Money moves in, artists and culture move out. Twas ever thus.

In 1999, I paid about $1200 a month for a tiny studio in an old vic in Lower Pacific Heights. I barely scraped by but it was totally worth it. San Francisco is awesome.

And there are plenty of rich artists who do cool stuff, best part I ever went to was thrown by a bunch of tech workers whose office building was getting demolished. The theme was Edward Gorey and we had to come in costume. The whole place had been painted to look like an Edward Gorey comic book. The theme was, there was this couple throwing a birthday party for their daughter, but she never appeared. So they took mallets and broke down walls looking for her. At the end of the night, a coffin fell down with a child-sized skeleton in it, and it turned out the couple threw the party every year for their dead daughter. It was awesome. We all sat around chatting in faux posh English accents. Best party ever.

Tech is very male, but hardly all-white. Solnit loves to complain. SF makes it very hard for anyone to build a new house, much less apt. buildings.

Soling also think thr gov't should take over Google and FB. Because that worked out so well in the USSR. "You didn't build that" is her motto.

NicoleK, that sounds great! In 1992 I paid $1700 a month for a four-bedroom, two bath walkup in North Beach - with roof access and a sweeping view of the bay from bridge to bridge.

My friends had run Beat generation bookstores, worked for Coppola, had their own dance companies, music production houses -- and they're all gone. Moved away. Sure, they made a nice living, but not enough to afford millions for a house or insane rents. For every Danielle Steele there's a bunch of serious writers for smaller markets who don't pull down zillions for their work.

Let the place gentrify. The money people can turn it into something whitebread and boring and go to Starbucks every morning while they wonder what happened to the old cafe culture, and the artists can make someplace else interesting and lively.

Oklahoma beckons. Low cost, lowbrow, and beaten into stupidity by decades of bible-thumpers, for instance. Perfect barren field to sow.

Oklahoma beckons. Low cost, lowbrow, and beaten into stupidity by decades of bible-thumpers, for instance. Perfect barren field to sow. -- Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 21, 2014 4:37 PM

Speaking as one who lives in flyover country: Sow with what?

• The BS gun laws from NY, CA and NJ that don't make a damned bit of difference in crime?
• The income inequality that taxes CA residents at 20%? And they still have ghetto's, barrios and crushing poverty?
• How about Common Core that is going to intellectually stunt a generation until they believe plants crave electrolytes?
• How about the right to service over the religious objections of those who are gay?

Most of us in the middle of the country don't care what you do when you come there. But as soon as you want to impose your BS on us just stay where you are. You aren't always right.

Oklahoma beckons. Low cost, lowbrow, and beaten into stupidity by decades of bible-thumpers, for instance. Perfect barren field to sow.

Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 21, 2014 4:37 PM

Hoyt Axton once did a TV commercial for something where he, tongue in cheek, called Oklahoma "the cultural center of the universe"

My husband and I, who spent four pretty miserable years in Lawton used to joke that it was the cultural center of the universe just like the eye of the hurricane, Absolutely nothing there.

Hey, there's culture in Oklahoma. Like the folks who used to run the big theatre production of 'Oklahoma'. They were so pro-capitalism they refused to pay the royalty fees for the musical.

That's good down-home Christian businessin', that is. Real Midwestern values that you can learn your childrens!

My husband and I, who spent four pretty miserable years in Lawton used to joke that it was the cultural center of the universe just like the eye of the hurricane, Absolutely nothing there. -- Isab at March 21, 2014 5:21 PM

Why were you miserable?

What did you lack?
Was it that the Olive Garden sucked?
Or was it that they pretty much rolled up the sidewalks by midnight?

Does it really matter that there is no ballet or opera nearby?

Does it mean you are deprived because most of the people have to be in their fields at sunup?

I have lived in a large city environment. Getting a fresh pizza delivered at 1AM is great. But at the same time I can live without it for knowing who my neighbors are. Living for 34 hours a day is not that great.

Jim, At the time we lived in Lawton there was no Olive Garden.

McDonalds, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins was about it.
A couple of decent Mexican restaurants.

The things I disliked about Oklahoma were the taxes, the weather, and the sky high crime rate. Hot and humid in the summer, and cold and nasty in the winter, punctuated by two tornado seasons.

Our house was burglarized twice in the four years we lived there. Had a locked car stolen also. No, not exactly New York city crime wise, but less safe and comfortable than the two states my husband and I had been raised in.

In Oklahoma's cultural defense, The nicest concert I have ever been to, was Jethro Tull in Norman.

Quite a drive though, was on a weeknight, and we had to be at work at five the next morning.

I was raised in a town of 2300. I don't need a lot of amenities to be happy, but it seems to me, that Oklahoma, in some respects, has the worst of both worlds, with both a repressive social culture, and an unfriendly business climate.

Though it's kind of off topic for the discussion, I live in Tulsa.

I've also lived in Kansas, Tennesee, California, Georgia, and New York City (and other places somewhat less needing of mention).

I won't say that Oklahoma is perfect (and what is?), but Tulsa and OKC (for example) aren't the inbred backwoods banjo player from deliverance world that people seem to picture.

In 17 years here, I've had *one* break in attempt (that failed). Yeah, not cool, but not Detroit, either.

I've met more genuinely friendly people here than I've met anywhere else.

I have a job that pays, cost of living wise, as well as (or even better than) any equivalent position in San Francisco or NYC).

At least in the larger cities here, for every lowbrow bible thumper, there's at least one (or more) others who haven't been beaten into stupidity (and who didn't start there in the first place).

We have opera. We have theatre. We have a symphony. We have the 14th ranked arena venue in the US and the 32nd in the world.

It's pretty fucking sad that people feel the need to denigrate someone (or some place) simply because someone doesn't live where *they* live.

There are clue free, useless, ignorant pieces of shit in *every* location, no matter how hip they might seem to their defenders.

And there are intelligent, decent people in every one of those locations as well.

And, you know what?

This whole thread started with a story about someone who isn't native to San Francisco complaining about the influx of other people who aren't native to San Francisco.

And it somehow became important to shit on Oklahoma for some reason?

[citation needed]

"Hey, there's culture in Oklahoma. Like the folks who used to run the big theatre production of 'Oklahoma'. They were so pro-capitalism they refused to pay the royalty fees for the musical."

I have been to Tulsa. Pretty place, for the flat lands.
Much prettier than Lawton.

The weather still sucks, and politically it was extremely corrupt. Hope they have cleaned it up some.

Oklahoma City in my opinion is the ugliest capital city in America.
Ranks right up there with Amarillo TX in terms of scenic appeal.

http://prowlingowl.com/Comments/OKScandals.cfm

Well, I'm not actually arguing that Tulsa (or OKC) is somehow the pinnacle of existence.

Also not a fan of the political climate here (hell, I work in the same building the city does their business in), though I'm not particularly convinced that any other location is somehow less corrupt. It's largely all the same in the end.

Weather wise, I *do* like a cooler environs, but having lived in Georgia and Florida, Oklahoma is somewhat less Hell than those places.

And flat? Tulsa has nothing on Kansas. I hear that string theorists use Kansas as a template for flatness in their equations :).

Also, hard to argue with the ugliness of OKC (city of concrete) as a capital, but it could have been worse.

Minor historical fact: The original capital of Oklahoma was Guthrie, gov at the time absconded to OKC for some reason.

I live in the country now. Not the American country, but the Swiss country, in a small village of 1100 people.

Before I'd lived in cities like Cambridge, Philly and San Francisco, closest I'd been to the country was a Boston suburb on the T and inside 128.

I really like it. Every one is friendly, walking to the village is like that scene in Beauty and the Beast where everyone is saying "Bonjour" to each other. The villages all have little societies like chorsus or gun clubs or tennis clubs, and weird little traditions like the Raisinee where you boil a pot of apple juice in a huge cauldron in the village center overnight to make syrup. The circus comes every other year.

The city people here have the same attitude towards country life as Americans do, but I think there's a lot to be said for the slow, chill pace of country life.

This whole thread started with a story about someone who isn't native to San Francisco complaining about the influx of other people who aren't native to San Francisco.

And it somehow became important to shit on Oklahoma for some reason? -- there are some who call me 'Tim?' at March 21, 2014 11:16 PM

Actually I sort of started the OT issue. I'm wanting to reject Gog's suggestion of bringing the lot of the sociopolitical ideas out of the left and right coasts along to the middle of the country when they flee their native states. They don't work and now that they want to try to implement them somewhere else where they still won't work.

Just look at the warning labels that California requires. Have they made a difference in cancer rates? But it is an extra 5¢ or 10¢ per item to the manufacturer. Then it is passed onto the rest of the consumers in every other state.

Or New York's decree on no more than seven rounds in a magazine. Most Glocks have a minimum ten round magazine. But do you think the bad guy that is about to 'jack your car is only going to load seven rounds because it's the law?

I'm talking about the locust effect. They come in eat everything until all the resources are gone and then move on and repeat it.

I'm talking about the locust effect. They come in eat everything until all the resources are gone and then move on and repeat it.

Posted by: Jim P. at March 22, 2014 8:42 AM

This is a legitimate concern. Most of the people pushing these feel good policies are deficient in their understanding of cause and effect.

They truly, and mistakenly believe that they can remake places to their liking without the unintended consequences of socialism that have overwhelmed California, and New York.

Oklahoma's general unattractiveness, may save it.

Right now they are working hard on Colorado, but are getting a bit more push back than they anticipated.

I barely scraped by but it was totally worth it. San Francisco is awesome.

I agree Nicole. San Francisco and Boston are my two favorite American cities.

I've been to the Bay Area a lot, because my older sister and her family live in Richmond. And, for the past four years, I've been going to S.F. for the wonderful Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, held in Golden Gate Park. On my last trip, I visited the Bernal Heights neighborhood for the first time (I went there to do a couple stairway walks in this book) and really liked it.

I don't defend Oklahoma because it is somehow a pinnacle of perfection (nowhere is). There are things that I like about the area, and quite a few things I don't like about it. Right now, due to my circumstances, it's the place I choose to be. There are other places I might rather live, but this is how things have worked out for now.

However, I refuse to stand aside while abject falsehoods and inaccurate information are bandied about by those who see, as an abberation, a part of the country they actually know nothing about.

There's lots of things I like about San Francisco, my brother lives there, for one. And there's quite the variety of things to see and do.

It really *is* a pretty cool place in many regards.

But, for all of the interesting bits, there's very many more outright poisonous morons who seem to believe that the city is better off stagnating in its current configuration than making any kind of productive change.

Because if it's allowed to change, it might be infected by someone they disagree with (or that it will make their particular place in the city somehow less important).

In the end, a structure (city in this example) either grows or it dies.

There is *no* middle ground in the long term.

It might take some amount of time for one or the other outcome to occur, but one of them will occur.

When you get right down to it, the above applies to the 'locust effect' as well. For many, it's not enough to kill their original state, they feel that they have to impose those self same destructive tendencies to whatever state they move to.

If the generally supported perception of Oklahoma (and other similar states) keeps these morons away from us, it's all for the better.

I'd like to visit Oklahoma, I've never been. I generally visit towns where I know people (we do a lot of combined trips that are business for my husband so we end up)

One of Frank Lloyd Wright's finest designs, and one of his few high-rises that actually got built, is in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

"Sow with what?"
Sow with the kind of culture that keeps the recent college grads from moving to a city with an alt weekly that carries Amy's column.

Won't this problem just work itself out in a few years as google's workforce ages, has kids, and they all move to Noe Valley at the same time?