Stay Home: Why Major Cities Are All Marketing
It's better to big fish in a small pond than a pointless fish in hell.
As someone who has spent a significant amount of my childhood and adult life in and around major cities, I don’t understand the allure of them. Why would safe and sheltered suburbanites wants to live in a place where everything costs more and everyone hates them?
The short answer is marketing. Major cities operate like popular brands do, they have an aesthetic that they try to co-opt in an effort to attract certain types of people and their dollars.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has three major cities, and all of them want your money, but they’re aiming for different people.
San Francisco has two conflicting camps of people it tries to attract: gay people from the Midwest, and tech demons from every corner of the earth.
If San Francisco could speak it would likely say something along the lines of “Sucking a dick in a cornfield is no comparison to a sucking dick in the Castro! GIVES US FUCKING MONEY!”
This happens while they simultaneously shame every nerd on GitHub by insinuating that they’re not really in tech unless they’re paying $20 dollars for a single piece of avocado toast in the Marina District while living in a beat up Victorian rowhouse in the Mission with 6 other roommates for $1500 a month while working for a start up that is trying to automate every single aspect of human life because getting off your ass is considered an inefficiency in the eyes of Silicon Valley’s well-funded aspiring fascists.
Oakland is looking for well-funded people with things to prove. Are you a white person who doesn’t want to seem racist, but also is willing to pay $3000 for a condo overlooking a homeless encampment? Well, do I have the place for you!
Or are you a person of color who grew up in a suburban environment looking to shake off the dullness of the model minority myth by acting like you hate white people despite all of your friends being white? Well, welcome to Oakland. Enjoy pretending you’re from here.
Then there’s San Jose, which isn’t really a major city. It is, but not in like the way you’re envisioning. It’s a major city the same way Phoenix, Arizona is a major city. A lot of people live in its boundaries. But not efficiently. They reside in VIOLENTLY OVERPRICED single family homes, apartment complexes, or luxury condos that are in areas considered walkable. But fake walkable in the sense that they’re walking distance to businesses that aren’t even fucking open because no one is walking around to walk into them in the first place.
LA is the same thing, but with actors and influencers and every other type of narcissist you can imagine. These are places for sociopaths who prefer to sit in cars. What a dynamic urban experience!
To make a long story short, don’t believe the hype. Also if you’re a loser in Midsville, Missouri or whatever, considering there is significantly less competition, what makes you think it would be any better in a place with significantly more?
The sad thing about cities is that they don’t even care about the people from them, so why in the fuck would they give a fuck about you? And if you’re rich, you can have a an easy life anywhere. So why are you even here? Go home. You’re just raising the rent for everyone, yourself included.
Yeah, this hits pretty hard as someone who lives in SF and BARTs to San Jose periodically—I get to observe all the problems in one go. Lately I’ve been noticing, around Civic Center BART, they place a fancy bakery in the middle of it, with a dog park and a bunch of city workers milling around, as if to say, “Everything is fine! No drugs here!” But I’ll defend my little corner in the Richmond. There’s some weird, funky magic happening around Clement street that I love.