Unfortunately, Ferlinghetti's San Francisco is long-gone; the artists have moved on. Tech rules the City now.
Another challenge: affording commercial gallery space.
I'd like to say, that's an extremely uncharitable and untrue view of YIMBY positions. When you have intense housing pressure, landlords will abuse the law if they think they can get away with it.
This is instead of legislating locking people into place (for example, having to commute 10 miles across sf like one of my friends does due to rent control "lock" in).
I would rather rents be dropped by matching demand. It's working in Seattle, it's working in Portland. Building housing to match the influx of people moving into all cities (there are more people today than when they were built), in combination with moderate rent control and strict tenant protection is the only way out of this mess.
Not for artists it’s not.
“in spite of decades of indisputably strong development, Seattle’s share of cost-burdened renters has barely budged.”
“...by overbuilding housing for the wealthy, Seattle has achieved some short-term improvement in affordability for the middle class, at the expense of substantial displacement and continued upward pressure on the most vulnerable. In this, it is similar to California as a whole, with the state’s 300,000-unit surplus for above-moderate income earners, in spite of Seattle’s proportionally superior housing production. As the city considers a greater emphasis on inclusionary zoning, even supporters of robust development have begun to question some of the core assumptions of supply-side models.”[1]
[1] Seattle, a Cautionary Tale for Supply-Side Housing Advocates https://knock-la.com/seattle-a-cautionary-tale-for-supply-si...
But rents had doomed it anyways. Artists need spaces, time and spare money to work. And high rents consume all three.
During my pit-stop in SF last November, I made a point of attending the famous monthly underground art variety show (Tourettes without Regrets) in the east bay, because I happened to be there that day. I was shocked to see the audience and performers were much older demographically than I remembered when I lived in the area 5 years ago; most attendees seemed to be over 30 rather than under 30.
So, anecdotally, it seems to me that the artists who established there years ago may still be there, but the east bay's not attracting new artists as much as it once was.