Farewell, San Francisco
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.8 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Gibson joins Brian Anderson to discuss San Francisco's ongoing struggle with public order and his decision to leave the Bay Area for Los Angeles—the subject of Gibson's story, "America’s Havana," in the Spring 2020 issue.
"Even before the current Covid-19 pandemic," writes Gibson, "San Francisco was a deeply troubled city." The city ranks first in the nation in a host of property crimes, and its high housing costs make it prohibitively expensive for low- and middle-income families. Even tech companies are now considering relocating their operations; any significant exodus of such businesses would be a serious blow to the city's economy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to 10 blocks. I'm your host, Brian Anderson. And joining us on today's show is Michael Gibson. |
| 0:22.4 | Michael is the co-founder of the 1517 Fund, a venture capital firm formerly based in San Francisco |
| 0:29.0 | and now in Los Angeles. And we'll get to that in a minute. He's written on technology and |
| 0:34.5 | innovation for the Atlantic, National Review, Reason, and recently a couple of |
| 0:39.8 | excellent pieces for City Journal. You can follow him on Twitter at William underscore Blake. |
| 0:46.1 | His latest essay, which we released online last week and appears in our spring 2020 issue, |
| 0:52.1 | is called America's Havana, |
| 0:57.7 | and it's about San Francisco's ongoing struggle with public order and other serious urban problems, |
| 1:00.2 | even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. |
| 1:04.2 | Michael, thanks very much for joining it. |
| 1:06.7 | Happy to be here. |
| 1:08.2 | Now, let me read the very vivid opening paragraph to your story. |
| 1:12.7 | Quote, on January 8th, London breed San Francisco's mayor was sworn in for her first full term. |
| 1:19.7 | House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated her in a tweet saying, |
| 1:23.3 | I look forward to working with you to continue San Francisco's proud tradition of standing as a guiding |
| 1:29.9 | light for progress across America. I don't know what definition of progress Pelosi is using, |
| 1:36.2 | but any candid observer would rate the city a catastrophe. Mayor Breed was inaugurated on the same day |
| 1:43.2 | that I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles |
| 1:46.4 | after 10 years working at the cutting edge of science and technology. |
| 1:51.9 | You then begin your brief tour of the reasons you and others like you are leaving the city, |
| 1:58.6 | starting with public order and hygiene. So could you give a |
| 2:02.5 | description of how the city was kind of crumbling over the last several years in these areas? |
... |
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