The Cable Car tram – a unique public transport in San Francisco
I have lived in San Francisco for almost 12 of the 20 years I spent in the United States, and this city still surprises and captivates me with its eternal youth, novelty, openness, changeability, and at the same time constancy in its unwavering system of values.
Let's start with that very San Francisco liberalism, which has been elevated here almost to the status of a religion. It's hard to find another city as tolerant anywhere in the world. Until recently, it was legal to walk around completely naked on the streets, and marijuana has long been legalized (under special licenses).
Long before Obama announced healthcare reform, there was a system of virtually free medical care for residents. The authorities officially declared a zone of tolerance for illegal immigrants and prohibited city police from conducting raids to find and deport them. Several times a year, mass street festivals like the Folsom Street Fair are held, compared to which the gay pride parade is a family event. The annual gay pride parade itself is a citywide event sponsored not only by the mayor's office and city authorities but also by all self-respecting corporations, banks, etc.
The attitude towards gays in San Francisco deserves special mention – it was here, in fact, that the fight for gay rights as such began. Long before it became the norm in most American cities, the attitude towards gays here was already absolutely tolerant. True, it didn't all go smoothly – it was in San Francisco that Harvey Milk, one of the city's first gay politicians, was shot dead along with the liberal mayor for political reasons. That happened way back in 1978. Today, the compact neighborhood of homosexuals – Castro – is one of the wealthiest and most beautiful in the city.
In San Francisco, the influence of Asia is felt more than anywhere else in the USA, since more than a third of the population are ethnic Asians, mostly Chinese, although there are plenty of Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos.
The Chinese began settling California over a century ago, when the state needed cheap labor for building railroads and cities. And although initially the attitude of white Americans towards migrant workers was unfriendly, they were even forced to live in a few specially designated neighborhoods, but thanks to Chinese diligence and ingenuity, the descendants of the first immigrants formed the backbone of the business and political elite of San Francisco.
It is Asian Americans who make up the lion's share of property owners in the city, middle and top-level managers, and more recently the mayor of San Francisco is Chinese. Chinese students – both US-born and foreign – make up half (or more) of the students at prestigious universities near San Francisco such as Berkeley and Stanford. And those first Chinese neighborhoods make up today's Chinatown – one of the most colorful and authentic on the entire North American continent. There, thousands of people still live who barely speak English.
As everywhere in California, the Latin American diaspora is widely represented in San Francisco. These are mostly Mexicans, and many of them are illegal. They form the backbone of the city's labor force. These people can work hard in hot kitchens or on construction sites for 12 hours a day, sending every dollar earned home to Guadalajara or Mexico City. Mexican subculture is especially well represented in the Mission district, where there are many signs in Spanish and you can try real Mexican dishes, not that Tex-Mex that is considered Mexican cuisine worldwide, though it is not.
Naturally, there are plenty of whites and African Americans in the city. Perhaps this is one of the highlights of San Francisco – the absence of a clear ethnic majority, which makes everyone treat each other more tolerantly. There is simply no room for racism here.
This diversity is also expressed in the languages one can hear on the streets and on public transport. Even the driver's license exam can be taken in 31 languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, French, German, Farsi, Hungarian, and, of course, Russian.