Cruise down Middlefield past Marsh and somewhere around 5th you'll understand. There are two very different groups of people living very close together.
In the daytime, workers motor towards the money to toil in the plutocrats' homes and gardens. A lot of them are illegal immigrants driving marginal toyota pickups overloaded with tools and co-workers.
Nighttime brings-out the drunkards and the criminals. The police ward off the latter and move the former back into RWC.
These folks are just like you coming to Sand Hill to pitch your startup: they want money & this is where it's at. They're the same in that some will toil & some will grift. They're different in that the deviant poor are more likely to turn to violence and theft, while the psychopathic want-to-be-rich become consultants at Accenture or KPMG.
The rich & the poor look & behave differently. A battered PU stands-out as much as an Athertonian's Fisker just 2 miles down the street the "wrong" way.
They need to be protected from one another. Atherton is way too nice to be real, yet it exists, so it has to be buffered. That requires vigilance. Bay Aryans have delicate sensibilities around inegalitarianism; i.e., you need good police who will go about the business w/o putting it on display.
Same thing in Palo Alto. It has a stark socio-economic border with East Palo alto that requires sophisticated social policing. As a Palo Alto resident (or high-tech gastarbeiter) you feel safe and secure in a shared culture of prosperity. Yet (underreported) property crime and (unreported) deportations tell a different story: safety isn't a given, it's provided by vigilant, sophisticated police & enabled by a populace willingly suspending disbelief.
Catch a glimpse by spending your lunch at the transit center or your evening smoking in any alley off of University. People-watching at the PA Caltrain socio-economic nexus radically changed my "feel" of PA.
It's hard to overstate the difference between (poor parts of) RWC & Atherton, EPA & PA, or Belle Haven/Ravenswood & Menlo Park. If you're local, it's well worth driving (or better biking) from one to another to get the sense: incredibly, unbelievably nice on the one hand; fucking shit awful on the other. My gut says: there's something really wrong with this. But my head can't figure-out what to do about it.
In the daytime, workers motor towards the money to toil in the plutocrats' homes and gardens. A lot of them are illegal immigrants driving marginal toyota pickups overloaded with tools and co-workers.
Nighttime brings-out the drunkards and the criminals. The police ward off the latter and move the former back into RWC.
These folks are just like you coming to Sand Hill to pitch your startup: they want money & this is where it's at. They're the same in that some will toil & some will grift. They're different in that the deviant poor are more likely to turn to violence and theft, while the psychopathic want-to-be-rich become consultants at Accenture or KPMG.
The rich & the poor look & behave differently. A battered PU stands-out as much as an Athertonian's Fisker just 2 miles down the street the "wrong" way.
They need to be protected from one another. Atherton is way too nice to be real, yet it exists, so it has to be buffered. That requires vigilance. Bay Aryans have delicate sensibilities around inegalitarianism; i.e., you need good police who will go about the business w/o putting it on display.
Same thing in Palo Alto. It has a stark socio-economic border with East Palo alto that requires sophisticated social policing. As a Palo Alto resident (or high-tech gastarbeiter) you feel safe and secure in a shared culture of prosperity. Yet (underreported) property crime and (unreported) deportations tell a different story: safety isn't a given, it's provided by vigilant, sophisticated police & enabled by a populace willingly suspending disbelief.
Catch a glimpse by spending your lunch at the transit center or your evening smoking in any alley off of University. People-watching at the PA Caltrain socio-economic nexus radically changed my "feel" of PA.
It's hard to overstate the difference between (poor parts of) RWC & Atherton, EPA & PA, or Belle Haven/Ravenswood & Menlo Park. If you're local, it's well worth driving (or better biking) from one to another to get the sense: incredibly, unbelievably nice on the one hand; fucking shit awful on the other. My gut says: there's something really wrong with this. But my head can't figure-out what to do about it.