Jonathan Weber on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly about How Tech Remade San Francisco

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, where we talk honestly with well-informed people about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. And Sandeep, I've had people recently tell me I shouldn't be using the word smart in the introduction, so I thought maybe I would try well-informed instead. I don't know what you think about that. Is that because they think we're dumb? What's wrong with the word smart?

[00:00:36] I think, you know, well-informed, not just smart. I'm not sure. I don't know. I've gotten some pushback against the use of that word. Call, write and tell us why you're concerned about that. Is Lionel Messi like a talented soccer player or a well-informed soccer player? I guess it's hard to say. He looks very smart. So what am I going to do as a transition here? I don't know. You went off on a weird tangent. You have the World Cup on your brain, obviously. We've got a game today in Seattle.

[00:01:04] Yeah, I know. I know. I know. All right. Well, our guest today who's going to help us understand what's happening down in San Francisco is Jonathan Weber, who was the Los Angeles Times Silicon Valley correspondent starting, I think, in 1990. He later became editor-in-chief of the Industry Standard. And his new book is City on the Edge, Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco. Jonathan Weber, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, David. A pleasure to be here.

[00:01:32] So I want to start by asking you a little bit about your backstory. And Sandeep and I were both living not in Silicon Valley, but in the Northwest here, starting in the 1980s through into basically the late 1980s. You moved to San Francisco or Silicon Valley in 1990. And I'm just wondering kind of why did you move there? But also what was tech like back then? I mean, this is pre-email for most people.

[00:02:01] Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, tech was kind of starting to be a thing, right? So the personal computer arrived in the early 1980s. Through the 1980s, a lot of people bought PCs, but mostly they were used for as word processors. The kind of tech revolution as we know it today hadn't really started. But clearly there was a lot going on.

[00:02:27] And Marty Barron, who was the editor, the business editor of the LA Times at the time, and he was the one who had originally hired me at the paper as an intern, actually. And so in 1990, Marty saw that the tech thing was becoming a big story and he wanted to have a tech correspondent in Silicon Valley.

[00:02:49] And so he tapped me for that job. I had a little bit of background. My first job in journalism had been at a long since defunct trade newspaper writing about telecommunications. And so Marty tapped me for that job and sent me north to cover Silicon Valley. Now, the bureau, the LA Times at that time had a good-sized bureau in the city of San Francisco.

[00:03:13] There were about eight people there. And I showed up at that bureau and the people there were like, oh, that's great that you're here. But if you're the Silicon Valley correspondent, what are you doing here? Because this isn't Silicon Valley. We don't do tech here. That's down south. And Silicon Valley is about an hour away. I mean, it's a 30-mile-long valley, so depending on the north or the south end of it.

[00:03:38] But it was really a very different world. The tech world was an engineering-driven culture. It was a very military kind of oriented culture, very engineering-driven. It was geographically very suburban in Silicon Valley. And San Francisco was a very different world. It had been the headquarters of the counterculture. It had gone through a lot of kind of social tumult in the 70s and 80s.

[00:04:06] The economy was kind of not very good. It had lost most of its manufacturing after World War II. And then the corporate headquarters and banks and things that had filled the gap to some degree in the financial district, some of those were starting to move out now, either to cheaper states or moving to the suburbs. So the economy was really very uncertain in 1990. And there was not a single tech company in the city of San Francisco at that time.

[00:04:36] So it was really a very different time. And the industry, you know, was tiny. So to talk for a second about the tech industry at the time, and I mentioned this in a couple of different places in the book, but the industry was so much smaller and so much more intimate that it's almost hard to imagine today.

[00:04:57] But, you know, these executives, so I was one of about a dozen journalists for the National Press Corps who covered tech. I mean, that was it. There was about a dozen of us. We saw each other at the same events all the time. And the industry leaders were very accessible. You'd go to these conferences and Bill Gates would be standing in the hallway and arguing with whoever came along, you know, that was kind of his thing. And, you know, you could just talk to people.

[00:05:27] Steve Jobs, I remember one time called me up. I never knew how he actually found the phone number, but this was pre-cell phone. And I had been, I was staying at my girlfriend's house in Palo Alto. And somehow at eight in the morning, phone rings and it's Steve Jobs. And it's like, hey, Jonathan, it's Steve, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, I remember the phone number, but he wanted something from me at that moment.

[00:05:55] And that was just kind of the mood and the style of the thing. You know, it was very, very different. You said that, I heard you say, like, didn't Bill Gates like yell at you at one point at some conference about the fact that you were covering the antitrust? We had a crazy interview. So I went to interview him. This would have been in probably 91, I think, 91 or 92.

[00:06:20] And the Federal Trade Commission investigation of Microsoft, which led to the antitrust suit, had just started. And so I had had this interview scheduled. And it was odd, I remember, because it was on a Saturday. And so I went up there and so there's hardly anyone on campus, but they, so they take me in and, and then I started asking him some questions. And then he's, he's very contemptuous, very hostile.

[00:06:50] And, and he believes that the, that the FTC investigation is a bunch of bullshit. And, and further, that I am an idiot for even asking him about it. Like if, cause if I knew anything, I would know that, you know, this federal investigation, which led to one of the biggest antitrust suits in history was, was sort of a non-event, you know? And like, why was I so dumb that I would be wasting his time with such questions?

[00:07:18] He's a much better journalist than you are, clearly. So let's bring it back to San Francisco. Because, cause you get to San Francisco in 1990 at, you're at the dawn of this, this kind of you internet thing that starts to happen.

[00:07:32] But, but let's start with the city there because in your, in the early pages of your book, you kind of give up portrait of San Francisco back then as a kind of, you know, it's a funky counter-cultural, welcoming, you know, kind of energetic and vibrant artistically beautiful city. But as you say, also economically on its back heels with, and there's no real tech economy.

[00:07:58] And so it's just kind of very different place than we think of as San Francisco now, kind of affordable, egalitarian. And in some sense, I think you're saying a very cool city back then, like authentically, culturally cool. Yeah, I think that, I think, I think that's probably true. You know, it was, you know, it was a very fun place. You didn't have the kind of money chase, you know, like you, like you see it today. And there was, there was a lot of very experimental culture.

[00:08:27] There was this group called the Cacophony Society that did all kinds of public sort of stunts and jokes and gags. And it's kind of some kind of performance art theater. They were actually the group that really started Burning Man, as an example. So, so it was a very, it was a fun time. You know, there's a, there's a video you could look up on YouTube from 1989. There was an outfit called the Survival Research Labs.

[00:08:56] And what they, and they would hack together robots. But this is, this is 1989. So robots in a, in a, in a different sense. And so this was kind of industrial machinery. And they would, and they would do things to, to make them spit fire and stuff like that. And then, and then they would stage fights of the, of the robots. And, and they had this one performance in 1989.

[00:09:21] And it was underneath the 280 freeway viaduct in the, in the southern part of the city, but not very far from downtown, maybe a mile, mile and a half. And, and you watch this video, there's, there's several hundred people there. And the, and these, these machines are crazy. Like they're spitting fire. They're, you know, they're crashing. Like you watch it, you're like, oh my God, someone's going to get killed, you know? But they're just like doing this in the middle of the city.

[00:09:48] You know, nobody, nobody's telling them to go away. I, I, somebody told me a funny story about encountering the cops that, you know, the cop, sort of cop pulled up and asked a few questions. And the guy gave him a few answers and the cop drove off. So this is, this is just like unpermitted, right? Under a highway. Yeah.

[00:10:09] And I, I did watch it because I, I knew that you were interested in this anecdote and somebody at the end of it says something like, I, I could have died, but I didn't die, but I could have died. You know, and you're like, that is a different time, a very different time. And it says something to you, like about what San Francisco was like, but also at, in those days, a real contrast with the culture of Silicon Valley and the culture of tech. Right? Yeah, that's right.

[00:10:36] And, and, and that is kind of why, so the internet, which the consumer internet, as we know it, the worldwide web really started in the, in the early nineties. And so the people who were kind of into that and who were really on the front edge of the innovation around the internet and cyberspace and the new online world and starting to invent things like virtual reality, like those people were interested in the culture in the city. They were not interested in living in a ranch house in the suburbs.

[00:11:04] So that, that was a important distinction, I think. So let's talk about that a little bit, because at the beginning of this, whatever we want to call it, tech explosion, tech revolution that happens in San Francisco. Right?

[00:11:18] I mean, you, you really say that, that, that, that extant culture that existed, that, that kind of funky countercultural kind of, you know, live and let live libertarian sort of, sort of vibe that permeated the city really has a lot of impact on the, these early internet pioneers. Right. And that, that, that, or that in the early nineties, these people are doing these things and it's, it's non-commercial. It's not even non-commercial, but the ethos is almost anti-commercial. Right.

[00:11:48] Right. That's right. Yeah. They're not interested in money. You know, they're interested in something different, a kind of communitarian collaborative, you know, endeavor. And this is the beginning of open source, right?

[00:12:03] Everything, you know, they're working together and they're putting it up and it's all free and, and, and people are fired up, not because of the promise of material gain, but because they see an opportunity to build some fresh and dynamic new world with these unheralded, expanded horizons.

[00:12:20] So talk a little bit about, you know, what it, it's almost this, this kind of techno optimism that in retrospect to me, it seems more than a little naive, but also in some ways, not that different from the kind of willfully naive optimism about human potential or what have you, that characterize the San Francisco hippies of the boomers or flower generation. Well, you know, yeah, I think that, I think that's, that's, that's absolutely right.

[00:12:44] So the, some of that techno optimism that you refer to, which I'll elaborate on in a second, but it definitely is related to those old tendrils of the, of the counterculture, the sixties counterculture. You know, John Markoff, the New York times, a long time, New York times tech writer. He wrote a good, he wrote an interesting book called what the door mouse said, which is explicitly about the connections between the counterculture and the early personal computer industry.

[00:13:10] So he was looking more at a slightly earlier era, but, but those connections were there. And if you think about it, the, you know, the internet was a brand new thing, right? It was nobody quite knew what it could do, what it was, what you could build around it, how you could make it work. You know, so there was a lot of a kind of creativity experimentation, kind of pushing the boundaries and sort of doing things.

[00:13:33] And a lot of the politics, actually early politics of the industry around the electronic frontier foundation was really about protecting the right to, to do stuff in cyberspace to kind of play around in this new realm and not have it be some, you know, kind of tightly controlled corporate zone. Yeah. Fuck the man. Right. I mean, you don't want the man coming in and, and, and.

[00:13:56] Well, it's funny because we were talking recently to an indie rock musician, John Roderick, about what the Northwest music scene was like in those days. And it kind of makes sense. And it's easy for us to remember that that wasn't about making money. In fact, it was sort of rejection of a commercial ethos to, but to think about tech that way, it's really hard to remember that. And in the book, one of the people you talk about is the guy who starts Craigslist and kind of, you know, what Craigslist was like and what that was all about.

[00:14:23] So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that story and how that fits into this kind of countercultural tech ethos. Right. Yeah. So Craig is a kind of great example of what I'm talking about. So Craig is a, is a guy from New Jersey and he, he moved San Francisco to work for Charles Schwab. And he was, he was a techie, you know, he, he, he, he, he worked in computers at Charles Schwab and he got to San Francisco.

[00:14:49] He wasn't, he was a kind of socially awkward guy, but he was, he was interested in the culture. And so he, he started kind of looking around and sort of going to events and trying to find out about events. And, and he was part of the well, which was a very early online community that was very influential among, among the first generation of internet entrepreneurs and others. And so partly through the well and other things, he got to know some people.

[00:15:17] And then he started just collecting events because he was looking for events. And then he became a little bit of an authority within that small group. So people kind of knew that Craig knew where the events were. So he started doing a little newsletter where he would just send around a little list of events and then more and more people wanted the newsletter. And then, then people like, oh, you know, apartments, how about that?

[00:15:43] And in fact, Craig told me that, that the, that the real big takeoff of Craigslist came in 1995 when there started to be a tighter housing situation in San Francisco. So it became harder to find an apartment. And so then that, then apartment listings, one of the things he included, and then that was a big part of the takeoff. And, you know, the great thing about the Craig Newmark story is that Craigslist was ginormously popular, right?

[00:16:14] He kept it super, super simple. It's still simple today. I mean, it really looks very similar to what it did 30 years ago. Incredibly. But Craig had a few principles, like people don't like change. So he doesn't change it, right? Keep it simple because then you won't have to provide a lot of support and you won't need a big team. You know, just keep it simple. And so he did that. The thing was ginormously successful.

[00:16:41] Had just, just huge amounts of traffic, right? All over the country and eventually the world. And so meanwhile, and this is say 97, 98, 99. So the internet is just starting, the commercial internet. And then one of the things that people see quite obviously is like, oh, you know, classified ads, like this will be a great place to put, you know, to do event listings or to rent apartments or things like that, you know, that Craig was doing.

[00:17:08] So these early VC funded companies and then especially eBay, which, which was started around in the second half of the 90s, but very, very successful, very early. And so there were all kinds of people that were desperate to buy Craigslist because he owned the classified market, you know?

[00:17:27] So they were, I mean, it was crazy, you know, eBay went after that for years and years, you know, they managed to find a disgruntled early partner who had a bunch of shares that Craig had given him and bought the shares from that guy and tried to leverage Craig with that, you know? And, you know, they would, they were like, name your price, dude, you know, a billion, two billion, you know, whatever. I mean, that was literally their attitude, but, but he wouldn't do it. Just wouldn't do it. He's like, nope, it's not, that's not what I'm in it for.

[00:17:57] I'm not interested in that and go to hell, you know? And, and he did that for decades, you know, constantly people wanted to buy this thing and he would never do it. And the, and the, and the great, the, the poetic justice of the thing is that Craig has made a gigantic fortune. So he, he turned down, you know, the billion dollars like multiple times, but he made, he kind of made the billion anyway, actually, because the thing is so profitable even now. Yeah.

[00:18:26] And you're saying he still has like just a handful of employees and whatever. It's like 30 people. But he's become this major. I mean, they're very secretive about the financials. I don't really know, but, but I, I think it, I think it throws off like 50 million a year in profits, you know? Right. And you're saying he's like a major philanthropist now. He's spending, you know, he's giving away hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think he told me 400 million he's given away. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. He's a very unassuming guy. You know, he's, you know, I really like Craig.

[00:18:53] He's, he's, you know, I've known him for a long time and he, unlike a lot of these people, you know, he's the same guy that he always was. The billionaire we need. Yeah, that's right. Okay. It starts in this kind of, you know, techno optimist, communitarian kind of ethos, but it changes quick, man. I mean, this internet thing really takes off, right?

[00:19:19] It becomes the big new thing. And this big new thing that the internet is, I mean, globally a big new thing. And it's, it's happening largely or to a really significant extent in the city of San Francisco. And you, you know, in the book, you chart the rise of these kind of tech startups in the cities, which by the mid to late nineties are becoming a huge magnet for young, smart, educated people who want to be part of this new world.

[00:19:50] And, you know, and participate in the innovation. And then these companies, some of them, they start going public starting in the mid nineties and huge amounts of money are being made. So talk about that period, right? There's this kind of incredible boom that happens in the late nineties. Yeah. So the, so the starting gun was, you know, what they call the next, the, the Netscape moment, which is when Netscape went public and that, and it's share price went up by 4X on the first day.

[00:20:17] And it never was that high again, by the way, but, but that was sort of the signal where the, the kind of financial industry and VCs and investment bankers were like, whoa, like there's a huge thing here. So, so then over the next few years, yeah, there was a huge, huge bubble and investment frenzy around the internet and the opportunity there. And so I was the editor of the industry standard, which was a magazine that was started in 1998.

[00:20:48] And to give you an example of the magnitude and the speed of the way things developed. And I use the, the, I tell the story of the bubble through the story of the industry standard, because we were not only a observer, right? We were the, the journalists with a big team, you know, covering all this stuff. But we were also a bubble company ourselves. So we were experiencing the thing that we were writing about.

[00:21:12] And, and so in our own company, so we went from a standing start to 15 million in revenue in the first year. And we had 40 million in revenue in the second year. We had 140 million in revenue in the third year. And then in the fourth year we went bankrupt. So that, that was kind of a good illustration of the path of the thing. And it was a crazy time, you know, things happened very fast.

[00:21:41] The city was, was kind of on fire, you know, I mean, it was fun, you know, there was, there was a lot going on. We were legendary for these parties we had on our rooftop to this day. That's one of the main things people remember about the industry standard. And it was a very exciting time. And, and even though, so the money had come in, right? And people, it's like, oh, wow, we can make money. Like, yeah, that's cool. We can make a bunch of money.

[00:22:05] So if, so at that point, you know, people were, were kind of into the money, but, but it was also, there was also still this very strong ethos of, we're going to change the world for the better. Technology is a good thing. We're going to create a new economy with new kinds of opportunities and more egalitarian and empower people and connect people and all these good ways.

[00:22:26] So, so there was, there was definitely a money-making thing, but the, it was, it was tightly tied to a, to an ongoing ethos around like, this is, we're going to change the world for the better. And, and that in many respects, I think, and I would speak for myself here, but, but certainly in my case, like I had stock options in standard media and the idea of making a few million bucks, you know, at one point, my options were worth, you know, a couple of million dollars.

[00:22:58] But, but that wasn't my main motivation, really, you know, you know, I got paid a good salary, you know, it was a good job by any standard, but, but the motivation wasn't like, I'm going to get rich doing this. The motivation was like, this is a really important moment in history. We've got a front row seat. We want to do a good job of writing the first draft here. And you also argue that a wired magazine plays a bit, really big role kind of beyond San Francisco and kind of rebranding tech as something that it's not IBM anymore.

[00:23:28] This is some cool shit that you should get into and it's world changing. And so what's that story with, with wired? Cause I remember wired, of course, from those days, but I hadn't thought of it, you know, in this kind of historical context before. If you're enjoying this podcast, can you please do us a favor? Spread the word. Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers, anyone who's interested in the future of Blue Cities and better governance.

[00:23:57] Basically anyone who thinks that the conversation in Blue Cities is kind of stagnated and thinks we need to be hearing from more smart people, even people that we might disagree with about many things. And one more favor to ask, if you want this podcast to continue, can you take a minute right now to give us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts? Because the way the algorithm works, it's the five-star reviews that give other folks a chance to discover the podcast.

[00:24:25] And finally, we want your feedback, positive, critical, whatever. Please send that to us directly. You can email us, bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. That's bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. And send along show ideas, guest ideas. Sandeep and I would really appreciate that as well. Okay, back to the show.

[00:24:50] Yeah, well, Wired, you know, and Louis Rossetto, the founder or co-founder with his partner of Wired, he set out very explicitly to, like, make the stars of the industry into rock stars, into celebrities. Like, these are the most important people in the world. They should be treated as such. The tech revolution is going to change everything. These people are the people who are changing the world. They're cool. They're sexy. They're fun. You know, this is like, this is not your father's technology industry, right?

[00:25:18] So, that was huge. And even aside from that sort of, you know, vibe shift or it's sort of linked to it. But a big thing that Wired did was that prior to Wired and prior to 1990, you know, like, even the terminology, like, nerd or geek, right?

[00:25:43] Or, you know, those are sort of disparaging terms referring to somebody who's sort of too interested in technology, right? And so, that was kind of, you know, if you were, like, really into tech, you were, like, a nerd, you know, you were a nerd, you were a geek, and that wasn't really a good thing. But Wired was, like, first of all, it's kind of cool to be into tech. And second of all, there's actually a whole world of people out there that you didn't know about.

[00:26:13] So, there were a lot of, like, undercover tech enthusiasts around the country, you know, not in Silicon Valley or even in Seattle, really. But more in, like, middle America, you know, there were closeted tech enthusiasts who didn't really, couldn't really share. They had nobody to share their enthusiasm with. And there was almost social opprobrium around being too interested in technology.

[00:26:38] So, Wired was like, oh, my God, there's, like, a whole world of people out there who think like I do, you know. So, that was a real revelation for people. You know, Ev Williams, the founder of, co-founder of Twitter, told me about literally, like, picking up Wired magazine, one of the first issues on a newsstand in Grand Island, Nebraska, which is, he was from rural Nebraska. And he picked up that magazine. He was like, I got to go to San Francisco.

[00:27:06] I'll add just one other thing about Wired is that, you know, the magazine was, you know, ginormously successful and influential. But it's also the case that Hot Wired, a story I tell in the book, was really the kind of almost the first website. Yeah. Like, the first commercial website as we know it. Yeah, you talk about that. Very significant. That they've got to, you know, kind of create the protocols for how you do, you know, they've got to kind of invent it all from scratch, right? Yeah, like, yeah, literally. I mean, there's no software.

[00:27:35] Like, what is a website anyway? Right. Yes. I mean, that, obviously, that part of the book is just, it's a fascinating story of how this kind of world comes together in the early and mid-90s. But it's also like, okay, here we are in the late 90s. And, yes, these companies are now, you know, nationally, globally known, famous. The Internet is this big new thing.

[00:28:03] There's still a lot of optimism about how it's going to transform the world for the better. But in the meantime, it's already begun to transform San Francisco, the city. And in the late 90s is when, as you say in the book, you start to begin to, you know, not everything is wine and roses in San Francisco. If you're not part of this world, this new world and making this new money, you might be getting left behind here.

[00:28:30] And homelessness is becoming a bigger problem in the city. Evictions are skyrocketing. And a political backlash begins to form. You know, there are people in the Mission District who are like, wait a minute. Why does my funky old, like, you know, this is a low-income neighborhood, but people are proud of what it is. And these techies are coming in and taking over buildings. And there's redevelopment happening. And, like, people are like, wait a minute.

[00:28:59] Well, what's this about? So talk a little bit about the origins of this kind of political pushback. Right, right. Well, so I think that I would say there are really two main elements to it. And one is strictly around the rent. So it's a relatively small city.

[00:29:19] A lot of the apartment stock is rent-controlled, which is good if you have an apartment, but it means that it constrains the effective supply at any given time. So with the huge influx of people for the Internet and making good money and just more people, it drove rents way up. And then led to, you know, evictions and other kind of things that come with a tight and overpriced housing market.

[00:29:49] So that created a lot of resentment for the obvious reasons. You know, suddenly you couldn't get an apartment unless you made a ton of money and people were vulnerable to being pressured out of their places. You know, there's something called the Taylor Act in California where you can evict people if you're taking the building off the rental market. And that's kind of often abused sort of process. So there were a lot of fears around that.

[00:30:16] So just, you know, the rent's too damn high and like we don't like it, you know, so that was one big component. But the second one is a little more subtle. It was more of a cultural thing where it's like, who are these people? These are people coming from somewhere else, different kind of people. They're not our people and they're taking over our neighborhood. And we don't like that. This is our neighborhood.

[00:30:39] And, you know, these stores, these kind of little cafes and little variety stores and things like that, you know, they may not look like much, but we like those stores. Those are our stores. And we don't really like it when one of those stores gets kicked out so they can put a super high-end restaurant in there that we can never afford to eat in.

[00:31:00] So those cultural tensions, I think, were really, really significant because there really was a feeling of like, you know, no, this is our neighborhood and you can't, you're kind of an illegitimate resident as a newcomer. Now, that attitude is kind of understandable in many ways, but it's also very like a very un-San Francisco attitude in another way. So.

[00:31:32] And the cultural tensions, you know, and those ramped up, you know, again in an even bigger way. Yeah. And just a quick follow, but un-San Francisco in what way? Just to elaborate a little bit about what made that sort of push back on San Francisco or. You mean what made it, what made it more intense? No, no, not what you were saying. It was sort of, it was in some ways not an, it was an un-San Francisco kind of attitude. Yeah.

[00:31:58] Well, I think because San Francisco has always been a pretty, I mean, one of the magnificent things about it as a city is it's a place where like people come to make their fortune. People come for a new life. People come because they want to leave something behind, you know, and it's a somewhat transient kind of place. And so it's, it's, it's kind of welcoming to, to people who come in from outside in general. So in that way, it's, it's contradictory, I think.

[00:32:24] Nowadays, there's a lot of anxiety in blue cities, a lot of dystopian worries about AI, a lot of concerns, obviously, about all the problems associated with all the money that tech represents. But if you go back to like, say 2008, at least here in Seattle, you know, there's that, the housing crash, the recession, unemployment's up.

[00:32:48] And so our mayor at that time, Mike McGinn, welcomes Amazon into the downtown core. Not just him, but, but he's a very progressive guy who does this. That starts happening, Sandeep, I think in the early 2010s, somewhere in there. And it takes a while. That's the period in which people are still welcoming Amazon in. But it takes a while for the mood to shift.

[00:33:14] And then this sense on the progressive side to be like, wait a minute, now tech is basically destroying the city and destroying the world. So I'm wondering kind of what the timeline is in San Francisco when the mood really starts to sour in, in ways that we're kind of living with right now. Yeah, well, I think it's a similar timeline to what you describe. And in fact, what you describe about the mayor kind of welcoming Amazon to downtown in 2010, right?

[00:33:44] That was a very similar to what happened in San Francisco. So in that time period, also great financial crisis, even though tech was at that point, you know, becoming a significant industry in the city. But it still wasn't anything like it is now. You know, it still wasn't the dominant industry. And so with the problems of the banks and other companies in the great financial crisis, you know, unemployment was way up. You know, it was over 10%.

[00:34:10] And so the city leaders were very worried about that. And the Twitter tax break, which became kind of a symbol of the city selling its soul to the tech industry, which is rather hyperbolic way to look at it. But the Twitter tax break arose directly from that moment where the city leaders were like, oh, shit, you know, unemployment is way up.

[00:34:37] We don't really know, like, what is the future of San Francisco's economy? Like, it kind of looks like tech. So we better not let the tech companies all move out because then we'll have nothing, you know. So that was sort of the vibe, you know, and I think similar to what you referenced in Seattle. And so basically they give a big tax break to Twitter to, yeah, to Elon Musk.

[00:35:02] So what they did, you know, so they, they, so the real issue was that the city has or had at that time a payroll tax. 1.5% of the whatever a company paid for its payroll, you know, had to go to the city for tax. And that tax applied to IPO proceeds. And so Twitter was about to go public. And so that tax was going to cost them like 30 or 40 million, you know, just for the IPO proceeds.

[00:35:32] And if they, one of the things about San Francisco, you know, it's very geographically small. So you don't have to move very far to be, to be outside the city limits, you know. So they were going to move to, to, to South San Francisco, which is only five miles away and, and save the 30 or 40 million, you know. So that was kind of the, the issue.

[00:35:55] Now it was funny how it played out because the, so the city came up with this tax break and it had to do with this building and this part of town. I won't go into the whole thing unless you're interested, but, but so they did a tax break to, to, and attracted Twitter to move into this big building and renovate that and spur the renovation of that building and then that part of town.

[00:36:22] And so it, it was called, it was the mid-market tax breaks. It was, it was, it was a payroll tax break for any company that moved in there, but it was known as the Twitter tax break. And a lot of the tax savings went to Twitter. Now the tax savings only ended up being, you know, it was like, it cost the city about $70 million over eight years, which, you know, in a city with a $15 billion budget, you know, it's not really that much.

[00:36:49] Also what happened, which hardly anybody even knows. So after the Twitter tax break was passed with great hoo-ha, you know, all kinds of noise around it, right? But they passed the thing. And then the companies that are not in the tax break zone that are also about to go public and especially Zynga. So Zynga, you know, the game company has also been growing like a weed.

[00:37:17] They're probably maybe the second biggest tech company in San Francisco. And they're like, they're maybe even bigger than Twitter at that point. I'm not sure. But, but then Mark Pincus, you know, the CEO of Zynga is like, what the fuck? Like, what about us? You know? And like, this thing's going to cost us 80 million. The figure he had at 80 million, you know, he was counting, not just the IPO proceeds, but some other stuff. And they had moved, you know, so then they're going crazy.

[00:37:43] And then, you know, Salesforce and the other tech companies didn't like it either. Like what's with the special treatment for Twitter. And so then, then the city passed another ordinance that basically just said the payroll tax doesn't apply to the IPO proceeds. So that actually, first of all, was a bigger fiscal sacrifice than the actual mid-market tax break.

[00:38:09] And, and, and second of all, like they probably could have done that in the first place and they wouldn't have had to mess with all the other stuff, you know? So it was just kind of funny. You talk a lot about how the politicians kind of handled or mishandled that. I guess in this instance, it's sort of Gavin Newsom, who was mayor from 2004 and then handing it off to Ed Lee.

[00:38:33] But how did they approach the, or how did they handle or mishandle the, the emergence of big tech and taxes and the rest of it from your perspective, those two mayors in particular? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good question. I think that in the case of Gavin Newsom, so he was kind of tech savvy in a way.

[00:38:56] And he, and he knew a lot of these people and, you know, he socialized with some of these tech moguls and he was a little bit part of the scene in a way. But, but he didn't really, and he would always have ideas. So Gavin is a great idea guy. So he's always generating ideas and then most of them don't go anywhere. So that's the plus and the minus side of that. But, but so he had an idea of like, we're going to have citywide wireless.

[00:39:24] You know, he was talking to the people, some people at Google at a party and then it's like, oh, this would be great. We could have citywide wireless, you know? And then, but it never happened because he had no follow through and there were many people who objected to it. You know, it's a complicated thing. You got it, you know, and he didn't have patience for that. So, so that was kind of Gavin, you know? But the thing I really fault him for is the housing thing because the tooth that when he was mayor was a slower time in the economy.

[00:39:55] And that was, you can't really deal with a housing crisis when, when rents are at an all time high. You know, you have to deal with a housing crisis when the market is a little bit cooler. And so I, you know, I think that Gavin had the opportunity during the time that he was mayor to, to, to take some steps to try to get ahead of what was about to become a huge, huge problem. And he didn't do that. So, so I would fault him for that.

[00:40:22] Um, I think, um, Ed Lee, uh, so Ed Lee was a funny figure because Ed Lee was not his own man in an important way. So he was, he was installed by, by Willie Brown and Rose Pack and other people, you know, he didn't, he actually literally did not want to be mayor. Um, now he later came to enjoy being mayor, but, but at the beginning he was like, I don't want to be mayor. You know, it's too much stress. It's not my thing.

[00:40:50] And, you know, about to retire, you know, he just didn't want to do it, but, but they were like, no, no, you have to do it. You know, you, you owe it to the family and blah, blah. So, uh, so he, he did it. And, um, and, um, and then part of all of that actually was that they wanted, and they being Gavin and Willie Brown, who was still the kind of dominant, you know, political influencer, I guess in town. Kind of the dom.

[00:41:16] And, uh, and, uh, really the political establishment, you know, they, they, uh, they wanted, they, they wanted Ed Lee in there because he would do what, what they needed him to do, you know? And, um, and part of that was pass the Twitter tax break and be friendly to tech and bring the tech companies in. And so that's what he did. And he became very friendly with, with, uh, Ron Conway, who's, um, venture capitalist and a very particular sort of venture capitalist.

[00:41:43] Um, and that partnership became almost notorious, uh, and people now think that the Twitter tax break was Ron Conway's idea and that he made Ed Lee do it. But that isn't actually true. The tax break way preceded their friendship. But, uh, but Ron was very opportunistic and he saw that, uh, the companies needed a friendly city government and it wasn't just about taxes. So this was the time of, you know, Uber, Airbnb, right?

[00:42:11] So they, they needed city rules that would let them be in business. I mean, Airbnb was an illegal business, you know? I mean, you weren't allowed to rent out apartments for two days, you know, that wasn't legal. Um, so Ron, you know, Ron saw that the companies were going to need the political cover and he, he went straight after Ed Lee and, and built a strong partnership there and that benefited the industry tremendously. Yeah, it's interesting.

[00:42:37] I mean, obviously I, I make my living as a political and public affairs consultant here in Seattle. And, uh, you know, I'm definitely, David and I were talking about this here today. I'm definitely a beneficiary of Seattle's tech boom, right? Which, which follows in the wake of San Francisco. And I've consulted for companies like Airbnb. Airbnb. And I started consulting for Lyft in 2014 when, you know, I met John Zimmer who, you know, within like six months of me meeting him, there's like five layers of, you know, the company is growing so fast.

[00:43:07] Right, right, right. There's people between me and him. But at the beginning, like he showed up in Seattle in December of 2013 and I met him at a party and, you know, started consulting for them. And, and, and, and yeah, it's, it's amazing to see how much these kind of, the, the, these technology companies become intertwined with the political fabric of these cities. It happens in Seattle.

[00:43:34] It happens in San Francisco and, and, and you, Jonathan, you're, I think fair to say somewhat critical of, of, um, of how sort of San Francisco's political class, right? Start Willie Brown becomes mayor in the mid nineties. Then you got Gavin Newsom, you have Ed Lee, um, uh, you know, uh, obviously San Francisco is a city that has produced all these outsized politicians, Nancy Pelosi, um, Kamala Harris comes along. Right.

[00:44:00] And, and, and so is, is that fair to say that you think that you think that the, the, the sort of political world of the city became too, um, I don't know what the, maybe even more than intertwined, but kind of, um, um, uh, too solicitous or something or, or too accommodating to tackle. You know, did they drive the bargain that they should have for, for, for the benefit of the public?

[00:44:28] The, I mean, to, to, to answer the way that you framed it in the, your last sentence there. I mean, I think, I think no would be the short answer. So, so the, so the city could definitely have driven a harder bargain, um, could have gotten more out of the companies in the, in the early, in the first half of the 2010s, especially. Um, and, um, but again, you know, that just wasn't really the posture, um, of the city.

[00:44:56] And generally speaking, you know, I, the, the, the city's political class spends a lot of time, um, worrying about its kind of internal machinations, you know, and not enough time worrying about solving the problems of the city. And so that, you know, that's a general criticism I would make. And, and I think it was definitely true in the period that we're talking about, because, I mean, think about it, you know, there, there's, there's an economic boom, right?

[00:45:23] I, I mean, it, it, it, it brings tensions, but it also brings a lot of money. Like it brings the ability to kind of try to solve problems, to try to, you know, have new approaches, try to do things. And, and the city is always, always in its own way, you know, and, and trying to, trying to do things. You know, there's, there's a lot of factions, uh, the structure of the government with the city, the way the city is governed with the city charter and the ballot initiative system, um,

[00:45:52] creates a mechanism for people to end run the process if they don't like the result. And, um, and so that's had terrible consequences. So the city is really like tied itself up in a way that it can't really, uh, take advantage of the, the bounty, I guess, of the, that the tech industry has brought. I think that's similar in Seattle in some ways.

[00:46:16] And just politically, there's this sense on the progressive side, you know, uh, earlier, or, you know, we've been talking about how all this tech money is kind of destroying the city, leading to economic inequality, that you can't afford a house anymore. Um, and that Amazon and these other big companies are doing next to nothing to help.

[00:46:34] And the tech folks, as far as I can tell, I'm not as friendly with them, perhaps as Sandeep is, but they feel a little bit betrayed by this, but also just that they have no fucking responsibility whatsoever to help because God, it's the government's job to solve all of our problems. And they have this kind of libertarian contempt for government, especially at Amazon. So it's pretty dysfunctional because it feels like, um, government doesn't do its job and doesn't have a great relationship to tech a lot of times, but tech doesn't play a role either.

[00:47:04] It's like they're kind of both screw ups as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. And, you know, there's a few different things going on. I mean, so one is that, um, that it's difficult for cities, uh, as entities because of the, uh, beggar thy neighbor thing, you know? So, so if a city tries to, um, tax the companies or, or put too heavy a burden on the companies to try to deal with social problems, companies will just leave, you know?

[00:47:32] And, and so that, you know, that is a real issue. I mean, in, in 2018, so there was an endless debate about whether Twitter was bluffing and whether they really would have left without the tax break. And I ultimately determined, I wanted to answer that question, but the, uh, it turns out that it's not an answerable question because there was a split in the company, in the management, you know? Some people wanted to move and some people didn't.

[00:48:00] And so that never had to be resolved. So it's not possible to know how it would have come out. Um, but it is the case, you know, in 2018, both Stripe and, um, uh, and Block both moved out of the city as they promised they would if, if, if the, uh, Prop D. So there was another business tax passed in 2018 that all the businesses in the city were fiercely opposed to except for Salesforce.

[00:48:29] And, um, and they said, Jack Dorsey and the Collison brothers, you know, they said, if this passes, we're going to move out. And it passed and they moved out. So, you know, the city doesn't have as much leverage as it would like, I guess, in those, uh, situations.

[00:48:46] Um, now at the same time, it's also true that, um, especially now, you know, with AI, like the AI is very concentrated in the city and like the people really want to be in the city. And, and so the city kind of has more leverage than it thinks in some ways, uh, on these things, you know, so it's tricky.

[00:49:07] I mean, I, I personally, you know, when I, I think it's healthy for people who are involved in these debates to, um, have had a turn, like actually be like owning a business because it changes your perspective on these things. And so, you know, so I had a, I had a company, uh, in Montana, you know, I had a startup and, and, um, and we, you know, health insurance.

[00:49:34] I remember, you know, and, and, you know, it was big, big pain in the ass, you know, to provide health insurance for the staff and it was expensive. And, um, and I remember feeling like, why is it my job to provide health insurance for these people? Like I'm, I'm their employer. I'm not their doctor. You know, it's like, I'm not like, why is this? You know, it just seemed weird to me that like, as the employer, that their healthcare was my responsibility. I just didn't, I didn't get it, you know?

[00:50:02] And, um, and so I think that that sentiment is pretty powerful among a lot of business owners. You know, they're like, look, okay. Like city has a homelessness problem, but like, it's not my responsibility to solve the city's homeless problem. You know? Yeah. And can I just, you know, can I just say, I mean, I think there's this kind of open question, which is if politics work differently, would these companies be more willing to be taxed and not leave?

[00:50:28] If they felt like the city was doing a great job and would fix the problems, it feels like, and other citizens honestly feel like, uh, the city's facing a need fixing. And unfortunately the politics of blue cities and progressive politics don't always really work that way. It's more like, especially right now, you know, it's a tricky situation, but Sandeep, I'm sure you've got more questions. Well, no, I mean, I'll just weigh in on this because I think they, when you, when, when, cause I, I work with a lot of tech companies.

[00:50:57] And so when, when you think about, when I think about how they respond to this one thing, these tech companies go through their own, you know, morphology or they, they have to grow up, right? Like they start out, they grow with this incredibly rapid pace, um, in their, in their early years of the unicorns, the, the big successful ones.

[00:51:17] And a lot of that, those early years are spent kind of inward looking, growing the company and, and they don't spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, the environment or the city in which they're operating. And then they start to get big and then they have to cut, you know, and, and, and they, they evolve and I, I, they go through a kind of teenage phase and they're resentful or whatever. And then they, you know, Microsoft figured it out. Right.

[00:51:39] And they have a Microsoft here in the Seattle area has a very significant philanthropic arm and they do all of this kind of civic engagement work. Amazon got there too. It took, you know, Bezos, I think started out congenitally a libertarian, but kind of the company as it really started to get pushback in Seattle. You know, came to the realization that they have to do more engage and if they had these big housing initiatives and what have you.

[00:52:04] But I think if you ask the tech people who are running these companies, when the city comes and says, we want more from you, I think their pushback these days is what are we getting for the money? Like when we walk out the door of our building, there's like tent encampments, open air drug use in Seattle, you know, like the city's a shithole. Like, and you guys can't govern.

[00:52:27] So why the fuck should we give you a whole lot more money so that you can fritter away and give it to your progressive friends and like dole it out to your, you know, progressive interest groups and stuff and not deliver the basic amenities of a city where we can do business well. Right. I mean, that's the pushback. Right. Right. Yeah, no, I think that's very much the case here too. And I think that's legitimate pushback.

[00:52:51] And in the sense that, I mean, on the one hand, you know, business people are always convinced that, you know, that they are sort of smarter than whoever's in public office. And they can, you know, if it were up to them, they would spend the money better. And so it's better if I just kind of spend my own money as philanthropy instead of having to give it to the government for, you know, for social programs. So, I mean, that's sort of an attitude that I don't always appreciate that much.

[00:53:21] But I do think that the, so to speak to the category that you have here of progressive blue cities, and I would certainly include Seattle and San Francisco in this. So I think the gigantic monumental error that was made by the progressives in San Francisco was not taking seriously the issue of street conditions.

[00:53:44] And, you know, it's just, I mean, it was bizarre to me because I, so when I started the San Francisco Standard and, or I was head on to be the, to make it into a thing. Right. So, so I started there in September of 21. And the, the mission was to build a news organization, you know, daily news operation with a lot of credibility. And so that's something I've done before. Or it's not, it's, it's a hard job.

[00:54:14] And, and I didn't think I could really do it remotely because like, you know, the teamwork is really important. You know, there's just a million things that are really important about a newsroom, about like the in-person aspect of a newsroom. And especially in a startup, I was just like, this has got to be in person. So I insisted that we be in person starting in the fall of 21 when almost no white collar institution in San Francisco was back in the office. We were back in the office in Showplace Square in Soma.

[00:54:44] And it was a fucking zombie apocalypse, you know, and it just was, you know, and, and the progressives are like, oh, this is all an invented story by the right wing. And it's like, sorry, guys, I was there every fucking day. And it is not an invented story. The conditions down there were absolute disgrace.

[00:55:03] The idea that any city government would think that it was okay for a minute to have that kind of shit going on in their streets was just freaking insane. And, you know, so solving it, you know, is, is, is not necessarily easy thing. You know, I'm not saying these are easy things to deal with, but the denial was madness.

[00:55:27] And, and I think it's done just immense damage to the democratic brand, you know? Yeah. I mean. And yet, and yet San Francisco voters at least seem to want to reverse course having elected Daniel Lurie in 2024. Yeah, yeah, they do. Because, yeah, like who wouldn't? I mean, you know, that the shit that was going on. Well, you haven't been to Seattle. The recalls, you know, the recalls and the, you know, the stuff that happened. I mean, because people were pissed.

[00:55:57] They were like, you know, it's like, come on, are you kidding me? Like, you know, and it wasn't, I mean, so there were certain areas of downtown. I mean, you couldn't really go. So, so there were definitely areas of downtown where you would not just not want to go at all. You know, wouldn't want to be there. You know, most of the city was sort of fine, but, but even in other parts of the city, like the car break-in thing, you know? Can't park your car without it getting broken into, right?

[00:56:23] So that, you know, so the progressives are all like, oh, well, you know, that's just property, you know, and blah, blah, you know, but. Bourgeois concerns. Bourgeois values. But, you know, call it what you want, but when people can't park the car on the street without it getting broken into, like your argument that that's okay, like is not going anywhere, you know?

[00:56:45] Just this week, a friend of mine's car got stolen and our two cars got splattered with latex paint by somebody who's wearing a zebra outfit who was like just seemingly high out of their mind, basically. And it's like, there's no solution to that, right? Like what's going to happen? I mean, there's no, I have no source of optimism really whatsoever. I just wanted to follow up though.

[00:57:08] My larger question here was, I saw one of your tweets saying no one's going to like this, but Daniel Lurie and Zoran Mondami are succeeding as mayors for exactly the same reasons. I love that. No one's going to like this, but what are you getting out there? Because I think it's a really provocative point. So, they both have a very cheerful, very engaged, very present, approachable public persona.

[00:57:36] And so, people really respond to that. So, Mondami, you know, people talk about his social media game, you know, but it's like those videos, you know, he's very, very relatable. And he kind of, and he's sort of there. You feel like he's kind of, he's always sort of there. His people are there. They're very present. They're very aware of what's going on in the city. And they're open. They're trying. They're regular people like you, you know, working on these problems.

[00:58:05] Now, you know, Lurie is not a man of the people in the sense that he's a, you know, he's a billionaire, but he knows that. But, but, you know, he has a very like sort of friendly demeanor. And he also, you know, he shows up at every freaking ribbon cutting. You know, I think I wrote the book, you know, no, no, no business opening is too small, you know, to merit a visit from the mayor, you know.

[00:58:31] We had Emily Hoven from the Chronicle on back in December to kind of do an assessment of Lurie's first year. And she, I remember the phrase she used was earnest dad vibes. Like his Instagram videos have this earnest dad vibes that like people relate to. Yeah. And so people, you know, people like that. And so they appreciate that, you know.

[00:58:53] So they, you know, and he kind of feeds into a certain civic pride, you know, that we're like, hey, you know, we're a great city. We can do better than this. Come on, you know. And, and I think Mondami has a similar thing. You know, he's like, hey, I'm a New Yorker. You're a New Yorker. We could do this together, you know. And, and so I, I do think there's, there's that, that similarity. And, you know, and, and I, I haven't followed, I mean, I'm from New York.

[00:59:21] I followed a little bit, but, but, you know, my sense also is, so Lurie has very technocratic, you know, kind of approach from a policy standpoint. So he hasn't done anything super controversial or confrontational. You know, he's just been kind of chipping away at the edges of things. And a lot of the improvements that you see, partly because he's chipping away, the street conditions are a lot better. You know, the city's in better shape by any measure.

[00:59:48] And a lot of that is, some of it is his chipping away at little things, but a lot of it is actually just psychological, you know. So people feel better about the city than they don't throw trash on the street as much. They don't, you know, you know, it's just true. Like they, the police were kind of on strike, you know, before. Like they, they didn't want to arrest people because it's like, yeah, you know, we arrest people. They're just going to let them out anyway, you know. So the, the police were kind of on strike.

[01:00:18] The, you know, the civil servants were demoralized, you know. But so now you get a new regime, you get some enthusiasm. And I, and I, it's my sense that Mondami is also, you know, benefited from something quite similar. Certainly, yeah. You know, interesting to see the, the kind of evolution of that, that relationship. And when I think back on, we were talking about Seattle's experience, right? Amazon comes in 2010. And at the beginning, there's this kind of tech bromance between the city and Amazon.

[01:00:46] But by 2017, Shama Sawant, our, our local, you know, socialist firebrand council member is leading marches that are literally fuck Amazon marches. Right. You know, and, and saying Amazon's destroying the city with its gentrification and all that. And, but even during that period of Trump 1.0, the tech moguls, the people running these companies, they sort of align themselves politically with, with progress, the resistance and progressives and all of that.

[01:01:13] And this time around, when Trump got reelected in 24, it changed, right? And all of a sudden you've got these, you know, they're all showing up at the inauguration and Mark Andreessen's, you know, God knows what he's up to with, with the Trump people.

[01:01:30] And Elon Musk is doing Doge and that relationship seems like it's just gotten politically and ideologically a lot more fraught between here in Seattle, for sure. And we're seeing it manifest in some of this anti-data center stuff and this techno-doomerism about AI that, that is rampant, at least here in Seattle.

[01:01:57] And I just wonder, Jonathan, is that your sense of the vibe and the relationship right now between, between tech? Obviously the AI boom is happening even more down there than it is here, though we're experiencing it too. But what's your sense of where it's ended up, right? Where, right now, where the, the, the tech companies and the, and the kind of populace of the city are? Yeah, well, the, the backlash against tech really began, I think, with Trump 1.

[01:02:27] And then the Cambridge Analytica and all that stuff. And, and, and then just as the industry got so gigantic and, and powerful and all of that, you know, so, so that backlash was going on. And I think that what happened in, in, with Trump 2 is that, so you had a certain cohort, you had a small cohort of kind of right-wing tech guys who were way out of the mainstream, you know.

[01:02:57] So Peter Thiel and David Sachs and these guys, you know, they were like marginal figures. And so, but then with Trump's win, they were suddenly not marginal figures, you know, even Elon Musk, you know, margin, they were suddenly no longer marginal because they were in the center of power. You know, they had the ear of the president. So, so these marginal figures suddenly became kind of representative of the tech industry's relationship to the Trump administration.

[01:03:24] So, so that, so there was that. And then the second thing that happened, and, and this was honestly a big shock to me. And I think to a lot of other people is that, is that a lot of the people in tech who opposed Trump decided that it was too risky to be public about that.

[01:03:46] So there was a lot of the companies, especially companies like Apple, which had the, had the wherewithal to, to, to not do that.

[01:03:59] And, and, and then at the same time, I think what, what kind of fed into that attitude was a kind of a resentment of criticism that they'd been taking for a long time.

[01:04:17] And, and so people, you know, Mark Pincus, who I write about his evolution in the book, and he's kind of a good example because, you know, he was a hippie and, you know, not a guy you would have expected to sort of go MAGA, you know, but, but he just got sick of being criticized for being a billionaire after a while, sick of having to defend himself, you know, for this or that.

[01:04:39] And then, you know, the anti-woke thing, or the, the, I guess the woke, you know, social justice movement and all of the things that went along with that were very alienating to people like him, you know, to kind of mainstream Jewish white guys, you know, in their fifties and sixties, like the social justice movement didn't resonate very much.

[01:05:05] And was in fact, as, as, as one of those people, myself, like often kind of directed against people like us. Right. So, so they didn't appreciate that. And so when, when suddenly they had permission to not go along with it, they, they, they were happy to take that permission. So. So Jonathan, just by way of close. So, you know, as I read the epilogue of the book and you're talking about, Hey, San Francisco is having this AI boom, like, you know, jobs, money coming back.

[01:05:33] Lurie's, you know, very popular, right. Arguably the most popular mayor in the country. And yet you, there's still this sense of loss, right. Something has been lost in San Francisco that just not the same as it used to be. You know, maybe the city's not as cool. It's maybe just too focused on money and economic activity. And it is unequal. So just talk to that, like, like, yeah, where are we in San Francisco now?

[01:06:03] And, and what, when you look back on this trajectory of your career and that city's evolution over the last 35 years, what, what, what is that trajectory look like? Yeah, well, I think the, I mean, the city is clearly in a prosperous moment, right. A sort of growth mode. And, and, and the AI boom is very real and kind of addressing some of the problems that were revealed in the pandemic.

[01:06:31] But, but I do think that a lot of the kind of vibe and activities of the city haven't really come back. So if you, if you walk around the city, the, just the number of people on the streets, you know, is, is, is not what it used to be. In terms of, you know, restaurants, nightlife, these kinds of things, it's not, it's, it's definitely not really come back.

[01:06:59] And, you know, the, some of the experimental art, things like that, that I was talking about, you know, it's very tough because it's so expensive. About 15 theater companies have closed in the last, since the pandemic. That's two main prestige art schools, both closed. And so I do feel like the, the city has become much kind of less fun.

[01:07:26] Now, of course, it's always dangerous to say that because maybe I'm just less fun, right. But, but I think. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, I realized the hazards in statements like that, but, but, but I think it is true. I mean, if you, if you go around to neighborhoods where there used to be like a lot going on at night, you know, in the Marina or on Polk street or, you know, the, the whole club strip, you know, on, in Soma on 11th street.

[01:07:51] And like, it's just not happening, you know, there just aren't, aren't people out in the same way that there used to be. And, and, you know, you have a lot of social activity moving into private spaces. So that, that's a big phenomenon that, you know, isn't necessarily a good thing for, for cities.

[01:08:10] So, you know, I just worry, I guess, you know, my basic worry is that it, it just becomes a city that's just entirely occupied with making money on AI, you know, and everything else falls by the wayside. And, you know, I don't think that would be a great, great thing. Jonathan Weber, thank you so much for coming on blue city blues with us and, and talking about the book and about San Francisco's evolution. Really appreciate it. All right. Well, thank you very much, Sandeep and David. I really, really appreciate it.

[01:08:38] And the book is city on city on the edge. City on the edge. Yeah. Or we'll have a link in our show notes about it. That's it for another edition of blue city blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. Uh, you can support this podcast. Now, if you go to patrion.com slash blue city blues, we're now up on Patreon and thanks everybody for supporting the podcast and just so much for listening.