This Is Why I Believe San Francisco Never Lost Its Essence
I am sitting in the airport, drinking the last IPA made in San Francisco and listening to all the tunes that have created the Soundtrack to this trip.
Once again I am leaving a city that from the very first moment has had a special corner in my heart and in my future plans. Often I’ve written about feeling connected to places and to people in a way it is difficult to explain. Sometimes these connections don’t really have a reason. They just happen.
To me San Francisco is a mix of feelings and a mix of opinions about a city that is full of contradictions.
There is the San Francisco of the hippies and the San Francisco of the tech companies.
The first one is the essence of the city, the reason why San Francisco was the center of the counter culture in the 60’s. If you have ever read Jack Kerouac, Tom Wolfe or Ken Kesey and you go to the corner of Ashbury and Haight you almost can feel the energy of these guys running up and down these streets trying to change the world. And while you are standing there looking around you barely can’t believe the guys you’ve read about where stepping on the same pavement as you do at the moment.
There was Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty going to the next party or planning their next trip. Exactly in the same point you are standing at the moment.
After those years the tech companies came over, Steve Jobs created Apple in a Garage while Sergey and Larry did more or less the same a few years later. But they also changed the world and started a movement. Instead of fighting with flowers and songs they did it with technology and intelligence. Same as Kerouac and Wolfe, they were visionaries of their times, with a mind too open for those years. Everybody thought they were fools, right?
At the end, everybody complains that San Francisco has lost that essence of the 60’s because of the tech companies, and those real San Franciscans (also called unicorns because, who is a real San Franciscan in San Francisco?) still wanting to keep that essence and that lifestyle, when, at the end San Francisco’s main purpose hasn’t changed even a little bit.
It is still that place where everything is possible, where every crazy idea becomes true; cradle of pioneers and rebels. The place where everything is happening and the place that marks the beginning of any cultural movement that in a few years will be seen as “cool” or “hype”.
That is why I am sure in 30, 40 years some author will put a name to this technological revolution we are living and will put a name to the people that changed the rules of the game while living in San Francisco.
The question then is: Do you wanna be an spectator of this movement and tell your children you “live those years” or you want to tell them “I was actually PART of it?”
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