"Such a boom of organized hostility to life"

"As a young girl at boarding school, I cartooned...to possess the unattainable....Today I realize I've got quite the opposite impulse, trying to nail down the normalized malaise that defines the downtown world. My once bohemian city is now pumped so full of tech cash that everyone walks around terrified: of failure, of not enough or the wrong kind of success, of being beat to market by someone with the same absurd idea. I've never witnessed such a boom of organized hostility to life. It's as though the whole city is standing on a shrinking ledge while pretending it's at the best party ever thrown. The twisted creatures flowing out of my finger onto the tablet screen are like the neck-treading demons lurking inside every comely young entrepreneur carting endless confidence and optimist to the streets. Out, out, all of you, into the cold light of day. Let us examine and document the true shape of you."

Jen Burke Anderson
Womankind #21

It has been so bizarre to see how my hometown of San Francisco has transformed in the past ten years. I felt grateful when I read these words from another longer-term resident of SF, for what they capture that I haven't been able to put into words myself.