San Francisco, You’ll Miss Your Tech Bros If They Flee
The last thing the Bay Area needs is for the industry to get fed up and move.
Are these really that obnoxious?
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergSan Francisco recently banned plastic straws. The move won’t make a dent in oceanic plastic pollution, but will certainly inconvenience some disabled people, and will make it harder for certain kinds of ethnic-food businesses — in particular, Taiwanese boba tea cafes — to remain in operation.
In another restrictive move, San Francisco temporarily prohibited electric scooters. For a while, this cheap, convenient, low-energy form of transportation seemed as if it had practically taken over the city; now scooter operators must go through a laborious permitting process. Though stereotyped as a plaything of wealthy tech bros, the scooters are in fact most useful for middle-class Americans.