| | | Having lived in San Francisco it's difficult to describe its peculiar provincial insularity to an outsider.
While residents of San Francisco are very accustomed to tourists, they strongly dislike those they consider outsiders, a dislike which has nothing to do with money or income.
While San Francisco is a very ethnically diverse city with a large percentage of Chinese, until recently the number of people from India / Pakistan / Bangladesh could probably have been counted on one hand.
The overwhelming majority of those who both "live in San Francisco" and "line-up each morning to take unmarked buses to Silicon Valley" are single men from India. Living in the well-known City of San Francisco provides them with high status and glamour back home, giving them an edge in finding a suitable arranged marriage.
But San Francisco is a city where single men from India cannot find women or men willing to date them so they hang out together in conspicuous small groups on the weekend, unless they're socializing in Oakland or other cities with a larger Indian population. Conspicuous in spite of the fact that they dress in a totally assimilated manner. San Franciscan's believe these engineers "should live closer to where they work", which is to say not in San Francisco because things which happen outside of San Francisco simply don't exist, an attitude quickly adopted by those from elsewhere who become long term residents.
Most of these Indian engineers are on short-term visas so while the presence of Indians in San Francisco has been relatively long lasting, they are not the same Indians over time which seals their outsider status, something akin to tourists who have overstayed their welcome.
The sole benefit of these engineers from India is San Francisco finally has a number of restaurants offering excellent Indian food. When I lived there, visitors from London would comment on their inability to find any Indian take-ways which is a staple of London life.
I took my parents to a gelateria, Perché No, in North Beach in San Francisco run by an immigrant from Florence Italy. When asked where my parents lived, they replied the East Bay (of San Francisco). With a thoughtful expression he said he had heard of it.
My Father who knew the game from having worked in San Francisco for decades asked the Italian owner if he had ever been outside "The City" and he brightened up and replied he had visited Golden Gate Park only last month. San Francisco and Paris are the only places where "the city" is used in place of the city name, being naturally assumed in both places that there is only one City in the world.
When asked where I lived, I might say "the city", Scott and Washington. The response was often, "Oh, the blue house?" No, the grey one two doors from the blue one, I'd reply. The response was typically something like, "Oh the one with the original horse carriage house, yes that's very nice."
In a different City I might have replied that I lived in Pacific Heights or simply San Francisco. But San Francisco is a City of very insular specifics. Many absentee landlords in the City rent to the single Indian engineers, but until they are Indians who are not on short-term visas they're unlikely to become accepted as permanent part of the City.
Trump's attitude toward "shithole countries" and his strong dislike of H-1B visas used by Silicon Valley is likely to help prevent the Indian presence in San Francisco from transitioning to a permanent part of the city culture. |
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