Will APEC ♥︎ San Francisco?
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The full membership of APEC countries but not all of them will be sending high-level delegations, if any, to the 2023 summit this year in San Francisco. NOTE: most of the Central American nations do not belong to the Conference.
The so-called “class” picture of the 2015 APEC Summit when it was last held in Manila and the late President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III hosted.
San Francisco is the 17th largest American city by population (est. 839,000 residents). It is named after Giovanni Francesco de Bernardone of Assisi, Italy or simply, St. Francis, patron saint of animals and one of the gentlest Roman Catholic saints. The City by the Bay, home of the Beat Generation, of Flower Power and LGBQT clout, of Sam Spade and Dirty Harry, however, sits on land originally occupied by the Muwekma-Ohlone (or Costanoan) Indians of North America, lest it be forgot.
The original inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area, but the anchor city was named after Catholic Italian saint Francis of Assisi.
A Cultural Heavyweight
For a city its size, San Francisco is a cultural heavyweight.
• It has world-class museums galore: the de Young and Legion of Honor, the SF MOMA, the Asian Art Museum, and smaller installations and innovative art galleries;
• SF Opera, is the second oldest in the US and the company celebrated its Centennial this year.
• San Francisco Ballet is older than New York’s American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet by a few years.
• San Francisco hosts the oldest Chinatown at least in the US (think Flower Drum Song).
Incredible wealth, much of it created since the 1849 Gold Rush, is the foundation of all that “artsiness.” Home to the Hearsts, Bechtels, Levi-Strausses (Haas-Goldman), de Youngs, Charles Schwab, Gordon Getty, Marc Benioff, the Fishers of “The Gap,” Coppolas, Nick and Nora Charles, etc., San Francisco was the financial capital of the West until upstart Los Angeles further south took over in the 1930s.
Deep pockets also sustain the SF Bay Area’s temples of haute and nouvelle California cuisine of tres, tres haute prices as well. Chez Panisse in Berkeley started the high-priced, farm-to-table, slightly snooty dining out revolution in 1971. Then in 1994, the French Laundry opened as the #1 “bucket-list restaurant” on the planet where the tasting menu goes for at least $500 + taxes, service charges, etc., per diner, and gourmands wait up to four months to get a reservation. It is also weighty in more “blue-collar” pursuits, e.g., the 49ers, Golden State Warriors, SF Giants do very well in the national sports leagues.
Top-Heavy Political Clout
The SF Bay Area’s nine counties (with about 7.8 million residents in some 7,000 square miles, or 2.8% of the total 339 million US population) has an outsize political clout. The 2nd and 3rd persons in line after President Joe Biden were two women from the SF and Oakland districts. The current US Vice-President is Kamala Harris-Emhoff from Oakland. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita, is from San Francisco. So too was the late Dianne Feinstein who was the oldest, longest serving US senator.
Boarded-up windows of San Francisco’s renowned Union Square district that once rivalled Fifth Avenue and Rodeo Drive for the concentration of its world-famous and exclusive designer brands!! Where will the foreign delegations do their shopping?
While the United Nations eventually made New York City its permanent home, its Charter of the Organization was signed in what is now Herbst Theatre in the War Memorial Veterans Building, an ironic name for a peace-championing city. However, an even more powerful force makes San Francisco its home – Star Trek’s Starfleet Headquarters on Earth.
The Doom Loop
San Francisco has been through a lot the last three years. The Covid pandemic really did a number on it, drying up its lifeblood of domestic and international tourism. Hotels and restaurants started laying off people or closing, so did luxury brand stores in the chic Union Square shopping area. The once bustling downtown became a ghost town when armies of tech workers began working remotely, leading to vacant office buildings, and killing support services that catered to the office crowds. The growing homeless, drug overdose scenes, “smash-and-grab attacks” on retail merchants, and rising criminality delivered extra body blows to the city’s je ne sais quoi. A large part of its problems may lie with SF’s ultra-liberal, permissive “anything-goes” philosophy. You’ve seen those large heart sculptures all over the city; yup, San Francisco wears its heart on its sleeve. Who cares about the outrageously high cost of living if you can sponge off a very “generous” City Hall? News crews began covering the city’s so-called doom loop, and will no doubt say a lot about it during APEC, especially journalists from Russia.
A mental health crisis contributes to much of the drug and homeless scenes. It has become so acute that San Francisco’s Main Public Library has had to place safety nettings in its airy atrium to prevent more suicides after three had jumped off its cantilevered staircase. The Golden Gate Bridge used to be the usual site for self-destruction. Now, the Main, which has been the happy setting of six successful editions of the Filipino American International Book Festival, is making sure it does not become a convenient alternative. (The 7th International Filipino American International Book Festival is set for next year, October 11, 12 and 13, 2024. Mark your calendars.)
Looking into the central Atrium of the San Francisco Public Library, September 2023. All such openings in the library with access to direct free-fall drops to the ground floor have been blocked off with secure netting, or in the case of the main staircase in the background, barricaded with new acrylic barriers—all to prevent more suicides. There were three successful ones in the Library; hence the new precautions. (photo courtesy of the author)
Ever Resilient
San Francisco, however, is a very resilient town, forever reinventing itself. From a rural outpost in the 1840s when everything was centered between the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, it became the gateway for the massive Gold Rush of 1849. And just as it was going to be America’s greatest city on the West Coast, the Big One struck in 1906, turning much of the city into ash and ruin. But in two years or so, the City was back in business, with new skyscrapers and all. For many decades, it was a favorite location of Alfred Hitchcock and his Hollywood colleagues when they wanted a “Gotham-like setting” without having to actually shoot in New York City. It survived the double political upheavals of one week in 1978 when many former residents died in the Jonestown massacre, followed a few days later by the shootings of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, which paved the way for the ascendancy of the late Dianne Feinstein. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, San Francisco (with New York City) was ground zero of the AIDS crisis. It also survived the dot.com bust of the late ‘90s which was replaced by the even larger technological boom. San Francisco may be on the verge of reinventing itself again. Tech workers who left the Bay Area a year or so ago, are trickling back in, drawn by the lure of AI (Artificial Intelligence), which is the new “gold.”
For many Asians, Filipinos included, San Francisco will always be a magnet, The City on Many Hills. Although Daly City, just a few miles southwest, is undisputedly Pinoyville, San Francisco always seems like a salubrious, year-round Baguio holiday, far from thoughts of a sweltering and sticky Manila. It is also comforting that the Motherland seems just within one’s beck and call even if it’s nearly 7,000 miles of ocean away. On October 23rd, United Airlines returned to servicing Manila with a non-stop daily flight from the SF Bay Area, giving Filipinos and PH-bound visitors a second choice for a non-stop service to the old sod.
Just in time for this week’s APEC Summit, civic leaders in SF are trying to burnish the city’s image and self-worth with a shiny, new PR campaign riding on the slogan, It All Starts Here. What does that even mean? I’d rather put on this soundtrack instead:
Molto grazie, Tony Benedetto, this video melds the glories of this very special place with your timeless and classic rendition of this anthem.
Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books:
· Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2021);
· Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes (© 2016); and
· Of Adobo, Apple Pie, and Schnitzel With Noodles (© 2018)—all available in paperback from amazon.com (Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Europe).
Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians, contributing to the ISOH Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com
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