Dan Moore:

> Ultimately, I decided that the most important thing you should be aware of before trying to ship my car to California and moving to San Francisco is this: the city is changing, quickly. Mechanisms of gentrification have upended neighborhoods with the abruptness of lightning strikes, dividing the citizenry. This is important, because from the day you get here, you’ll find yourself in the middle of this divide, caught in anxious, awkward suspension between two worlds: one that’s losing control of its identity and one that hasn’t really figured out what its identity is yet. I should actually amend that statement: you’ll feel like you’re strung in the middle of two worlds. This will not be so. > > See, the world that hasn’t figured out its identity yet is probably better known as the tech community. This community consists of people whose move to San Francisco was made possible by way of companies related at least peripherally to the technology industry. Yes, this means you. What this also means is that many of your neighbors won’t see you as a benevolent outsider caught unknowingly in the middle of what is, essentially, a class war. You have, by association, already chosen your side. And the association will be your shame. Some people will assume even before they meet you that you care only about your company’s app; that you don’t appreciate the more intrinsic aspects of your new home; and, moreover, that you don’t respect the impact that your being here is having on it—namely, accelerating the ultimate selling out of San Francisco’s soul.

I love San Francisco. I went to school in the area, learned to drive a stick there (those hills!), learned a lot about life there. I hate the divide that appears to be more and more a way of life for people in this great city.

I’ve been gone a long time. Is this really the way things are now?