The most noticeable quality of life these days in San Francisco is the dramatic increase in automobile traffic. Traffic has increased noticeably on all the freeways and on quiet city streets.
There is one explanation: business is picking up and more people are getting jobs. San Francisco was among the last cities in America to get the benefits of the four years of uninterrupted high economic growth.
My guess about what has been happening in San Francisco is that we have seen a long term decline, beginning in 1970 as people left the city for the greater surrounding suburbs and business followed them. We didn’t perceive the changes because it was covered up by the explosion of new small businesses that the hippies generated from 1975-85 and the vast Internet boom from 1992-2001. We are now living in the remnants of a super nova, surviving on the largess of summer tourists from the world and the monthly visitors from the suburbs.
The photo on the right is new clothing in a new men’s clothing store in the Castro. Current style is based on contrast of every kind: color, fabric and pattern.