Tom Scott's Reviews > The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco

To live in San Francisco is to constantly hand wring about what it means to be living in San Francisco—It’s sort of a joke among us transplants (which is most of us) that no matter when you arrived here you’ve already missed it and your experience isn’t really true. I arrived in 1990 and over the next 30+ years, I got married here, bought a house here, had a career here, raised two kids here, and yet I still have this nagging feeling I don’t have a right to belong here. But here I am.

This is a collection of essays from 25 writers musing on about why they either left San Francisco or why they’ve stayed. The writers and their experiences span from the 1960s on but is heavy on 1990s and 2000s nostalgia. There's an unstated hypothesis that the latest influx of tech culture and wealth starting in roughly 2008* has finally and truly killed The City That Knows How.

Maybe. I dunno.

But on a personal note, there’s enough shared nostalgia from the 1990s in these pages to make me finally realize I do, and have always, belonged here and my San Francisco is just as valid as any other San Francisco. (Hey—I remember the Red Man, the White Lady, Bum Jovi, Herb Cain, Live at Leeds, etc., etc., etc.—so get off my back.)

*Perhaps sneakily included as corroborating evidence, the two essays written by tech transplants (including the founder of Goodreads) are truly obnoxious.