A GENERATION OF CELL PHONE ZOMBIES

It hasn't rained for a while in the city, nor even rained enough in many years.
Most of us who have been here for years remember torrential downpours ("oh yes, that was the year that.."), and we cannot wait until the recent arrivals from Flyoverstan get drenched. On the one hand, we're sick of them and their memories of real weather, on the other hand, despite a reputation for tolerance and openmindedness, we have a streak of mean a mile wide, and they've worn out their welcome.

We want them to get soaked in the freezing rain.
So that they're thoroughly miserable.
And hate the weather here.


Beloved San Francisco institutions are all disappearing because those migrant hosebags from the rest of the country are driving up the rents.
True San Franciscans sneer at the East Bay, and despise everything between the Oakland Hills and Chicago or New York.
Particularly the people: paranoid Christian Teaparty Republicans, their manners, morals, values, and especially their repulsive adult offspring who flee Flyoverstan and get all hip once they reach San Francisco.
Please, go back, all of you. You're loathsome.

Plus you dress funny and eat too much.


A landlord in the North Beach / Chinatown area is trying to chase out all of the long time tenants so that he can rent his miserable fleabag hotel rooms to internet yuppies desperate for a pied-à-terre in the downtown.
We're talking elderly people, poor folks, and cripples.
Versus young, white, and unbearably hip.
And four times the rent.

See, the Google bus (or is it the Genentech bus?) stops less than a block away. They can get a glutenfree zero sugar donut and cup of sustainably farmed espresso -- or a kale smoothie -- and then wait in quiet lines reading their text messages before they are whisked away by their all-benevolent nurturing tech companies.
Other than sleeping in the neighborhood, and getting shitfaced at a south of Market club every weekend, they do not contribute to the life of the city. They can't cook, what with being modern American twenty-somethings, they purchase their clothing and entertainment from the internet, and they have absolutely NO intention of frequenting local shops and restaurants cheek by jowl with THOSE people.
Chinatown restaurants aren't fashionable in any way.
North Beach doesn't have East-Coast pizza.
Our Irish bars have too many Irish.
We're not hip enough.
Or at all.

But in some sense they do participate in local life; they Uber. Which means that they can Uber to a fashionable watering hole elsewhere in the city, have a mojito and some designer food while chatting with other hip people, Uber over to a club owned by East Coast investors, then call Uber and get back to their North Beach / Chinatown technocoolie barracoons without ever having to interact with, you know, THOSE people.
Long-time neighborhood residents.
San Franciscans.

If they have to eat, they use Grubhub, Spoonrocket, and Munchery.
There's Task Rabbit and The Armory for everything else.



I got out of the house at eleven this morning, and had a wonderful day. Lunch with an old friend, then a chance meeting and a long conversation with an associate from years ago who was smoking a cigar in the familiar spot, followed by a trip on the Cablecar, a tea-time hot beverage and a jin deui at Blue Sky in C'town, and a long stroll to the park behind the Pyramid with a pipe in my mouth.

The bus back across the hill coming home, however, was a bit stressful. Before it even got to Sansome Street it was already filled with émigrés from Flyoverstan. And their damned cellphones. Sweet Jesus wearing purple yoga pants, what a bunch of blisters!


Get off your phones, ignore your text messages, and talk to someone!
Interact, be social, show consideration and humanity.

Unless you're reading this on your phone.
In that case, please continue.
Leave a comment.





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