The Great San Francisco Bubble (FreeRepublic Mentioned)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | day, May 9, 2003 | Mark Morford

[nickcarraway]

It's that odd dumbstruck jolting feeling you get as soon as you step more than 25 miles away from this most progressive and funked-out and deeply flawed and self-consciously screwy of kaleidoscopic American urban metropoli: oh my freaking God, what is happening to the world? This is what you say. To yourself. Probably.

[finnman69]

Mark Morford speaks

[Publius]

What do you think? Does he pitch or catch?

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Not that Italy wasn't beautiful and culturally intoxicating, she said, but that it was, as she was painfully reminded, sexist as hell, homophobic as Rick Santorum, intolerant as Utah, what with the example of my friend's young shy half sister casually molested and possibly worse by a drunken Italian suitor and then everyone pretty much shrugging it off and brushing it aside and asking what she did to deserve it and no one standing up for the girl or smacking the dolt with a brick before castrating him with a rusty pizza cutter. Just one example.

Et tu, Juanita Broadderick?

[The KG9 Kid]

You're right; Mark Morford doesn't get out much. I believe that his sensationalistic declaration of San Francisco as all things gay, tofu, and organic doesn't necessarily hold true when he walks out the door of the San Francisco Chronicle at the end of the day.

Two nights ago, the SF Jewish Cultural Center was filled to capacity to hear Dennis Prager speak on the issue of 'Why The Left Has Abandoned Israel' as a guest of the Jewish Republicans of San Francisco, for instance.

Morford might have missed the fact that although 100,000 anti-war protestors from outside the city may have demonstrated before the war in Iraq, at least six times that many Bay Area patriots came to watch 'The Pretty Blue Angels of Death' during 'Fleet Week' that Morford railed about in an earlier column.

Morford speaks for Castro Street (or, "The 'Stro", as he no doubt calls it), and that's about it.

[Dead Dog]

What a set up.

[GSWarrior]

Because despite S.F.'s adorable slew of brazen flaws, despite our frequent hypocrisy and suckass mass transit and decimated music scene and shameful homeless issues and ridiculous housing prices and a desperate lack of exceptional pizza and an ongoing invidious adherence to snippy politically correct mind-sets and Good Vibrations closing at a tragically early 7 pm on Valentine's Day ...

This isn't even close to a sentence. I know it's a column and columnists have freer license, but I'd be embarrassed to affix my byline to this.

[finnman69]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/down/download.html?file=/media/sounds/104/sp104_audio1.wav

http://www.southparkstudios.com/down/download.html?file=/media/sounds/104/sp104_audio3.wav

[bert]

EarthQuake.....9.3, no stones left standing.

[vikingcelt]

Morford makes me ill. What does he know of San Francisco anyway? The San Francisco that was the greatest city ever. The San Francisco that was MY city when I was young. The San Francisco that I wept over when I had to leave because it had changed so much it was no longer recognizable. The beautiful old gray lady...shrouded in fog...violated, raped, demeaned, insulted by those who came from "God Knows Where" to spit on her and to destroy her. I will always see her in my mind and heart and soul as she was...beautiful, sophisticated and proud...and though I can never go home again that once greatest of cities will live on in my heart and soul and memory...I will always remember her as she was once in a beautiful long ago dream.

[CounterCounterCulture]

The most close-minded, intolerant city I have ever visited is Frisco (a.k.a., San Francisco). What would you expect from the birthplace of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple? The cult-like attitude still prevails. Somebody pass 'em the organically-correct Kool-Aid.

[Billthedrill]

I just wrote a phony note from an illiterate little kid on another thread. The whining, malapropisms, and jumbled syntax made it sound just like this piece of silliness.

I'm not so sure the "pop the bubble" metaphor is quite appropriate, but it's close. I prefer "lancing a boil."

[finnman69]

Nark is definitely not this

Mark definitely is this...

[HamiltonJay]

San Francisco is a cesspool... it has to be one of the most filty and smelly cities I have ever visited. It's colorful I'll give you that... but all those blinding colors can't cover up the odiferous stench of urine in the streets, spent needles in the gutters and grafitti on everything in site.

The idea that SF is a utopia is comical. 300k a month just to clean up after the homeless.... Its effectively a city full of people who don't believe in personal responsibility.. and it shows.

[finnman69]

I'm not so sure the "pop the bubble" metaphor is quite appropriate, but it's close. I prefer "lancing a boil."

More like this.....

[NormsRevenge]

Let's face it: We in S.F. live in a cultural bubble. A giant tofu-huggin' gay-lovin' lusciously fed hippie liberal sunshine-y cocoon that might as well get blasted by terrorists and die of AIDS and drop off into the ocean for all the relevance it has to the rest of the world -- that is, if my rabid monosyllabic gun-lickin' hate mail from, say, the psychopatriot Freeps over at freerepublic.com or the bilious dittoheads of lucianne.com is to be believed. honor and continue to do so. What do you do fo

Hi Mark.. I served my country with honor and distinction. What do you do for a living? They don;t actually pay you to write this drivel , do they?

[Constitution Day]

It was irresistible.

[CounterCounterCulture]

What would you expect from the birthplace of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple?

Actually, let me correct myself. It wasn't born there (Indianapolis was the birthplace), but ultimately thrived there before going to Guyana. But my point still stands. ;-)

[Grando Calrissian]

Shallow and condescending with delusions of grandeur. The more this guy screams about how unique he (and by extension "San Francisco") is, the more common he is. He's a name-dropping, fad-chasing, humorless caricature that no more represents San Francisco than the people he makes fun of. I can almost guarantee you that this guy at one time: owned a "Member's Only" jacket and a pair of "Oakley Blades", has danced the "marcarena", watches "Survivor", and took part in "Hands Across America". Oh, and his favorite band was "No Doubt" until they "sold out".

I have lived in San Francisco most of my life, and I can tell you that this guy is more likely to be ridiculed than taken seriously.

Oh, and Mr. Morford, your table is ready at the Oxygen Bar.

[Burkeman1]

The great thing about a federal system is that you are going to have enclaves of freaks, pervs, and weirdos like San Francisco. That is what makes this country great. If they want public gay oral sex to be legal then so be it. You don't have to live there. I am non too fond of San Fran and I take it that this author is non too fond of - heck - 99% of the friggin country. Seeing that the freak culture he thrives and revels in is about 1 percent of the population of this country it is more than a little abusrd to describe the rest of the country in the terms he does. Who has the small mind here? Who is "progressive"? Perhaps someone should remind this author that while he may be "progressive" he is certianly ignorant and bigoted.

Oh- and Mr. economist? San Fran's housing prices aren't sky high because it is a great place to live. They are sky high because insane socialist laws like rent control, anti landlord regulations, "open space" building prohibitions, and other totally whacko envirnomental regs. Wonder why there is no "affordable" housing in San Fran? Becasue a developer would be insane to build any sort of lower income housing is San Fran with the current climate. The only new housing that ever gets built is luxary aparts by developers with the cash and connections to jump through the hoops.

Oh- and ask black people in San Fran about how diverse it is. Oh- that's right- there are barely any left as they are being driven out by the busload becasue they can't afford to live in your lilly white (but "progressive") gay wasteland.

[cibco]

He gets paid for this?

Can't wait 'til he gradiates' high school...