how many San Franciscans does it take to screw you with an Edison lightbulb?

The ridiculously expensive SF real estate marketplace has led to landlords jacking commercial rents in old neighborhoods with new money to the point where the businesses that made these neighborhoods good in the first place can't afford to stay there, nor can residents without rent control. San Francisco is becoming the bedroom community for the 20-something millionaire commuters to the southern tech corridor. And to admittedly stereotype, that population is predominately the antithesis of what makes San Francisco such an interesting and colorful place to live.

My most recent lament was Marlena's, who fell to another Douchebag Trio who take old venerated neighborhood places who can no longer afford to continue in the new rent brackets, and transform them into yet another "reclaimed wood, Edison lightbulb and crafted cocktails" over-priced poser bar. The first person to make such a bar was cool. The thousand copy-cats are as uninteresting as their patrons. Part of the value of a speakeasy is the patron filter of those in-the-know and those not. As SF neighborhoods become dominated by suburbanites playing at being urban, the nightlife venues are threatened or closed, the art and fringe culture is pushed out, and the artists, educators, and creative people who make less than 250k a year are being priced out. Sadly, these are the ones who created the interesting things in the City in the first place. I feel at times like I'm watching the funky areas of San Francisco transform into a thinly veiled Applebee's.

This alert just in from T. Tarn:

::wail of woe:: No, no, no, NO! They can't do this, not to Louie's! The precise reason why I go to this joint regularly at lunch for the last four years is because they're no thrills and no frills: With simple, cheap fare and cheap drafts. Despite what they claim, the Tempest team's gonna festoon Louie's with reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs, and fart out a blood-letting expensive gastro pub menu that NOBODY WANTS! Can't we keep just one or two old school places like Louie's in this town?

From The Inside Scoop: Tempest guys taking over another San Francisco old alley bar: Louie’s