says "hella" to me is gonna get punched.

Unless that person is a woman, a child or man who's bigger and buffer than me.

You're too high strung to actually live in the East Bay.

I admitted the superiority complex stuff. Hell, I more than admit it -- I'll brazenly flaunt it.

But that's really no difference than the LA and NY and Chicago and Philly and DC residents who swear that their city is, in fact, the greatest city in the USA, if not even the center of the freaking cultural universe. The denizens of The City really aren't any different in that regard than the denizens of pretty much every other city.

What's different is only that you've got a bee in your bum about it. Of course, that's sort of expected for East Bay folks. So maybe you really do live there ...

No self-respecting resident of The City (or, franky, the entire Bay Area) buys imported French bread. With the local sourdough tradition and all the artisan bakeries, that's just crazy talk. Honestly, if anyone in the Bay Area does that they should be banished to Orange County.

Hella.

Pretty good chance I'm bigger and buffer than you.

Wait, so your point is there are hypocritical assholes in San Francisco? Shocking, I'll bet you can't find those anywhere else, of every political persuasion imaginable.

And have you actually been harangued for not using compost properly? Although I admit I have been harangued for not putting a compostable utensil in the proper container, but it was at the Green Festival, so that kind of comes with the territory.

Originally while a student at UCSC San Jose was the place with the airport to which I shuttled my friends. And it's never really been much more than that, it's a place I drive through rather than to.

I wouldn't be surprised if The City dated back to the 19th century. SF had a population of 300,000 in 1890, when LA had barely 50,000. SF was the sixth largest city in the USA.
IIRC, there's a Bogart scene (Maltese Falcon, 1941?), where he simply writes "City" on a letter that he is mailing within SF.

That's awesome.

Well, there was a PO Box number or street address, as well.

Lol - like you know me. I live in Berkeley.

And I'm no more high strung than the little old ladies in their Priuses who'd slit your throat because you took their parking spot - on a public residential street with no assigned spaces.

See what I mean???

No, what's different about the denizens of the City is that they're transplants who don't know any better and all of a sudden, their shit don't stink and everything's roses. You, I suspect, don't fit in this group. You're actually from the Bay, you can recognize the merits of other places and you can tell the difference between home town pride (i.e. "Our burritos are hella really good and Golden Gate park in the summer is just heaven") and pathetic self-loathing about one's roots (i.e. "You're from Smell A? Well, I squeeze whole roast out of my asshole for my own blend. While riding my fixie down Valencia. So ******** you. 'God, I hope he doesn't find out I moved here from Novato after high school'. ") . And may be us East Bay folks are just over these dumbasses. But I suppose I'd they rather stay in the Mission and not Oakland.

My point exactly except they've already taken over the stretch encompassing the Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, etc. Have you been recently? It's pretty much Orange County. Vapid housewives in yoga pants with some token banana Asians thrown in.

Then I'll just talk shit about you behind your back!

Anyway, maybe I'll mellow out after a while - I've only lived here (this time) for a year. But I was feeling the exact same thing about LA before my wife and I had to move up north. You can pretty much write off anybody living between Santa Monica and Silver Lake. They are not Angelenos. And them and their small-town, insular thinking can go ******** themselves.

I've lived in a ton of places and but the sheer number of hypocritical assholes who love to stand on their soap box and just go to town on how enlightened they are (and how you're not) is, in my experience, unique to SF. And it galls me that they seem to have acquired their politics by reading the back of a cereal box (with recycled packaging and from a local, organic, non-GM modified producer - of course) and are repeating these liberal talking by rote. And it further chaps my hide that they're not even freaking from SF!!!

You point is well taken however. You might say the same of Teabaggers in a small town in the Bible Belt. But the thread was about SF and, maybe this is my fault, but I expected a lot more of SF and I expected the majority of liberals to have some integrity and critical reasoning.

Dude, you don't even know. And many times they're just plain wrong! It's ok to throw waxy cardboard packaging into the compost along with the food waste that came in it! I'm not supposed to throw it in recycling! I literally want to make a t-shirt with the rules on it so the next time it happens, all I have to do is point to the relevant rule with one hand and give them the finger with the other.

Spent half of my first quarter century in Seattle, half in San Francisco. I'd move back to Seattle in a heartbeat. S.F. nope, not a chance. The smugness is OK when you live there -- like living next to a sulfur pit, you get used to the smell -- but now that I've been deprogrammed I can't go back.

The East Bay is better but not good enough.

Maybe you're just less cynical than me, I don't expect the majority of any particular group of people to have integrity and critical reasoning.

But regardless, I think you're overstating the point a little, or maybe I just run in different circles, but I don't experience a whole lot of soapboxing in SF. I'm guessing it's more prevalent over in Berkeley than in the City itself. I know it is in parts of Marin County (if you want a fun field trip go hang out at the Mill Valley Whole Foods for a couple hours).

Friend of mine, also from the Bay Area (but originally from the northeast), recently took a permaculture workshop, and she said by far the most insufferable participants were those who'd come down from Portland, and continually one-upped everybody else regarding their environmental credentials and sustainability practices. So these weren't hypocrites, they were actually walking the walk, but being total dicks about it.

Portland, well yeah any town that is self conscious enough to print little buttons and stickers about staying weird will be annoying. That goes for you too, Austin. Especially since you're not even weird, you're like hot dusty Portland wannabes.

I guess that includes my current home, where they sell bumper stickers saying "Keep Petaluma Eggcentric!"

Petaluma!

Maybe you've become chic and annoying, Lord knows enough places have, but for oldies like me you'll always be a nice little chicken town.

Then again when I lived in Saratoga it was a little nothing apricot town, rent a crap house for $70 a month or whatever. So I go back a ways.

We had that in Asheville too. I had to leave many establishments because the hippies smelled awful. Their trust funds can buy them a house, a car, and an oz of weed per week, but not soap.

Nah, it's nice, has definitely moved up in the world (though I'd hesitate to call it chic), but is still a nice little chicken town. I've been here 8 years now and have no intention of leaving.

Does Lake Merritt still reek in the summer, or has modern science figured out how to clean up the algae?

Bird (and dog) poo all over the place so didnt notice the algae smell

Don't know about Merritt but saw this about a pond in Golden Gate Park this morning:
Decades-old GG Park pond has become thick with vegetation, almost devoid of wildlife except a frog that devours almost anything.

From today's AM walk from Monty to my office near South Park:



Lol - hyperbole much?

Marketing. Who wouldn't want to go to school at the University of the best city ever?