One city, two faces

Someone recently asked me what I liked least about living in San Francisco. My mind went immediately to what I like least about San Francisco. Full stop.

Of course, my thoughts on the matter could probably be applied to other prosperous cities around No. America like Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, New York City...

I began my answer with this wee story:

I remember meeting a friend and her friend for lunch downtown. It was probably 1990. The friend of a friend was wearing a vintage, haute couture (her words) Chanel jacket. We complimented her on her coveted piece. ‘Thanks, it was my Grandmother’s. She was from San Francisco, afterall’. My response was something like: By the time I knew my Grandmother, she’d graduated to wearing elastic-waistband, polyester slacks and she was from San Francisco, too! (I laughed as I said this; the other two didn't.)

At the risk of sounding dense, meeting the 'haute couture' girl was truly the first time I had thought about the pockets of great wealth that have always existed in this city. In the 1950s, my Uncle Buddy had worked for a time as a chauffeur for prominent San Francisco families, but I hadn't really thought about the sorts of people who might have employed him. By the time I had come into the world, my Uncle and his partner were living in a lovely flat atop Nob Hill. They seemed to me to have had money, but I now realize that one could rent a nice place in SF in the 1950s and still be of modest means. Rent control meant that Lee and Buddy could continue to afford living in their cozy digs as the cost of living steadily climbed throughout the ensuing decades.

The red 'X' marks the spot, approximately, where Buddy and his partner, Lee, lived together for almost 50 years. They weren't living high on the hog, but they were definitely 'wealth adjacent'.

Nob Hill: Grace Cathedral in the center of the shot.

I asked my mom, recently, if she knew who Buddy had chauffeured for and she told me that he'd driven around members of the Spreckels family, heirs to the Spreckels Sugar Company fortune. Everyone in my family of that generation save my mother is deceased, so the story can't be corroborated, but it does make for a good yarn.

Below is an image of the Spreckels family mansion--

The novelist Danielle Steel now owns this architectural wonder. 

As you might have guessed, I come from working-class San Francisco stock and my people were bus drivers, bartenders, pizza-makers, firemen, foster mothers, floorers, cannery workers, cleaners, longshoremen, etc. As a result of my upbringing, I had tended to regard SF as a working class town. By the mid-20th century, the majority of working class areas of SF were geographically removed from the very monied areas. If found yourself in the SE and SW districts of San Francisco back in the 1950s, then you were in blue collar territory as far as the eye could see.

The numbers of working-class (and middle-class) residents have been shrinking at a fairly rapid clip since the last decades of the 20th century. Housing costs have far outpaced wages. Folk from lower socio-economic strata can no longer afford to move here. I live in a former working-class area of SF. In fact, the original owner of the house (built ca. 1940) we are renting was a postman. The houses in this area are modest. Most were built with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. These same homes now regularly sell for over a million dollars. The 'family car' of newly minted residents seems to be a Porsche Cayenne or one of the other plentiful European SUVs on the market.

Buddy's father, my Grandpa Frank, was a streetcar* conductor. Were my Grandpa alive and working the same job today, would he not only not be able to afford to buy the house he did back in the 1940s in Visitation Valley, but he’d probably be renting out in the Central Valley some 80 plus miles away and commuting in hours a day to work as a city bus driver.

The 22 Fillmore (now a bus route) was my Grandpa's line.

The 22 Fillmore, coming and going.

I don't really have anything against people who can affored fancy clothes from France. But, frankly, this city is now almost exclusively geared toward those with shed loads of disposable income. And, as I told the person who asked me, I dislike that fact the most.

*busses have largely replaced streetcars