Login
You're viewing the front-end.social public feed.
  • Adrianna Tanskinnylatte@hachyderm.io
    Sep 7, 2026, 1:58 AM

    The version of San Francisco that I viscerally dislike is the one that Herb Caen mythologizes.

    ‘Don’t call it Frisco’ type of guy with no space in his writing or his imagination for a San Francisco that wasn’t just white and upper middle class. (Black working class people call it Frisco)

    This piece articulates what I’ve been feeling about his work: oaklandreviewofbooks.org/herb/

    Even better that it’s in the Oakland Review of Books.

    #SanFrancisco #Frisco #Oakland

    💬 4🔄 7⭐ 15

Replies

  • Adrianna Tanskinnylatte@hachyderm.io
    Sep 7, 2026, 2:03 AM

    The funniest way to annoy the people in this social class (they are different from the tech transplants), is to tell them that they’re all being ripped off at the Ferry Market farmers market and that they should take the bus instead to Alemany market

    .. or to tell them that you feel perfectly safe in Oakland.

    #SanFrancisco #Frisco #Oakland

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 1
  • Adrianna Tanskinnylatte@hachyderm.io
    Sep 7, 2026, 2:58 AM

    Why pick on someone so long dead now?

    I think that more and more, I am more irritated by a modern day version of this guy. The ‘I’m not racist but I have zero close friends who aren’t white or East Asian and upper middle class’ type of person, which I find incredible in a multicultural city.

    “And so it’s no contradiction to note how many Black San Franciscans have said “Frisco” with uncomplicated gusto. It was never them Caen was speaking to, or about. Which is the thing I’ve landed on with him, I guess. When he had to think about race, explicitly—or about Oakland—he was that beloved and honorable type of white person, the “not a racist.”

    More than anything else, I think the more time I spend away from San Francisco the more obvious it is to me that this place is increasingly less diverse. Which is one of the reasons I struggle with living there so much. (And also why I run away to Oakland as much as I can)

    And of course, the people who did call it Frisco were run out of the city long ago.

    law.stanford.edu/publications/

    #SanFrancisco #Frisco #Oakland

    💬 2🔄 4⭐ 6
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Berkubernetusfuzzychef@m6n.io
    Sep 7, 2026, 4:30 AM

    @skinnylatte oh, no question. When I moved to the Haight in 1994, my average neighbor was Black or Hispanic. By the time I left in 2015, the only non-whites were the nannies.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Adrianna Tanskinnylatte@hachyderm.io
    Sep 7, 2026, 2:43 AM

    @kristinHenry the city was already extremely multicultural. I don’t fault him for his blind spots but I also dislike how people keep putting that version of it on a pedestal. It is exclusionary and limiting and not relatable

    I also think it’s more important than ever today to talk about this, as the city becomes even less diverse than it was 30 years ago due to cost of living and displacement.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Nantucket Litnantucketlit@mastodon.social
    Sep 7, 2026, 3:49 AM

    @skinnylatte

    > Before him, to put it only a little too simply, “Frisco” had been a gold rush disaster of a town, a far-flung mining frontier on the Pacific rim whose soul was in the earthquake, fire, and labor of its factories, port, and hinterlands...

    That reminds me of the Frank Norris novel McTeague.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Nantucket Litnantucketlit@mastodon.social
    Sep 7, 2026, 4:16 AM

    @skinnylatte Sorry to comment twice, but this essay got me thinking.

    It's interesting to learn about people's shibboleths. I didn't know the context of 'Frisco'.

    Now I get what Sister Sledge were singing about: "One night at the disco, on the outskirts of Frisco..."

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0