Hills? Check.
Cable cars? Check.
Public wireless infrastructure? Check.
Public transit information available via Google tools? Check.
Young, hip mayor? Check.
Zealous anti-smoking ordinance? Check.
Once proud pro football team, with a history of Super Bowl success, now struggling to find its feet? Check.
Yep. I live in San Francisco.
13 comments:
Do a google search for: second hilliest city
There are over four cities that take the title.
Logic would dictate that studying cities that have similar geographies would be smart in terms of development strategy and urban planning.
Pittsburgh is like a silly poodle, that thinks it's a pitbull. We have the geography of a San Francisco but seem to think we are Las Vegas.
Ravenstahl's about as hip as I am rolling in dough.
Downtown bustling with lots of people on Sunday afternoon, there just for kicks - Not Checked (at least not yet)
Vibrant hi tech community? NO check here.
Booming cutting edge restaurants and cooks? no check here.
How about dim-sim? No check here.
Tons of good vietnamese food? No Check here.
Diverse immigrant population? No?
Common things. High business taxes, and irrational regulation. Sharing nutty car emission regualtion.
Ya, if PIT is SFX, then I am Anne of Green Gables.
So when is Ravenstahl going to unilaterally issue gay marriage licenses? That'll get people to move here, eh?
Glad to see you're getting in the spirit of things, Anne. ;-)
But vibrant high tech community in SFO (SFX??)? Valley yes; SF no.
Tons of good Vietnamese in SF? Some, yes; tons? Hmmm.
Diverse immigrant population? More so in the East Bay (Oakland), less so in SF, I think. At least that used to be true. It's pretty expensive to emigrate to SF.
Dim sum. Yep. I do really miss the dim sum. OK. I don't live in San Francisco after all. And you're Amos again.
mike madison said ...
"Diverse immigrant population? More so in the East Bay (Oakland), less so in SF, I think. At least that used to be true. It's pretty expensive to emigrate to SF."
Huh? There are now more Chinese living in San Francisco than Americans. That sounds pretty diverse to me. There are also small communities of Vietnamese and Japanese people, and fairly large Latino population. And the area just north of the southern border (near the old Candlestick Park) is all black. Sounds pretty diverse to me!
Depends on your definitions of diversity, I guess. Remember, I grew up in the Bay Area and worked and lived there for more than 30 years. SF has had a huge but mostly segregated Chinese population for more than a century, and a sizable but mostly segregated African-American population for nearly that long. The Latino community is newer and smaller, though it's growing. The difference between SF and Oakland, however, has been the absence of a dominant racial/ethnic/cultural group in the latter. While certain neighborhoods are historically black or Asian, it's been a long time since a white majority had the ability to ghetto-ize any racial minority. Demographically, no group constitute an outright majority of the population, and (living in Oakland for almost a decade) I certainly sensed a diversity in the community -- multiple groups of people, blended together -- that I rarely felt in SF (where I worked for most of that time). Not that living in Oakland was conflict-free; it's not, and never has been. It's just that multiple communities there seem blended together more easily than they are in SF.
Maybe Hunter's Point and the Fillmore aren't so solidly African-American any longer (in fact, the A-A community as a whole has been disappearing from SF for some time). The Chinese community remains vibrant, I assume, though I also assume that it's no longer concentrated in the ghetto-ish Chinatown and North Beach. The real growth in the Asian population, however, is up and down the East Bay -- from Milpitas up through Richmond. That's where the (relatively) inexpensive housing is, and that's where you're likely to see a broad range of races and ethnicities hanging together at In 'n' Out at 11:30 at night. I don't see that so much in SF.
YMMV.
Why are Pittsburghers always praying, hoping, wanting to be somewhere else?
Constantly comparing themselves...needing to be accepted?
What is it about us and our city-wide self esteem problem? We aren't San Fran...and we should be happy about that. We are Pittsburgh!
If I were a Pittsburgher, and if I yearned to live in San Francisco, I might offer an explanation. But I'm not, and I don't. ;-)
I believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship.
Wheewho. For a second I was worried about hosting tours for Japanese women to PEI. ;-)
Ya, I am mixing LAX with SFO. It has been awhile since I was out in CA for work.
According to CitySearch, PIT has 4 restaurants claiming vietnamese food. None I concider adequate. SFO has 100 vietnamese (only LAX has more listed, 116) and either 35, or 48 dim sum places. That is a huge numerical advantage, even concidering those that dumb down the fare for tourists.
My point about diversity is not some much that SFO is "perfect", but that PIT is a real anomaly, even for the east coast, being very old white bread bland.
William, just like Mike is the exception, someone with no ties to the area originally, moving to PIT. 84% of the people in the PIT MSA are from at least PA. I am another exception, in that I am stuck here, and want to leave. Most people that what to leave PIT, do. Unfortunately, I have family obligations.
PIT really has an "irrational exuberance" about itself. Most people here will never say anything critical about it. It falls to me to be that guy that says the "no clothes" thing.
I actually checked out "WiFiPittsburgh". Pretty lame. Spotty reception, dropped signals, substandard for high bandwidth (much less than the mentioned "free" 512 Kbps (or 64 KBps)). In other words, the perfect metaphor. I wonder if the PG will do a story in a year detailing how few people that actually signed up for the service at any paying level. Here is the USWireless map of PIT showing where the lamppost access points are. I have seen other maps that were, well, generous with coverage.
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