Heather, I would strongly agree with you - I think San Francisco is a beautiful city, and I would live their in a nick-beat if I was bohemian. I just happened to be non-bohemian, but what I find relevant about Silicon Valley in relationship to San Francisco isn't the beautiful nature of San Francisco, it is an insanity that that will inevitably occur with any form of manic focus, which includes gentrification, as well signing up for the resulting rollercoaster ride, and that is on top of the natural adjustment to become blissful about living life on a major geological faultline. The irony of Silicon Valley is that it was built upon the foundation stone of the Hippie culture - that it brought forth a Wozniak and a Jobs but still managed to serve to create something far removed from that culture. Maybe what I should have said to my wife in the 80's is, I didn't come here to marry you, but to pay my last respects to the Hippie generation as they begin to meet with the sunset, but unfortunately somewhere in the 60's I got transplanted with a Howard Cosell gene of "I'm just telling it like it is". As much as I respect the impact of the Hippie Generation, I learned enough from listening to John Lennon when he wrote the words "No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go" on his final album called Double Fantasy, to instinctively know that there is one Hippie-leading light that I would be wise to truly learn from……M.
May 6, 2008 at 9:43am
Mark Zorro