The owners of old San Francisco, in the 1870’s-1920’s, covered its neighborhoods with stately mansions and lovely Victorian townhouses. These were rich people. The Stanford %$*E%$ of their day made San Francisco what it is, architecturally and economically. The city has been living off their legacy ever since.
This silly fellow wants back a San Francisco where the neighborhoods had become cheap and run down, and so affordable to the bohemians and hippies. That was one stage of existence, not the whole of it, and not the most edifying one.
There are problems with the lack of culture and the crassness of the latest tech industry arrivals (and they are largely not gay, the gay thing was a stage, apparently, and it is slowly passing), but they are an improvement over some of the previous populations that have infested this place.
Yours is one of the few responses about SF that knows what they're talking about. Too many posters here at FR knock SF (and California) as being beyond hope and infested with gays. Nothing could be farther from the truth. SF is beginning to return to normalcy. For 2/3rds of the 20th century it was a conservative place, as was most of California. Hippie liberals started arriving from elsewhere in the mid-1960s and began to ruin things; then gays migrated in. They've been leaving over the last couple decades. They're a minority, and their numbers are declining.
As you stated, the hill of SF used to be covered with rich people's homes. Now they're returning, in the guise of techies and professionals. And as you say, the same wealth that built Stanford University also built SF long ago. I'm in the midst of remodeling my mother-in-law's home in SF. Prices are going up 10 percent each year, as rich people move in and gentrify the neighborhood. A home half a block up was remodeled and sold over $2 million. It's crazy. Everywhere in SF there is gentrification and "ghettos" no longer really exist. The tech boom of Silicon Valley has moved north into SF, and the bums are being edged out. Too bad, but the city is better off without the freeloaders.