This Is The Problem With How We Discuss Cities And Quality Of Life

Pursuant to yesterday’s installment—

Such a wasteland / San Francisco’s Dolores Park on a Saturday early afternoon

What follows is the perfect illustration of what’s wrong with the discussion we’re having (if you can call it that) on cities and quality of life.

I wrote what I wrote yesterday and on other occasions because it’s true. I know it’s true because I live in Los Angeles, used to live in San Francisco, have a daughter who currently lives there and I visit that city frequently. I know it’s true because it’s what I experience—in the day to day, on the ground—in a variety of neighborhoods in both places, though mainly in LA these days.

I don’t just go downtown or to Hollywood. The former has clear issues in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. The latter is, obviously, unique to Los Angeles. I have a large, diverse sample of significant time spent across both of these cities over the last 25 years.

But, even if I only spent time “downtown” this characterization of San Francisco, from freaking Kevin O’Leary, who I can safely assume only goes downtown (if he even goes there), is plain wrong. But it’s more than wrong. It’s fucking pathetic.

Of course, Fox publishes this drivel because Democrats run many of the nation’s big cities, such as San Francisco, and Fox has political motivation to place the blame there. They don’t love or care for America. They’re married to a narrative that’s at best disingenuous, but, in reality, untrue and potentially dangerous.

"Don’t listen to me. Go try it out. You wouldn’t run a convention in San Francisco. You have to take an Uber one block to your hotel, or you get executed," he stressed.

The article isn’t worth citing further or linking to. It contains all of the same generic content that gets repeated over and over again to be treated as fact minus any real, sustained, lived experience.

When I was in San Francisco over the last eight days, there was a convention downtown. I walked a block from the convention hall along Market Street. While this area has its issues, I didn’t get executed. Neither did my wife.

In fact, in all of San Francisco—

• There have been 17 homicides this year. Down from 25 at this time last year.

• Only 4 have occurred in the Tenderloin, which is the part of Downtown (about a 15-minute walk from the convention hall) having the most trouble with homelessness, drug use/dealing and perception of safety. Add in the rest of “central” San Francisco, and the number of homicides increases to a whopping five.

• In fact, throughout the city, violent crime is down about 12% year over year.

You can check the numbers for yourself. They don’t lie. But Kevin O’ Leary is lying.

And this is the sad part. There are real issues that need to be addressed. I never hesitate to illustrate them. However, there’s a massive distance between perception of safety (which is important) and actual incidences of crime.

Heck, last year we saw a tech person kill another tech person downtown and, before the facts came out, people like O’ Leary jumped to conclusions, adding to this false wasteland narrative.

Not only will we not solve the actual problems amid this type of rhetoric, but if, somehow, these people succeed in taking down cities, all of America is in for a hell of a time.

New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle are all in the top six—worldwide—in terms of being global economic engines. If only the first three or four fail, everybody’s screwed, including the people who live in places that hate on big cities the most even though the populations rarely, if ever step foot in them. As in, they have no actual lived experience in them.

My wife and I are moving to Spain for two interrelated reasons:

• We want to live our day-to-day in the best, most walkable urban environments possible with loads of public space and the attendant social interaction and vibrancy.

• We can only have this lifestyle in Spain because we can’t afford an only halfway decent imitation of it—especially as we enter old age—in places such as San Francisco.

Trust me. I spend time in the neighborhoods that are not downtown in both LA and San Francisco. While some have their issues, most are thriving and as expensive as ever. There’s a reason for this. Especially in San Francisco, they afford the type of lifestyle you can’t get in most of the United States, outside of other super expensive cities, such as New York and Boston.

Yes, to some extent, our cities are a mess. However, the real wasteland is the media coverage and the false perceptions of reality they create around places we should be rooting for, not trying to take down.

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