How San Francisco Will Lose the Last of Us

Much has been written about the changes San Francisco has undergone over the last few years. It’s noticeable even walking through my old neighborhood. Small, nondescript Asian stores have become trendy thrift shops. Kitschy old cafes have been redesigned with concrete, steel, and “reclaimed wood,” a term I have always found laughably pretentious. Ancient businesses, the ones I wondered about as a kid of seven who didn’t speak a lick of English, have closed up shop and become chic sushi bars. Things are being curated, folks. Curated. This is not a drill.

But I don’t want to dwell on the inevitable. Small businesses, no matter how beloved, will always close shop eventually, replaced by a younger generation of business owners with new aesthetics and ideas. Much as it may feel like a personal hurt to no longer see the same familiar faces, it’s a futile fight to pick.

I also don’t care to point and blame the “techies” coming into town for the changes, as though our own native San Franciscans have not jumped headfirst into the tech movement with great success (you go, guys!). We should laud any industry that creates, innovates, and succeeds, because without it, our city would stagnate. Besides, no amount of Google bus protests in the Mission will change that fact. It’s also a futile fight, a protest against a symptom, but not the main issue.

No, the main issue lies with something less tangible than a Google bus or a trendy cafe, but with something that we all have control over. It’s a change of attitude in San Francisco, a perceptible shift in what is and isn’t “us.” San Francisco has never been the kumbaya oasis that people love to romanticize, at least not during my lifetime, but it has always felt like a city where anyone could find their place. It offered corners and niches for almost every group, generation, and belief.

Now, it seems like San Francisco has undergone an identity crisis, as though it’s become so insecure in what it should be, that it has set out rules for itself and its residents. And if you don’t fit in, you don’t belong here.

The rules are very clear: If you don’t attend these music festivals, you don’t belong here. If you don’t brunch here every weekend, you don’t belong here. If you don’t lounge around in this park on sunny days, you don’t belong here. If you don’t live in these neighborhoods, you don’t belong here. If you don’t subscribe to these beliefs, you don’t belong here.

When did that happen? When did San Francisco’s most vocal and obnoxious residents decide for everyone else what does and doesn’t belong here? San Francisco used to be a place for people of all ages. When did it become overrun by millenials with no patience for anyone else?

To be clear, it’s not just one group at fault. San Francisco’s politicians are not doing the city any favors, either. Instead of using taxpayer money to solve actual pressing issues, they gather to pass resolutions on what the official point of view of San Francisco will be regarding events that have nothing to do with us. Oh, will wars in distant countries not cease unless the city of San Francisco officially decrees their disapproval? Will the world as we know it end if San Francisco doesn’t pontificate on how we should all think and feel?

What if I disagree politically because I have very different life experiences? What if I hate music festivals because they trash Golden Gate Park? What if I don’t go to Dolores Park because I prefer to take walks in the park instead of people watching? What if I brunch somewhere else because there’s no wait?

What if I live in the Sunset, or the Richmond, or all the other forgotten neighborhoods of people who’ve spent their lives quietly living in San Francisco, without announcing their brunch/festival/420 plans every weekend?

When did San Francisco become so insecure that it established a cool police to dictate what San Franciscans can and can’t do? Is L.A. going to judge us if we’re seen doing something else?

I’m not going to fantasize about the kumbaya oasis San Francisco never was, but I will fondly remember when it was not unusual to see children in parks, or the elderly doing their grocery shopping, or families enjoying meals at cafes and restaurants. I remember when Russian immigrants came into stores owned by Chinese immigrants and everyone fumbled to understand each other. Now, we fumble to understand what the hell an organic kombucha is and why people drink it. Now, toes are tapped urgently in line behind us to remind us that kombucha waits for no one and that if you don’t know which artisanal croissant you’re going to get, you better just leave. Now, businesses and buses get periodically overrun by tutu-ed and onesied adults who loudly announce how very San Francisco they all are and how, as such, they don’t know why everyone else doesn’t just move to the suburbs already.

Why don’t the drivers and the families and the Republicans and the old folks and the people who run businesses not aimed at millenials just move already? Why must they insist on living here, in San Francisco, when they’re so not San Francisco enough? (Of course, Republicans, conservatives, and anyone with ideas outside the San Francisco dogma has never really been welcome here, but that’s a story for another time).

The reason we’re not moving, or haven’t moved yet, is not just because this is our home, but because we understand that a real city, one that’s got the self-esteem of a real world-class place, is one that’s made up of every slice of society. A city without a middle class is a few bad days away from becoming the alternate 1985 Back to the Future II warned us about. A city without children is a city without a future and a city without the elderly is a city without a past. Without immigrants, we are a city with only one perspective. Without political opposites, we are a city with one opinion in an echo chamber. Without families, we are a city of self-serving millenials. Without millenials, we are a city without an ambitious workforce pushing us to create.

So, how about we rein in this judgmental attitude toward everyone else? How about we remember each other’s value and stop acting like we’re the sole reason the universe exists? How about we stop deciding what is and isn’t so San Francisco, and just start trying to see things from other people’s perspectives?

I’ve always thought that I’d be the last San Franciscan to leave, that I’d never abandon this city to live somewhere else, no matter how expensive it gets to buy coffee, no matter how much taxes are raised, or how many more cars are broken into. But I didn’t anticipate how tiring it gets to defend your existence and your right to live here. And if San Francisco continues with this snobby, exclusionary attitude, it will soon find it has lost the last of us, the ones who’ve stood by its side, challenging San Francisco to be something greater.

Tatiana Sundeyeva-Orozco has gotten into the terrible habit of thinking too much about everything. She enjoys fantasizing about traveling, compulsively buying literature, laughing at her own puns, and consuming anything and everything that can be found in a bakery. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley where she got a degree in English. She can be found celebrating awesome female friendships on LadyBromance.com.