The comeback party has been going on for six months now and nobody has thought to check who wasn’t invited.
“Crime is down 25%,” said Scott, raising his glass with the energy of a man personally responsible. “Homicides at a 70-year low. AI companies flooding the city with capital. Office leasing at a six-year high.” He paused for effect. “San Francisco is back.“
Scott works in venture capital, which means he’s professionally required to be bullish on things. We were at a new restaurant in Dogpatch — the neighborhood everyone in tech has discovered simultaneously and is now describing as a hidden gem, which is the exact moment a hidden gem ceases to be either — along with Mr. X and a woman named Carmen, who had lived in the Mission for eleven years and was on her third drink by the time Scott got to the part about homicides.
“Rents are up 15%,” Carmen said.
“That’s a sign of confidence in the market,” Scott said.
“It’s a sign I might have to move.”
“To where?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it.”
Scott had the look of a man who had genuinely not considered this angle. “Look, I’m not saying it’s perfect. But you have to admit the vibe is different. Two years ago everyone was writing the city’s obituary. Now we’ve got $122 billion in Bay Area AI funding, Waymo everywhere, the Warriors—”
“The Westfield mall closed,” said Mr. X.
“That’s — retail is a structural issue nationally—”
“It’s on Market Street. The main street. Of the city that is back.”
“It’s being redeveloped.”
“Into what?”
Scott checked his phone. “There are several proposals. One involves a theme park.”
A silence that carried the full weight of that sentence settled over the table.
“Here’s what I keep noticing,” I said. “The comeback metrics and the lived-experience metrics are running in completely opposite directions. AI funding up. Tourism projections up. Office leasing up.” I looked at Carmen. “Also: unemployment nearly doubled since 2022. Thirty percent office vacancy citywide. A $900 million budget deficit. But yes — the vibe is different.”
“The vibe is different,” Scott insisted. “I’m not making that up. Walk around SoMa on a Friday. It’s alive again.”
“SoMa is alive because AI companies are burning venture money on office space they’re mandating people come back to,” said Carmen. “That’s not a neighborhood renaissance. That’s an amenity arms race with free lunch.”
Scott opened his mouth and then — unusually — reconsidered. “The return-to-office thing has been good for the city economically.”
“For the city’s lunch spots,” said Mr. X. “For the people who can afford to live close enough to use them? Different story.”
This was the part of the evening where Scott, who is not a bad person, just a professionally optimistic one, started to look mildly uncomfortable. He had the expression of someone who’d been confidently narrating a film and was beginning to suspect he might be in a different movie than he thought.
“I’m not saying the benefits are evenly distributed,” he said carefully.
“They’re not distributed at all,” Carmen said. “The people who were here through the bad years — the actual community — they’re the ones getting priced out by the comeback. The comeback is happening to them, not for them.”
“That’s the nature of urban cycles—”
“That’s a very calm way to describe being economically expelled from the place you’ve lived for a decade.”
A Waymo hummed past the window, carrying nobody visibly, going somewhere purposefully.
“You know what the tell is?” Mr. X said, in the tone he uses when he’s about to say the thing nobody wants to hear. “Every ‘SF is back’ piece, every bullish tweet, every newsletter about the city’s renaissance — they’re all written by people whose lives genuinely are better. Whose networks are back. Whose portfolio companies are hiring again. Whose restaurants are full.” He pushed his glass aside. “And they’re all slightly surprised when the people stocking those restaurants, cleaning those offices, driving those buses — when those people don’t share the enthusiasm.”
Scott was quiet for a moment. “So what’s the alternative? Root for the city to fail?”
“Root for the city,” Carmen said. “The whole city. Not just the zip codes with the best cold plunge studios.”
The dinner wound down in the way dinners do when something true has been said and everyone is politely waiting for the check to arrive and reset the atmosphere.
Scott picked up the tab, which he always does, and which is the gesture that means the conversation is officially over and we are all friends again.
Outside, Dogpatch glittered with the specific optimism of new construction and freshly painted storefronts. A few blocks away, if you walked in the wrong direction, it looked exactly like it always had. The comeback, like all comebacks, was a matter of where you were standing when you looked.
“You moving?” I asked Carmen, on the way out.
She shrugged. “Probably. Rents hit again in June.” She looked back at the restaurant, warm and full and expensive. “But hey. The vibe is different.”
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