#11 Lonely Is An Eyesore
What. The. Fuck, San Francisco.
I don’t know how the hell you did it, but i swear to god you’d better knock it off. I know, you probably think it’s pretty fucking funny to watch me suddenly realize I have NO idea where I am, and I’m sure you go to great effort to pull these little pranks, but seriously. These shape shifting shenanigans have got to stop. It seems like every time I turn around I’m further away from home.
For instance…
On the corner of 18th and Valencia, next to what was once Leather Tongue Video, there USED to be an empty lot. Not anymore.
It sprang up in under a months time, while my back was turned. Prolific and ravenous, they attack and aggressively consume all I’ve known with the malignancy of stage three cancer. Helter skelter they feed unchecked til suddenly I’m lost in the familiar, a stranger in my homeland.
It’s messing with my mind. And it’s everywhere.
So in an effort to alleviate these feelings of displacement and alienation, I did a little counter intelligence. I will now share my findings with you.
If you notice, they’ve already gone and photo-shopped out The Retox Lounge. As if there was any question that a late night live music venue would be allowed to remain open so near the home owning elite when clearly an Ultra-Lounge or sushi bar would be such a better fit. Don’t believe me? Consider the fate of The Eagle Tavern. The famed gay rock and roll club and live venue is currently up for sale. What will become of it you ask?
Another one bites the dust.
SO fight back citizens of SF! Get loud! Get drunk! Take a dump inside Starbucks! Don’t smoke crack in the alley, smoke crack in the middle of the street!! Let make San Francisco a bad investment and a better place to drink, work and live before they make it impossible!
January 22, 2010 at 6:22 pm
As a San Francisco Native, I’m not a huge fan of the developments, but in a lot of cases progress is good. I’d personally welcome some sort of hipster (aka douchebag) exodus which would make this town emminently more livable.
A big part of our civic problem stems from a lot of people moving to the city for a few years, living it up, contributing nothing other than bad legislation and a couple of puke puddles on the street, then leaving for the burbs when they decide they want to grow up. The bad legislation and bad legislators are why we get developments that are ugly and expensive, so it’d be nice to fix those problems.
January 22, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I entirely agree.
February 4, 2010 at 1:54 am
I have good news. I’m seeing more “for rent” signs and U-hauls in the Mission. Will enough hipsters go scurrying back to mommy’s house in Santa Rosa or Cleveland, Ohio to make a difference? Probably not. The only way to get all of them to fuck off would be to turn the place into Fresno. I think that’s too high a price just to be rid of a few young, dumb people with bad taste in clothes. I’m also seeing high vacancy rates for recently constructed or refurbished buildings, especially the commercial occupancies. Hopefully, this will hold some of the “redevelopment” in check for a while. Now for the bad news. Bad laws and bad politicians in sizable cities are one of the things they forgot to mention when it was said, “The only certainties in life are death and taxes.”
February 4, 2010 at 8:50 pm
My Mother used to tell me that if I wasn’t good, she would “drop kick me to Fresno”. I never understood the gravity of that statement until I had the great misfortune of being there one day. I was lucky to escape unharmed.
February 15, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Wait what NO! Those pictures have to be a joke…
They have to be.
Or my life is ruined.
Forever.
February 16, 2010 at 3:24 am
Wanna join my monkey wrench gang?
March 6, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Monkey Wrench Gang… I like that. What, pray tell, is the aim of the gang?
March 7, 2010 at 6:52 am
Read all about it in “The Monkey Wrench Gang” by Edward Abbey, or get the gist in the Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_Wrench_Gang
March 31, 2010 at 5:09 am
[...] Jenner wasn’t around for the invasion by hippie baby boomers in the late sixties, or the gay exodus from everywhere to the Castro in the seventies. She has borne witness to the class invasions of the nineties and the new century. She has seen the city she knew over-run with wealthy young white people driving up housing prices. She has seen what she considers to be her people and her places identified as blight. Rather than simply regret the passing of people, places and a way of life, she documents things gone or going. [...]
March 31, 2010 at 10:22 pm
I remember when the dotcom explosion was taking over the Mission a friend of mine told me that he bought a gun and a box of blanks and would walk around at night and shoot off a couple of rounds just to keep the neighborhood from feeling too safe…..It didn’t work.