Thoughts on being an "Invader"

I'm not a real techie, I am, but I'm not, as my friend Brooks said;

"She's one of the good ones"

My brother, he's a real techie, but he lives in the approved techie city of Mountain View. That makes him acceptable. He's not Destroying The City, like me.

I'm not a real techie because I'm a machinist who makes NOT TECHIE MONEY hourly. I make about 60% what your baseline real techie out of a state school or India does or 50% of what a  Carnegie Mellon or Stanford Techie makes.

Although I do have stock options, which makes me a techie, they are worth a decent amount in real world dollars, but I am still pretty poor in Silicon Valley Dollars in spite of Winning The Start Up Lottery.

Anyway, I'm Destroying The City with my very presence, or so I'm told. Daily.

I shouldn't take it so personally, especially since I'm Not A Real Techie.

But I'm Not A Real San Franciscan, as well.

Real San Franciscans HATE that Tech Is Destroying The City.

Even though half of them work in Tech as well. Probably more than half.

They think new skyscrapers and condos are "Tragic" that the abundance of high paying jobs is a plague.

Really, motherfuckers?

I'm from Detroit.

OK, just like not being a Real Techie, or a Real San Franciscan, I'm not Really From Detroit, either.

No one is really from Detroit. If you are from Detroit, you are from either the Greater Metro Area, which I AM from, sort of, or if you're from Detroit Proper you say your neighborhood. No one is from "Detroit" That's why Eminem says he's from 8 Mile, and Kid Rock isn't really lying when he says "Detroit" because he doesn't want to admit to being from Romeo. I wouldn't either, which is why I also say "Detroit"

The truth is that I'm not even from Metro Detroit unless I stretch the truth a bit, which I do, because the truth is that I am from Breckenridge, and not the good one in Colorado. I'm from the flat one with the wind farm, but when I was little, it was just a grain silo.

I only lived there until I was 7. Then I moved Somewhere Even Worse.

Now when I say I lived in a shitty small town, I am not talking about the cosmopolitan metropolis that is Howell, Michigan, where I went to high school, nor am I talking about the ironically named Breckenridge, I am talking about the truly hellish and truly remote Hale, Michigan. Had you ever been when it wasn't the height of summer, or Deer Season, you would understand why I prefer to say I am from Detroit, and you certainly wouldn't hold it against me, because you Real San Franciscans would probably go crazy if you had to spend one day in Hale. You Real San Franciscans think small towns are places like Half Moon Bay, or Guernville or Davenport, pretty places, nice places, not places like Hale. I don't think You Real San Franciscans actually know that place like Hale exist or have real people in them, because why would you? The City is Important. Hale isn't even somewhere deserving of our pity like Flint. I've seen how you look down on Fresno. Hale would kill you.

Places like Hale kill lots of people who Belong In San Francisco, if you get my drift, but maybe you Real San Franciscans forgot that not everywhere has problems like the Pride Parade "getting too commercial" now. It Gets Better, but usually only after you leave.

In fact, it wasn't even a town, legally, I think it was a "village" but Breckenridge was a "village" and was a booming metropolis compared to Hale.

"But where will The Next Allen Ginsburg come from if it's too expensive for artists to live here?"

Someone said that, wrote it down somewhere, somewhere that I read it. Probably more than one someone and probably not on paper.

"New York, like the last one?" I thought.

I didn't dare say that though. I've been called out on line for Not Being A Real San Franciscan. How dare I have anything to say about the city that has been my home for 20 years! After all, I'm From Michigan. I have no right to an opinion on The City! I have no right to Be Here! People Like Me have Destroyed The City! It was a welcoming, open place for Free Spirits before People Like Me got here. There was Diversity before People Like Me came and ruined it all!

The thing is, you dickheads don't know how good you have it, you Real San Franciscans are impossibly spoiled. If you grew up in San Francisco, and you are still here, you never had a reason to leave.

If you grew up here and were gentrified out, I'm not even sorry for you. You know why? Because you got to grow up Here. You can still come back to your "ruined" city and lament all the changes and how Terrible It Is that The City Has Lost It's Character. You still got to grow up here, so you don't even have a framework of how good you had it. Also, your parents voted for all the restrictive zoning and building laws that caused this mess so you should probably talk to them about THAT.

You don't know. You really don't know what it's actually like to not be able to go home again, because every place changes, that's how Cities work, that's how they are supposed to work.

As horrified as you are by The Tech Invasion, what if you came back, instead, to nothing? What if you came back, and instead of the skyline getting bigger and brighter, it got smaller and duller? What if the headlines were not about the outrageous rents or the tech boom, but about "what shall we do with these abandoned buildings?" I'm certain that would never happen to The City, so You will never know, so you will never know how lucky you are, and that makes me angry. I am angry that you equate prosperity with ruin, when I grew up with the opposite. You don't know how lucky you are to have Your Problems.

Detroit is in a Renaissance, just like they've been promising since the 70s.

When I did Go Back, I was pleasantly surprised, but it's not the Detroit I Grew Up With.

It's also not a real city anymore. The skyline of Detroit is just as unrecognizable to me as San Francisco's is to you Real San Franciscans, not by addition, but by subtraction. The Skyline looks like it had it's teeth knocked out, but, unlike yours, never filled back in. Back in the 90's those teeth may have been rotten, but they were still there. Now the Riverfront stares at you with a few golden teeth set in a newly healthy set of gums. It's pretty, but still sad, like when you see an ancient starlet from another era, celebrating a hundreth birthday, frail and aged, and riddled with dementia, and understand why so many celebrities want to die young.

Just like Tech Ruined San Francisco, but you know, the city is ACTUALLY RUINED instead of just Different Than You Grew Up In.  

If you're a Native San Franciscan, you have never lived in a place without public transit, you have always been able to go to a museum, or a hospital, or a farmers market, or a decent grocery store, or a theatre, your whole damn life. When I lived in Visitacion Valley, the Locals actually complained about it being a "Food Desert" because the nearest Safeway was a WHOLE 15 MINUTE bus ride away! There were not one, but two produce markets right there on Leland Avenue that held wonders that far eclipsed anything I had growing up, but I guess "Mexican Markets" don't count? You're all crazy. This place is magic, stop bitching. I can't believe how spoiled you are!

You can complain about Muni all you want.

There's a part of me, a big part of me, that still thinks it's fucking magical that I can take a BUS to a Movie Theatre. Let alone that I have the choice of 7 different ones to take a bus to! I'm not even counting the ones that are hard to get to by bus or just terrible. I actually have a choice of what theatre I want to go to to see a movie in. I didn't even have that choice until I was 16 years old, and even then I certainly couldn't take transit there.

But No, You Real San Franciscans, you take that for granted.

I doubt you Real Californians would even believe my tale of how raw cauliflower was a treat when was a kid. Not because my parents were strict vegans or anything, but because it was actually very hard to get raw cauliflower in a small town in Michigan in the 70's and 80's.

You want to know why People Like Me are Ruining Your City?

Because it is great. Not "was great" but Is Great.