 |
| Our apartment in San Fran |
Last year, we chose to live in Fresno just to be near San Francisco and it was the closest we could get at the time. Now, we're actually going to live there!
I'm pretty excited. I think it will be really interesting. We've already been told that two of the three other tenants in our building are IT professionals and none of them have a car. We're looking forward to finding a couple decent bikes and living in the Richmond neighborhood, just a couple miles from the beach, the Presidio, and Golden Gate Park.
It's an interesting time to live in San Francisco. As housing continues to rise, there are a lot of protests against the very IT professionals the Bay Area is known for. It's a microcosm of the future war that's been predicted to eventually happen between AI advocates and future luddites, and, more importantly, a debate that will continue to occur as the wealth gap increases. In San Francisco, discontent has surfaced as public protests against the private Google and Facebook commuter buses that workers take from San Fran to their jobs in Palo Alto. Airbnb was recently in the press being blamed for increased housing costs by filling apartments with short-term tourists instead of long-term tenants.
I'll be researching why diverse housing is such a big issue while we're there. Obviously, diversity is beneficial, but what is the argument for tampering with capitalism? Why aren't people who can't afford housing just expected to move to an area they can afford? Will the economy collapse if there aren't any minimum wage workers? I'm entirely ignorant on the issue...
Ever since we found out we were going to San Fran next, anything related to the city has been catching my eye. We watched the Disney move Inside Out last night and noticed all the San Frannery in the background. We experienced an unsettling earthquake in Anchorage and aren't too keen on the idea of a repeat, so we'll skip watching San Andreas. I did some research into earthquake prediction and the 1908 and 1989 earthquakes -- "Duck and cover!"
We leave tomorrow and are going to stop along the way to check out Sacramento. I'll write more when we actually get there. Here are a couple articles of interest:
The $600-a-month shipping container village for young professionals getting creative to avoid staggering rents in San Francisco
Tenderloin Photos
Finally, a clip from Inside Out of the family moving to San Fran. I was able to guess where they were moving to, and where they were moving from just by seeing the three transition clips. We experienced something similar along our travels through South Dakota, Colorado, and Utah.
