What the Young and Rich Have Done to the Bay Area

Entire industries that didn’t exist ten years ago are either thriving on venture capital, or thriving on companies that are thriving on it. It is now possible to find a $6 bottle of Miller High Life, a $48 plate of fried chicken, or a $20 BLT in parts of the city that used to be known for their dive bars and taco stands. If, after all, money has always been a means of effecting the world we want to bring about, when a region is flooded with uncommonly rich and uncommonly young people, that world begins to look very different. And we’re all living in it, whether we like it or not.

In the East Bay Express, Ellen Cushing looks at how a population of young people with a lot of tech money in their bank accounts have transformed the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s a story about gentrification, but the kind of gentrification that happens when “young people routinely make six-figure salaries, not necessarily beginning with a 1.”

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