I was recently in San Francisco and while the economic environment in Silicon Valley seemed good, when I visited San Francisco, it seemed to be much worse. I had an opportunity to look for property and prices were coming down in residential real estate, to buy or to rent. Here is a note from one of the listserves that I belong to from a woman who attests to that impression.
"Subject: RE: Economic recovery? Personal eval = recession/depression
Your comments about SF are right on. I was making the same point to a reporter a few weeks back who was interviewing me about turnaround work in the Bay Area. And while there is unquestionably a massive national recession that is affecting ALL parts of the country, it's safe to say SF has taken the hardest blow.
I'm a 6th generation San Franciscan, and I will always love the Bay Area. For it's beauty, it's people, it's unique history and it's very unique entrepreneurial/opportunistic culture that is quite simply far and away unlike any other major region....in a much better way.
But SF has a real problem, and they don't realize it. It's industries are GONE...not entirely, obviously, but to a much larger and far broader respect than most realize. As you mentioned, it was once a massive hub for entertainment (movies/TV/music), banking & insurance, import/export, publishing, maritime, defense, and a number of other industries. But most of these industries have either moved on, outgrown the severe space limitations of San Francisco, or are going through their own inflection points and reductions.
Of the 8.5% unemployed in San Francisco, a majority are from the tech industry. The same is true for the terrifyingly scary underemployment rate that is rapidly approaching 15%. San Francisco has never had much of a tech industry to begin with. Multimedia/design/agency types it had from the late 80s to mid 90s, but dotcoms pushed them out just as they did to the financial, import/export and other industry companies.
And since THOSE industries aren't hiring, or have already left the Bay Area, where are all these people going to find new jobs? Certainly not Silicon Valley for the time being...and SF has very little to offer the technology industry. There's not much incentive for a tech company to be based there.
Very rapidly San Francisco is becoming the bedroom community for people who work on the peninsula or in the south or east bays but want to live in an incredibly vibrant, fun, unique city.
All that said, yes SF/Bay Area has clearly been hit harder than anywhere else. HOWEVER, I'm not sure it's being plagued by the same economic woes that are affecting other places...I think the Bay Area has an underlying psychological issue that much of the rest of the country doesn't have, or at least not to the same extent because they haven't lived and breathed the absurdity and consequence of the last several years as deeply and personally as the Bay Area has. Your comment about LA's broad industryness helps underscore all this. And you're right also about this not being new for the Bay Area...while it may be the worst the city has ever seen, history has shown that even the post-Gold Rush / Civil War era had much of the same results.
I have a constantly negging _possibility_ in my mind that we may very well see an economic rebound THIS YEAR...perhaps as soon as May (dependent on how fast war in Iraq ends).
I think there's evidence enough to suggest that rebound will help improve business throughout the country, with new growth & innovation driving job creation. With one exception...the rest of the country will rebound while SF continues a downward spiral that no body here is expecting, and fueled mostly by the wake of the dotcom implosion. Believe it or not, there are still an awful lot of people here clinging to their delusions of grandeur about how "easy" it is to make money & build tech companies in SF. And even those who aren't, and simply want to stay and find work, will find it increasingly hard to do.
SF's government seems strongly convinced that the city will regain it's momentum as soon as the national economic crisis subsides and Silicon Valley companies are once again selling products to consumers & enterprises. I don't see it.
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From: Victoria Duff
