[Carry_Okie]

Interesting. The problem with SF is it seems like as it has microclimates of the weather it also has social microclimates. For kids, for instance, it seems to be two entirely different cities, depending on where you live and who you know.

That's a good observation, but given the mobility Muni affords, a kid can't get from one area to another without undergoing significant risks (I used to commute from Ingleside to Pacific Heights to school for example). Would you consider as a ten year old kid alone, using a public bathroom today?

If we can use school test scores, which are about as good a proxy for the state of kid-culture as any, the school district is an entirely different animal on the east and west sides. On the east side the schools are almost unversally as dismal as in Oakland. On the west side they are about what you would expect in Novato.

Lincoln is no Marin County school, and neither is City College. Lowell is the exception.

Also note that SF has the best public high school in California, Lowell, better than those in Palo Alto, which is one of the best in the country as a whole. The Lowell graduating classes I've seen (my wife is an alumna) are so impressive in their intellectual horsepower as to be almost scary. I would be very proud to have my children go to Lowell.

I went to Lick Wilmerding when it was still tuition-free. That's the elite school (especially if one is Jewish), or St. Ignatius (if Catholic).

The main reason I think the sickos got in was that the old mainly Catholic ethnic residents moved out to the suburbs. These politically active people formerly voted in rational governments. When they left they were replaced by a combination of politically inactive Asians and an assortment of malcontents from across the US, who achieved power by default.

Many moved out to save their kids from the '60s drug culture. Others left to retire somewhere cheaper (remember the skyrocketing property taxes before Prop 13). It went downhill steadily ever since George Christopher was mayor, the last Republican (and a RINO). Alioto made it look better than it really was.

The city has always had a large gay population, even in the '50s. They started getting militant with the "sexual revolution" of the '70s. It was part of the deal, planned long before Kinsey. The communists proposed using sexual fixation and homosexuality to destroy the West as early as 1919.

[buwaya]

I send my six-year old girl alone into public bathrooms all the time; I can't very well follow her in, can I ? I don't really see the danger, maybe I am naive.

Lincoln (and Washington) are a great deal better than they look, even in test scores. recall that these mainly Asian schools are where the bulk of the kids who didn't get into Lowell go to, mainly because their English was not good enough. Their Math scores are very high, certainly up to or above the suburban average. That part of SF public schools works very well in my opinion.

The main failure of the school district is that it does a very bad job in general with black and hispanic students, even compared to the California average. The black activists that complain about SF public schools have a genuine grievance, but of course they have no practical solution.

Given the score distribution in districts with much lower private school enrollment (SF has double or triple the private school enrollment of any CA district); I don't think either Lick or SI are any better than Lowell - the number of potential high-scoring kids just aren't there in the population, and Lowell is huge for such a high-scoring school, it sucks up most of the available talent, even if you assumed that SF has the educational demographics of Marin or Palo Alto. How schools score depends mainly on the students. Add to that as far as I know SI is typically considered a backup school for smart kids that don't make it into Lowell, it just doesn't follow that either Lick or SI are any better than Lowell, there just isn't the talent pool in the population to make it likely.

The electoral problem in SF is the Asians don't vote, and municipal elections are won with a very low turnout. That means that even a small politically organized minority group, like gays or leftists, has a free ride.