The grumbling over tech wealth in San Francisco has come to a head this month, with a second Google bus protest and an Apple bus protest today and an editorial by Slate's Matthew Yglesias earlier this week suggesting that Silicon Valley should just up and move to Cleveland. Yglesias writes that "The Bay Area is sick and tired of the antics of entitled techies, and the nouveaux riches want a place where they'll be appreciated. It's time for federal authorities to step in and show someplace else. Cleveland, say." The nouveaux riche seems to have their own ideas, though. TechCrunch is reporting that tech investor Tim Draper wants to divide California into six mini states so Silicon Valley can be its own state (screw that Ohio idea). That's something I have to believe is a joke, but in this roller coaster of activist stunts and outlandish (but real) quotes from tech heavies, it's hard to suss the truth from the avalanches of agitated press swirling like hornet's nest around San Francisco.
And so here we are coming to the end of 2013, stuck in an endless round of San Francisco stories about protestors who are angry at the symbols of tech companies' privilege and tech leaders doing little to address that anger – Twitter renting out City Hall for a Christmas party wasn't a very subtle move.
I don't believe the city is as divided as Yglesias, and much of the national press, paints us in order to make their points. I'd argue that for many of us, the line between tech and non tech is a blurry one when it comes to where our friends (and with The Bold Italic, our freelancers) work – not to mention the amount of technology we interact with in our daily lives. The harder issue to tackle, though, is the inequality of wealth and tax breaks for these companies that's inspiring the anger. Mayor Ed Lee's approval rating has taken a tumble over the course of this year. If he wants a return to those high numbers that got him elected, he needs to spend 2014 talking about how he's going to integrate tech dollars into San Francisco's economy. And then, hopefully, we can stop convincing ourselves that "tech" is a universally dirty word in this town.
Image from Six Californias