” The “ghetto” in SF (Hunters Point/Bayview district) looks like a well-to-do middle-class enclave from other towns, versus the burned-out desolate stretches I’ve seen in other cities.”
Years ago, I worked down on Jerrold Avenue. The area around the Produce Market, including Potrero Hill was a $hit hole. We had dead bodies turn up on our streets and it wasn’t a place where you wanted to take a walk after lunch. We had a chance to drive through that area a few weeks ago incuding driving up Third St. to the AT&T Ballpark. The Renaissance is stunning! Gone is all the crappy city-owned housing on Potrero Hill, replaced by high-end apartments and condos. Third St. is revitalized ( don’t know where all the Blacks who used to live there went, but they are largely gone from the area). Our daughter works for one of the major contractors in SF. They have never been busier building both business and housing. Downtown SF has an ever changing skyline due to all the construction. The old Transbay Terminal has been torn down and is being rebuild to accommodate better transportation infrastructure as well as more office space above. All of this activity has had the effect of displacing all the trash people that used to lurk in the city. Don’t know where the’ve all gone, but they have gone!
These people on FR who form the anti-California “amen chorus” don’t have a clue. They lash out in their stupidity at our state without having any first-hand knowledge about what’s really going on here. Would I like to see the RATs go packing? Sure, but nothing in governance is static, and the pendulum will swing back as people finally figure out that they are being played. Personally, I am not going to let those who use less than truthful invective to trash our state without a response.
Yes. I grew up in the Mission District on the north side of Goat Hill (Bernal Heights). Back in the fifties a bunch of streets weren't paved yet and you had to walk to another block to fetch your car. Me and my friends played around Jerrold Avenue and the warehouses, especially the junkyards and slaughterhouses (still remember the smell), sometimes we played in the public housing highrises, having no concept of danger. It was a $hit hole as you say. I helped my dad every weekend shopping at the produce market where we got food on the cheap (dented canned goods etc.) As you say, the renaissance is stunning. Particularly all the biotech building at China Basin, unrecognizable compared to the eyesore it was. I used to fish there as a boy near the drawbridge, dirty area but now it's McCovey Cove. The whole city is cleaned up. All the blacks left for cheaper towns' housing. My oldest is a grad of UC Berkeley, now working at Genentech - they built several dozen large buildings in South SF and modernized the whole area at the bayshore, real beautiful now. People have no idea how nice things have become here.