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| May 15, 2001 |
Hollow City
Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg
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The subtitle of this book is "The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism", and the typos scattered throughout the text would indicate it was put out very rapidly. The book was a very compelling read for me, especially because it focused most strongly on the plight of artists in San Francisco, and I identified many of the photographs as sights that I walk or bus past every day. Destruction and reconstruction have become such common things in this city that I've really had to stop feeling sad when I see another old building come down or another Starbucks go in. This book reawakened my awareness. The only bummer is that Solnit blames the dot-com invasion over and over again for such cultural destruction, and, well, that invasion is well over now. I think big business and bureaucrats like Willie Brown pose the real threat to the disadvantaged in San Francisco; the Internet takeover was a blip in comparison. I know that my hope is that with so many Internet companies dying SF will return to some semblance of normalcy, with enough housing and culture for all. And that all of my friends who got laid off will find new work soon before they have to move away.
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