It's not SF but I did leave Seattle because of tech employees coming in. They destroyed my beloved city of excellent, cheap music played out of our parents' basements and in any of the bars on Capitol Hill and replaced it with shining citadels of emptiness. Seattle was a bright little miracle before Amazon set itself down right in the middle and disgorged its peoples flown in from far and wide.
The knock-on effects of Amazon moving in included a flurry of real estate speculation which directly led to the closing of a restaurant that had been continuously operating for over a decade and close family losing their job there they had worked since its beginning.
I firmly lay the blame of this wanton appropriation at the hands of the tech companies. Amazon didn't need to move directly into the heart of Seattle: they could have done as Microsoft and moved next door to Redmond. But hey, eff the residents who grew up there, right?
I have a great little story of a waiter who had lived in his apartment in the Belltown neighborhood for many years: somebody had come in to look at apartments for all the new tech hires. Person is getting the tour of a unit, pauses to look around at all the other units, "Great, we'll take it!" It was every unit in the building including the occupied. Waiter got the boot.
Seattle had and continues to hold onto the cultural evil of the "Seattle Freeze" but I sure do miss the music and to hear the punky cries of Alice Glass: "Down, down, cities fall down on me."
