[wonderzombie]

Man, I am 100% sympathetic to the issues Solnit is talking about -- gentrification, the plight of the poor, public transit -- but I find this approach & framing completely off-putting. It's hard to articulate why. Maybe the whiff of entitlement to SF the way Solnit believes it ought to be, as if that's somehow purer SF than prior waves of change.

The upshot is that I'm way more conflicted than I might have been otherwise. And while it's not like I, as an individual, have some great sway over this debate, I can't imagine I'm the only leftie who feels sympathetic but alienated.

Maybe that's that cost of doing business here, so to speak. It's no secret there's a huge libertarian streak running through tech. And it's not difficult to imagine how unpopular a lot of obnoxious young white men in tech might already be in some areas.

And finally: big name tech companies = big headlines.

Disclosure: I work for one of the big companies discussed in this piece.