[nostrademons]

Multi-ethnic is not a problem in the Bay Area. Most of the people with money & skills are also immigrants, and many of them are various shades of brown or yellow.

Poor is. The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.) It's very strange - I think that people who are used to the race & class social systems of much of the rest of North America don't really know what to make about the Bay Area, because in some ways we've busted out of those social systems and just replaced them with other ones which are...weird.

[paxy]

I'd like to add that this isn't restricted to the bay area. All of America has a huge classism problem, and it's often misdiagnosed as racism (not saying the latter doesn't exist at all, of course).

[dragonwriter]

> The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.)

The rich get crime-ridden places, too? Sounds less classist than most places.

[nostrademons]

Yup, they do. Most of the Google engineers I know who live in the Mission have been mugged or had their car/house broken into at least once. You just learn to not carry a lot of money or expensive stuff with you.

The reason I say it's classist is that because you have both millionaires and people who are dead broke in the same space, people have invented a lot of subtle social signaling cues to understand just who they are dealing with. Like when my wife & I go house hunting, every realtor asks "Where do you work?", and we answer "Los Altos" and "from home", and then my wife says afterwards "I think they meant which company do you work at?" Or the time I met a black dude on Muni who had a bet with his girlfriend that he could identify techies by sight, because he asked me "Excuse me. Are you a techie?" and then got it right (apparently it was the Columbia fleece that gave it away, which is odd to me because it cost me < $20 off Amazon). Or the realtor who first took me around when I moved out here, showed me a kindy dumpy midtown Palo Alto apartment, then said "It's got a Palo Alto zip. That's important to some people."

Undoubtedly this happens in the rest of the U.S, but it's different in the Bay Area, precisely because wealthy and poor live in such constrained spaces. Many of the social signals of wealth in the rest of the U.S. don't apply here because they're stupid - if you park your Lambo in the Mission, it will get taken for a joyride, if you wear an Armani handbag it will get lifted from your car, and there's no room for your gated community outside of Atherton. Our billionaires are too busy coding, raising capital, rollerblading, and kiteboarding to worry about things like their wardrobe or car. You get startup founders who own companies worth tens of millions and yet use a 5-year-old iPhone with a cracked screen.

[andrewem]

Re "It's got a Palo Alto zip. That's important to some people.", my parents tell the story that when they were looking for housing in New Jersey in the late 1970s, the real estate agent said things like "This house has a Princeton address", and "This house has a Princeton phone number."

[h3throw]

What!? I've lived in the Mission for 5yrs and know plenty of others who also have. Never once been mugged our had my house broken into!

The car thing, though, everyone in SF who street parks has had their window shattered and car scavenged...

[nostrademons]

3 out of ~7-8 people I know in the Mission (uncertainty is because of different definitions of "know" and "the Mission" - is Dolores Triangle part of the Mission? Bernal?) have gotten mugged. One was on 16th & Folsom, another around 24th or 25th & Mission walking home to Bernal Heights, a third around 22nd & Van Ness. This is also over a fairly long period of time - over 10 years or so, though the people in question largely don't live in the Mission anymore.

It seems like the East side of the Mission (Folsom & Van Ness) is significantly less safe than the west side (Valencia & Guerrero) - I'll walk down Valencia and feel perfectly safe, while I'm always looking around me between Mission & Folsom.

[rconti]

Not that there aren't plenty of signals of wealth, but yeah, it's far more infrequent to see flashy cars in the bay area than, say, los angeles. The thing about the 5 year old iPhone with a cracked screen is spot on. Most of the exec types I know from tech companies give off a "too busy to even bother replacing my busted old phone" vibe.

[masonic]

   "It's got a Palo Alto zip. That's important to some people."

It was important enough for the Four Seasons hotel by 101 when new that they initially lied on their website and letterhead that they were in Palo Alto, not East Palo Alto. EPA isn't even in the same county as PA.

[ktjfi]

>Yup, they do. Most of the Google engineers I know who live in the Mission have been mugged or had their car/house broken into at least once. You just learn to not carry a lot of money or expensive stuff with you.

It's incredible that this could ever be considered "normal". And all in the name of political correctness, no less.

[sincerely]

I dont know where you are getting “political correctness “ from lol

[nickelcitymario]

I buy this argument, more or less.