Why are the world’s startups flocking to San Francisco? In a five part series for The Australian I look at the motivations for Australian entrepreneurs heading to the Bay Area.
The reasons for the moves are varied, as are the experiences, and it’s an interesting snapshot of a historical industrial shift as Silicon Valley evolves.
Has San Francisco become too expensive? An article on Bloomberg business suggests the prices for accommodation and labor have become too high.
Today San Francisco goes to the polls and one of the many questions being put to voters is Proposition F, an initiative to put restrictions on short term rentals.
Also known as the AirBnB initiative, Proposition F is also being seen as part of San Francisco residents’ push against the tech community’s takeover of the city.
In countering the Proposition F supporters, AirBnB hasn’t helped its case with a clumsy public campaign and an aggressive $8 million war chest to support the initiatives opponents, but the real problems for the service lie in the hostility towards the tech and startup community in general.
A notable thing about the new tech community is how their staff are isolated from the community around them. Probably the worst example of this in Southern California where Google has been accused of harassing homeless people on the public footpaths around its Venice Beach complex.
While having onsite facilities may make sense in remote Silicon Valley business parks, in city areas like San Francisco this only creates hostility from those who feel displaced by the new elite.
The remoteness of the new tech elite is also shown in their companies’ attitudes towards customer support. Services like AirBnB, Facebook and Google consistently try to reduce their support overheads by pushing responsibility onto users and contractors by making it difficult, if not impossible for the public to contact them.
Inevitably that remoteness from the general community breeds distrust and hostility. Which is what we’re seeing now being directed towards AirBnB.
Paradoxically, despite the hostility towards the tech community and AirBnB, they are probably not the reason for San Francisco’s soaring property prices as around the world the price of homes is soaring as the effects of cheap money filter through investment markets.
As long as those prices keep soaring beyond the reach of working and middle class residents, AirBnB and the tech community can expect to continue feeling the pressure. Although it’s not hard to think though that a bit of humility might help their case.
One of the longest running, and expensive, programs of the Cold War was the Nike missile program. Designed to protect US from Soviet bombers, the missiles were based at 280 sites and guarded cities and military installations.
Today the program is long since abandoned, a victim of changing technology and the 1972 SALT agreements between the then Soviet Union and US with the only base remaining in a working condition is SF-88 in what’s now the Golden Gate Park just North of San Francisco.
SF-88 itself was abandoned and over the last 15 years, volunteers have been rebuilding the site to roughly how it looked in the early 1960s at the peak of the Cold War.
The missiles themselves were only shortrange devices. The first version, the Ajax, only had a range of 25 miles and carried a conventional high explosive payload while the later model, the Hercules, could travel forty miles and could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
Each Nike base had three main components based at least a thousand yards apart; the actual launch site, the Integrated Fire Control room (IFC) that controlled the systems and administrative quarters. The reason for the thousand yard spacing was to minimise the damage from the launch of the rockets and to give the radar systems adequate range to track the weapons.
The missiles themselves were controlled by computer. Once fired they were controlled by the computers in the IFC, should the crew decide to abort the attack the only choices they had were to explode it prematurely or disarm it so it flew off into the ocean.
With the advent of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and submarine launched weapons the Nike systems became redundant, an experimental anti-missile system – the Nike-X – was tested but as the scale of the Soviet arsenal became apparent it became clear the system would be hopelessly inadequate to combat the hailstorm of death a true nuclear war would unleash.
By 1974 most the system, including SF-88 was decommissioned although a small number of bases remained in operation for coastal defences for a few years afterwards. Today most are disappearing at the land is taken over for property development and other uses.
The volunteers who’ve restored SF-88 have done a wonderful job bringing a facility back to life – the missile hangers had six feet of water in them before the work started and on weekends between 12.30 and 3.30pm they’ll show you around the facility and bring one of the missiles to the surface firing position.
Fort Baker’s SF-88 Nike Base is an easy drive across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, on weekend the Muni runs the hourly 76-X service from the Transbay Terminal. Admission to the SF-88 base is free but donations are gratefully accepted.
If for nothing else, a visit to the Nike Missile Base is worthwhile just to remember how close the world was to destruction in the paranoid days of the Cold War.
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is one of the must sees for a visitor. However the iconic attraction isn’t close to the centre or to the main public transport routes which, while time consuming is an opportunity to see more of the city.
Probably the simplest way for a visitor to get there is to take a tour bus, of which San Francisco has plenty. There’s also the options of a scenic hour’s walk from Fisherman’s Wharf or cycling on a hire bike, but it’s always been this site’s contention is the best way to get to know a place is to catch the local public transport.
In San Francisco, the public Muni network operates the bus, light rail and cablecar system with the Muni Passport offering unlimited rides at $17 for day or $35 for a week, which is a deal given the cable car services alone are $7 a trip.
The Muni Passport can be bought at most drugstores and at the various Muni ticket stalls dotted around San Francisco, most notably at the Ferry Building and at the Powell Street cable car terminus. While some outlets will sell you a Clipper Card with the passport pre-loaded, most outlets give you a paper copy that requires you to scratch the dates on it.
San Francisco’s Muni bus network is comprehensive although there isn’t a direct bus to the Golden Gate Bridge except the weekend the hourly 76x bus to the tollgates that continues onto the Marin Headlands and Fort Cronkhite, a worthwhile trip in itself.
Another direct service is Golden Gate Transit’s number 10 and 70 services which don’t accept the Muni Passport but are faster and more direct than the Muni buses as they service the commuter town to the north of the city.
For most times though the 28 – 19th Avenue service is the most frequent and cheapest service to the Golden Gate however it goes nowhere near the tourist precincts giving a visitor an opportunity to explore the city and get a taste of the ordinary person’s San Francisco.
The quickest connection from downtown San Francisco is the 38 or 38R Geary services from Union Square, these frequent services head directly West from the city and drop you off at the corner of Geary and 19th Avenue which the 28 runs along.
If you’re feeling more active during peak commute times the 38R continues to Lands End, the walk from there to the Golden Gate Bridge takes around two hours along the route of one of the original steam car routes and gives great vistas of the Marin Headlands and the Bridge. The Cliff House and Sutro pool ruins at Lands End itself are worth exploring as well.
There are other buses that can connect with the 28 at 19th Avenue including the 1 California however they are a lot slower and less frequent than the 38 Geary.
Another way, which may be faster than the buses during peak times in to catch the N – Judah/Ocean Beach service which drops you at 19th Street a little further south of the 38’s stop. On the outward route the stops are a block apart while coming back from the Golden Gate, the stops are adjacent.
The cable cars aren’t particularly convenient to the 28 terminus in the Marina district and the best way to make the connection is the 30 bus that goes along North Point with a change at the corner of Chestnut and Laguna Streets.
A much nicer alternative to the 30 bus is to walk from Fisherman’s wharf via the Maritime Museum in the wonderfully art deco Aquatic Park Bathhouse (free admission) and Fort Mason to the 28 Terminus in the Marina District.
All the above options are available in the reverse direction and again the Golden Gate Transit service is the fastest option back to the city although it doesn’t accept Muni passes. You can catch GGT buses from the toll plaza level of the bridge.
If you’ve walked the bridge and aren’t inclined to do the return trip, some GGT services stop on the Northern approaches and the 76X stops on the xx road just above the bridge’s approaches, otherwise you can walk another 45 minutes to Sausalito and catch a ferry – again Muni Passes aren’t accepted – to either the Ferry Building or Pier 43 near Fisherman’s Wharf.
Whichever way you go, the trip out to the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the must do things of a San Francisco visit and using the public buses is a great way to get a feel for the city.
Golden Gate Bridge image by By Octagon (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons