Much like the physical topology of today’s San Francisco bay was defined by the gold rush, so too is the culture of San Francisco. From gold, to whale oil, to canning, to shipbuilding, to the navy, the one constant about the city is that it has always been a place that attracted generation after generation of young people seeking freedom and fortune. To pretend that the constant influx of uncouth immigrants isn’t a vital part of San Francisco’s story is to deny its essential character.

But there’s a dark truth under this story that is often ignored in the celebration of the city’s culture: The economic lifeblood of San Francisco has always been about taking these immigrants, converting the youth of many into capital for a few, and then spitting those immigrants back out once they have been spent.

The pleasures, dreams, adventures, and characters you speak of are real, but they’re the pleasures, dreams, adventures, and characters of those successive generations of immigrants. The classic collective of hedonistic freed people you speak of is collected of the “uncultured, generally biased, and agonizingly socially awkward folk” you so charitably deign to tolerate. The “civil rights monument, grass-roots garden, working class utopia” ideal is real, but it’s also part of a greater lie designed to attract young people so that they can be used and discarded. The machine that must be fed is also an essential part of the city’s heart.

The art and culture that have emerged as part of this cycle are no less beautiful because they’re exploited and exploitative, but to put them on a pedestal and deny the dark side of their nature is to be accomplice to the robbery they facilitate.