tales of the city
stray thoughts and feelings after 6 months in san francisco
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Part I
Streets all over San Francisco increasingly feature silver buckets of succulents. They are much larger than a millennial’s leafy window arrangement or the palm-sized pots of cacti that greet visitors at the front door of many Victorians. They are deliberately oversized and expose a sad struggle.
To a tourist, the silver planters might look cute. They resemble the sort of an investment a city makes in a neighborhood that it is trying to make appear “vibrant.” I’ve noticed that many streets with them lack tree coverage, so they could be excused as urban greenification of some sort. But like many facets of the streetscape in San Francisco, the quaintness masks a deeper social problem.
Tents can’t easily pop up on sidewalks with planters. I realized this when I was biking around one afternoon, noticing that many of the familiar encampments in my neighborhood had somehow been replaced with the silver buckets which, I now know, are actually designed to feed livestock.
They are primarily sold by one company: SFPlanters.com, which offers “beautiful and vibrant planter box installations for our customers.” The site does not contain the word “homeless” or “unhoused.” But there is one reference to the population they are seeking to outlaw: “We also take a holistic approach to working with our community and city departments to find the best solution for home and business owners, and those living on the street in our communities.” Imagine that: a planter company working with both “our community” and “those living on the street in our communities.”
A few weeks ago, a short-lived parody site, SFPlanters.org, spoofed the design of SFPlanters.com, promising to “install barricades for beautiful, homeless-free sidewalks,” which was almost too close to the original site to qualify as satire.
Some planters weigh over 2,000 pounds, the same as a small car. Once installed, they limit the ability of the homeless population to take advantage of San Francisco’s particularly wide sidewalks to settle themselves and their belongings. The typical outcome of the planters’ installation, as far as I have observed, is that narrower pedestrian walkways get blocked instead.
However, neighborhood interest crowdfunding for these planters has never been more popular. This summer, residents of the Mission raised over $20,000 for 31 steel planters on Harrison Street. Last week, NoPa residents crowd-funded and installed a similar amount. Residents of the Castro have done so, too. They appear to be spreading – private businesses have installed them throughout the city, even on narrow sidewalks.
I found these rainbow-colored planters to be particularly striking. (Photo my own)
The planters are inescapable. I think about them frequently because they call out a tension between the residents living in $3,000 one-bedroom apartments (who feel they deserve more given the price they are paying) and a growing population of individuals the city struggles to provide services for. I’ve lived here for six months now, but I’ve found the city’s countless harbingers of inequality impossible to stop noticing.
ACS data from 2020 says that 37% of San Francisco residents are rent-burdened (i.e., spending more than 30% of their salaries on rent). Over a third of the city faces expenses their incomes can’t fully accommodate, which massively contributes to the housing insecurity the city is known for. Meanwhile, Vox reports that 1 out of every 11,600 people in San Francisco is a billionaire. (I had to read that statistic twice.)
Something about the density of San Francisco feels like these tensions play out directly in front of you, more than I’ve ever experienced before, whether you are commuting to the BART station or shopping somewhere cute with friends. Elites live in suburbs all over the country, but here they also live in high-density neighborhoods with high-need populations.
Part II
Other times the inequalities I witness are relatively benign, but still felt, like the bikes flying past me. Hammering up Valencia St.’s newest (and vaguely controversial) two-way bike lane, I am constantly passed by shiny carbon-fiber bikes from brands I’ve never heard of. I am not ashamed of my ‘80s Nishiki Olympic, which I purchased off Craiglist back in Chicago for $90. But I am always a bit struck by the nonchalance of these other riders – atop bikes worth as much as my car, and ridden without helmets, lights, saddlebags, clip-in shoes, or a cycling outfit. While there is nothing wrong with purchasing a really nice bike to become your Grocery Store Express, prior to moving here I had never heard of people doing that. It just wasn’t something I thought someone my age would do. But when you have to find a way to spend a salary double or triple the median of typical 30-year-old earnings, I guess it makes sense. They look fun, too.
But the Grocery Store Express is no match for the grocery store itself. The varieties of produce are limitless – we’re talking fresh strawberries and fruit combinations like “pluots” stocked year-round. The prices seem limitless, too. My neighborhood’s most expensive grocery store calls itself a “community market.” (It makes Whole Foods look like a Dollar General). I may have lost my internal definition of the meaning of “community,” but I am pretty sure that it is not a $2.98 deflated tomato. A few blocks away, produce markets line Mission St. selling tomatoes for much, much less.
Everywhere I go, I am reminded of this constant conflict of ideals: the liberal cosmopolitan interests of the wealthy and the varied realities of people who actually live here. It fosters a sense of parallel lives. Valencia St. is only two blocks from Mission St. Tech start-ups thrive in warehouses where the city’s manufacturing businesses has dwindled. Last week I read a library book at Haus Coffee while overhearing two men beside me discuss various “cross-applications” that would “bring millions on chain.” [Millions of what? I have no idea.]
Income is only one metric to frame inequality, but it is rising fast post-pandemic, and I observe it anecdotally everywhere. Back in Chicago, I never overheard early-twenty-somethings debating vacationing in Bali or renting “another” Airbnb in Spain. Sure, I had some friends who had more money than others, but I never felt that I couldn’t maintain the lifestyle of these friends while I was in grad school. Here, as a young person, it feels impossible to be removed from some dichotomy.
The y-axis is the ratio of the mean income for the highest quintile (top 20 percent) of earners divided by the mean income of the lowest quintile (bottom 20 percent) of earners in San Francisco County.
It feels like all these differences in the city’s population and built environment indicate something new every time you notice them. (I work as an Economic Analyst, it is possible I am too accustomed to this kind of thinking). But disparities really do grow everywhere, from who lives in the pre-war three-flats across from the six-story steel-and-glass condos, to who lives in the neighborhoods with community gardens versus those with abandoned construction sites.
I hope that in future months here I am able to better understand these dichotomies and how they came to be. There is so much that, due to the simplistic and misguided media narrative of SF as a “hellscape,” does not get analyzed.
Part III
It is maybe strange to acknowledge that, despite so many structural (and non-structural) struggles and visible tensions and widening economic gaps, so much of the city is still incredibly beautiful.
Personally, I am very lucky to live here in the circumstances that I do, where I have largely been able to “make it work” on a sub-Area-Median-Income salary. I’ve met incredible friends here and deepened existing friendships. I’ve found great bars and read great books in even greater parks. Despite noticing the cracks in the wall, I’ve been privileged enough to largely enjoy being housed within them.
Longtime resident or newcomer, there is no shortage of beautiful days in San Francisco. You can get a book from one of the coolest bookstores in America (City Lights), and enjoy it over a beer at the bar next door (Vesuvio Cafe), which is one of few landmarks of its kind (it was once frequented by Kerouac and Ginsberg) that still retains its charm. You can surf in the morning in Pacifica, grab a coffee and some tacos, and get lost in redwoods by the afternoon.
Like any fresh transplant, I especially enjoy taking walks through the city. The buildings reflect the city’s outrageous and debaucherous history from conquest to gold rush to gambling and ceaseless booms and busts of numerous industries since. (Who lives in those historic mansions is of course a gold rush of its own.) I’ve found parks big enough to get lost in springing up where I’d least expect them – heavenly nests above staircases or sheets of treetops sunken into the Earth. There are too many hills to climb in this city, and you really have to climb all of them, because the view atop each one is somehow different from the block before it. Somehow, against all odds, it is a deeply romantic city.
