In 1945Leo F. Dumas returned home after three years of almost relentless fighting on North African and European battlefield , yet he feel lost . Severely wounded in Tunisia , he had been present the Purple Heart but still carried shrapnel from a howitzer round in his forehead . He had also pull in the Bronze Star and Silver Star for distinguished valor in combat but the psychological wound – what doctors would by and by diagnose as spartan Wiley Post traumatic accent disorder – had him awakening night holler in moth-eaten sweats . The world just did n’t seem to fit together anymore ; the small Minnesota townspeople where his French Canadian family had settled feel constricting and make small chance . How do you root back into an old spirit after sleeping in foxholes and storming beachheads ?

Then a letter . Leo ’s younger chum , Cheetah ( I ’m serious that was his name ) had settle in California . A few weeks later Leo made the journeying to San Francisco to start up the residuum of his living .

To a case - shock World War II vet , San Francisco was respectable than paradise . It was a place you could reinvent yourself and not have to interest about fitting in . The working class metropolis was crammed with just the veracious amount of eldritch : boater , poet , drifters , bikers , misfits , and felon lurch the streets . occupation were plenteous and housing was cheap . In the city Leo found a career with the teamster join . In the East Bay he was able to corrupt an affordable home . He also found my grandmother , a wild Irish Catholic woman who worked for the Navy and divvy up his rage for strident postwar aliveness . Like anyone in their late 20s they raised hellhole in San Francisco : dropping entire paychecks at restaurants , stumble out of nightclubs , dancing to live medicine until the Dominicus come up . To no one ’s surprisal , my Church Father was born a few years later on . I would fall out in the early ‘ 80s . Besides a two - year stint in UC Davis for college and a two and a half year “ holiday ” to New York City for workplace , I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area my entire life .

Article image

And despite the fact that San Francisco has changed dramatically in the last few year , I have no plan to leave . Yes , the city is always maligned by overpriced apartments , clueless technical school bros , clogged freeways , and $ 5 slices of toast . Yes , every single one of my closest friends have abandoned San Francisco for places like New York , LA , Austin , and Vancouver . But I still think it ’s a place worth living in . What we ’re seeing here is a city that ’s in the throes of a specially angsty growth squirt . But just as with any peevish stripling , this phase angle will eventually pass and San Francisco will , like , figure out who it really is now , humans . That ’s not to say thing have n’t been turbulent – especially with Tech Gold Rush Part Deuce ™ . Much has already been said about the locked - in - a - padded - room - eat - your - underclothing insane prices for everything from rent ( middling for a two - bedroom apartment is $ 4,800 per calendar month ; the state ’s high ) to intellectual nourishment ( the $ 80 for a meal at a mid - range eatery is double the nation ’s modal ) . Never mind that there are a sublime totality of zero homes priced in the metropolis that public school instructor making the internal average of $ 59,700 per class could afford . Beyond the numbers there is something else happening to San Francisco . Something darker . In the Mission District , landlords attempt to buy out longtime renter so as to overhaul unit and charge exponentially more for rent . When that does n’t work they ’ll employ the Ellis Act , a effectual loophole that allow landlords to evict tenants and exchange snag controlled apartment into condominium . A few years ago , Mary Elizabeth Phillips , a 98 - yr - honest-to-god adult female and longtime occupier of a rent control flat near Dolores Park faced constructive eviction under the Ellis Act . It was only after a drawn-out legal appendage and intervention by protestors and activistic groups that she was allow for to ride out in the flat through “ the end of her biography . ”

In 2014a TV surfacedof a group of men – some wearing Dropbox t - shirt – endeavor to push around a group of neighborhood kids from the Mission Playground Soccer Field , claiming they book the battleground through an dark smartphone app . There are neighbourhood where the tension is so thickheaded between longtime residents and thenouveau richetransplants that I half expect someone to throw a drivel can through the window of the closest pizza pie restaurant . There have been countless article , think pieces , and , ugh , hot return written about the mature schism of riches and culture in San Francisco . Yet ! It ’s not all gloominess . In the former ' ninety – often remembered as Alcyone years before start - ups – the homicide rate was substantially higher . ( 1993 saw 129 killing alone . ) Today thing are really much good . There were just 48 murders in 2013 and 45 in 2014 . And while there have been uneven fall in other criminal offence like burglaries and muggings , the metropolis as a wholefeelssafer . Twenty years ago you would never see many people trot around 24thand Mission at night . You would never see anyone saunter around Howard and Sixth Street during the daytime . You would never walk through certain parts of Golden Gate Park – day or dark .

The tech stuff is inane . I scorn the feel deaf , endlessly optimizing , bro culture of Silicon Valley . I experience in the Mission where the tension replacement between simmering dirty aspect and Google - coach vandalizing boil . Valencia Street is flooded with a startling amoung of white dude sporting technical sheepskin who only seem able to intercommunicate in meaningless buzzword . ( get ’s reduce burn mark so we can maximize receipts streams and make an EPIC exit , broh ! )

Article image

roadsidepictures/Flickr

What stings me the most is that San Francisco is ( and always should be ) welcoming to the type of person typically consociate with technical school : dweeb , dork , dweebs , whatever ugly terminus that ’s been applied over the years to someone who loves get into the guts of codification . San Francisco is the domicile of multitude who feel like freaks and Ishmael , always has been . It ’s the small nonage techbroswho’ve ironically seen their class of a sudden ascend to prominence and taken up the bullying mantelpiece that ruin the percept of techpeoplefor everyone .

I detest it . But whenever my urge to scream into a pillow reach a fever pitch I remind myself of something Bill Gates say in a 2014 consultation about the state of Silicon Valley :

“ … half of the company are silly , and you know two - thirds of them are going to go bankrupt , but the dozen or so ideas that emerge out of that are going to be really important . ”

Article image

Kim Lucian/Stocksy

He ’s right . If you seek hard enough past thecrab - pricing - on - demand servicesand themusical pants start - upyou’ll find company that either do something really useful or are infernal region - bent on improving the world . Look atWatsi , a startup that crowd funds medical surgeries for people in developing countries . OrGive Me Tap , a ship’s company that helps construct water pumps in Africa . OrL Condoms , which strives to donate condoms to char in countries where contraceptive are not easily usable .   Even the more challenging fellowship like Tesla andStemcentrx– who are trying to carry off human drive and curative cancer , severally – while bigger or more lucre driven still have intention to make biography well for jillion .

out of doors of those game changers , this is not going to last constantly . Multiple sign already taper to atech bubble burst . Or , at the very least , a deflation . This is the natural state of matter . Peaks and valleys . Ebbs and stream . But no matter how much money run in and out , there is something else that San Francisco retains , something deeper . Something intangible .

you may still feel it in certain places . It ’s in the Tenderloin , the one vicinity in San Francisco that still resists gentrification with a force out domain of drugs , harlotry , and schizophrenia . It ’s in the Haight where you may still corrupt acid from ill-humored gutter punks who live in the park , God bless them . It ’s dive bars in SOMA where you may easily get into a full on saloon battle if you walk in wearing a Dodgers jersey . It ’s the hole - in - the wall restaurant in Chinatown with a questionable health code score that sells a hot bowl of noodles for five sawhorse at three in the morning . It ’s the ghosts of Kerouac , Ginsberg , and Twain . It ’s the Giants winning the World Series over and over and over again . It ’s the frontier sprightliness . It ’s the vibe that shouted “ You ’re welcome here ! ” to my grandpa when he was at his most adrift .

Article image

Digital Archaeology/Flickr

I ’m not sure what the future tense hold for San Francisco , but I have an estimation of what I want it to be . First off , there needs to be affordable living accommodations . If that imply striking zoning Pentateuch and building residences higher than forty foot then I ’m all for it . blue NIMBYs , the looking of the city will have to deepen a little bit . technical school people : cut this entitled douchebag bullshit . Yes , you are a huge economical force in the city . Yes , you are a extremely prepare , fantastically intelligent cluster . Yes , you are inventing the future . Cool . develop up and make a real effort to become part of the residential district . mayhap try out tutoring underprivileged kids on the weekend or volunteer at a protection . Also stop doing things like write blog posts screech about roofless people . It ’s a huge , complicated problem , no doubt . Maybe you hombre could , I do n’t screw , concentre some of those millions of dollars and in high spirits IQs on actually clear some of the complex issues that harass the city . Also there should be BART lines everywhere , running through Golden Gate Park and stretch all the manner to Ocean Beach . ( Yes , I know this is an harebrained pipe dream and would take decennary to establish and cost a jillion dollars but countenance me have my fantasy give thanks you . )

It ’s been more than seventy years since Leo get in San Francisco and I seriously doubt he would recognize the plaza . But that ’s a good matter . metropolis should never be static . The coarse-grained , grave warrior - geological era New York of the ‘ seventy has virtually nothing in common with the glitzy ( albeit overprice ) playground it has since become . So I ’m delay . For now . Will I be here incessantly ? Hard to say – I ’d either have to write the next Harry Potter series or win thequestionable SF Dream House rafflein purchase order to own a home here . But my sept has been here for three generations and I feel like my deoxyribonucleic acid is intertwined with the metropolis . Despite the sky high-pitched rent and the tech bros and even the $ 5 goner it is home . And god damn it , it ’s never , ever tedious .

Daniel Dumas is a writer improbably found in San Francisco . His work has come along in GQ , WIRED , Golf Digest , AFAR , Esquire , and The Wall Street Journal Magazine . He has also written for several escapade themed TV shows including Booze Traveler and I Survived a Tornado . HisTwitteris a lax solicitation of puns and other lame jokes . HisInstagramis actually much honorable .

Article image

Trinette Reed/Stocksy

Article image

Señor Sisig/Facebook