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VANILLA_CITY

                                             March     1, 2010
                                             September 5, 2013

   So, there's this jazz musician, Charlie Hunter,
   who came out of San Francisco in the late 80s,
   and then moved to New York.

   In the mid-1990s, when he was visiting SF,
   he did an interview in the Bay Guardian,
   and in passing sneered at the present state of
   San Francisco:  He and his New York friends
   dismissed it as "vanilla city": just a bunch of
   bland, relatively wealthy white people.

   Now that particular jab was pretty
   crazy, even as late as the 90s ,                        (Sep 05, 2013)
   and we might wonder what the hell              Though of late, it's
   he was thinking...                             seemed we're getting
                                                  there at amazing speed.
      The Mission
      Chinatown
      Hunter's Point
      Richmond
      Japantown         And, if you don't
                        get technical about
                        legal borders:        Oakland is really SF's
                                              analog of Brooklyn.
                           Oakland            You can't compare NYC
                                              and SF sensibly and
                                              just go by official
                                              boundaries.


    By the time Hunter was making
    this snide attack, Manhatten              The life and
    was well on it's way to being             diversity of New
    the real Vanilla City.                    York has long        (At a guess,
                                              since moved          Hunter was
                                              across the river     spending all
                                              to Brooklyn.         his time
                                                                   there...)


   But it's certainly the *direction*
   in which San Francisco was going.          And there are
                                              neighborhoods
      And it remains a nightmare              that definitely
      image of a possible endpoint...         deserve the
      gentrification out-of-control,          epithet.
      choking off the virtues that
      originally attracted it...                 Union Street.

                                                 Perhaps:

                                                 Noe Valley

                                                   But even Noe Valley
                                                   could be worse.

                                                         NOE_REASON





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