I had no idea Pandora’s headquarters were in Oakland. Kaiser, yes. Clorox, yes. But a tech company? Well, it’s a little hard to argue that it’s not there, especially if you happen to look up and see that sign. It’s in a building that was trashed by the ’89 earthquake, vacant for a couple of decades, and then finally somebody actually built something on the site. Go Pandora! Really — it’s nice to see signs of life over there. When I worked a couple of blocks from there, I ate a lot of lunches at the Greek restaurant across the street from that building — the Athenian Deli — and I’m thrilled that maybe they’re getting more lunch customers than random people like me. Unless Pandora does that obnoxious tech thing where nobody leaves the building for lunch because they can get all the grass fed beef they want right there. Otherwise, it looks like Oakland is getting some tech people (aka Twittsters, which is such a good name it would be a shame to limit it to Twitter employees, so I’m not going to.)
Which brings me to the Hipster-Twittster War of 2014. This is actually happening in San Francisco, but the collision between these two groups is a general Bay Area phenomenon. Apparently Google provides bus pickups and drop offs for employees who live in the city. The busses, which are actually cute little vans, stop at Muni stops. And that pisses off people who ride Muni, which is neither cute nor little. Which is kind of the idea of public transportation. So there have been protests at the bus stops in the Mission. What’s funny is that the protesters are basically about the same age (twenties and thirties); and same class (middle to upper middle) as the protest-ees. They all probably went to the same colleges. (The drivers who have to deal with this stuff aren’t part of this same privileged group, by the way.) Their differences basically come down to: turntable vs. iPod; artisanal shoemaker vs. Zappos; cute busses vs. Muni; and downwardly mobile vs. upwardly mobile.
I’m trying hard to think of another conflict that involves people who’re almost identical in their origin but who diverge in the flavor of their beliefs and the neighborhoods they live in Oh! That would be basically 3/4 of all wars ever fought. Sunni v. Shia. Tutsi vs. Hutu. Serbians vs. Croatians. The only thing the Twittsters have in common with the hipsters is that they all like to eat humanely raised meat, good cheese and Acme bread (and see all the other stuff discussed above.) That’s why they all live in the Bay Area.
Lillian Hamrick 