So forward to more modern times, Gay-everything in your face at every corner, obvious hard core drug abuse on the sidewalks, yet world-class views, architecture, food and steady tourism made the city go.. No overview is complete without mentioning that the quiet side of San Francisco is the Chinese-American community. The highest density of ethnic chinese population in the USA. Aside from Mayor Ed Lee dying of a heart attack in office, you just don't see many obvious attention-getting events with the SF chinese population overall.
The cost of living, the excess of all kinds, the reliable income, all came to a grinding car-crash result with covid-19. The balance on the street of healthy daily people versus dying-in-front-of-you, was lost. The ability of individuals of lots of non-dot-com people, to cope with expenses, was lost. Tourism dollars ceased. Restaurants closed. Of course it is a train-wreck. It really is a train-wreck, with nowhere to hide. Yet "billionaire-in-training" dot-com'ers and Bloomberg employees and 23andMe people and whatnow, glide through on a levitation walkway made of money. As others have said, some people are so well insulated from the consequences of these changes that there is no incentive.. in fact a badge of membership to overlook and ignore it seems.. no "community" .. the literally-insane people at Mozilla have indeed changed the world, and they can step over the bodies to get to their electric BMWs in the secure parking lot to move through it.