SF Culture

[gusl]

Culturally, SF feels quite different from most places that I know:

* LOTS of people wear T-shirts containing funny text, seemingly original
* unusual places: classical music café (in Berkeley), garlic restaurant, Pittsburgh-themed bar
* getting hugged by people I just met (in some cases before they know my name); getting a back-cracking bear-hug from a total stranger today
* zombies protesting at City Hall, and signing petitions in favor of gay marriage
* DNA lounge: at a non-gay club, seeing ~50% of kisses were same-sex; mashup karaoke

It feels to me like San Francisco is the creative capital of the world. People here like to experiment.

Comments

[chrisamaphone]

It feels to me like San Francisco is the creative capital of the world. People here like to experiment.

i like that characterization. it's also the locale of a lot of hackerspaces and the home of the "food hacking" co-op type place that i saw people at HOPE talk about.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Let me take the liberty to post a conversation I had yesterday:

Gustavo: how's Austin?
Mark: It is a semi-cosmopolitan city surrounded by Texas
Gustavo: right
I've seen the "keep Austin weird" t-shirts
Mark: For a small city, it has an unusually high geek, hippie, tech, and live music scene
Yes
Austin is proud of being unusual
But it is far less so than any part of San Fran
Gustavo: today a friend [that was spoonless -G] told me that he thinks of the West Coast as the frontier
nowadays, it's the frontier of culture
Mark: That's interesting
America as a whole hasn't been a true frontier for 150 years, but it still retains that as part of its cultural DNA
Gustavo: yup
Mark: The west was developed last, and still retains some of that flavor
Only about 50 years ago, California is still rather sparse and "up and coming"
In particular, far less of the west's elite social network is tied to "old money" and "good upbringing"