Somebody must have been breaking out the bubbly early because yesterday's Chron had a big, lead story by Carl Nolte saying that we here in SF are living a "Golden Age." According to him, things are better here than ever and someday, folks will be talking about SF during the aughts as "the good ole days." As Nolte puts it, San Francisco these days "looks like a small polished gem."

Now for those of you thinking "wha?" here are the reasons given:

-My, look at how clean downtown looks
-Look at all those happy, smiling shoppers shopping
-Aren’t those fancy, schmany restaurants yummy?
-And look at all those buildings going up

Last but not least is this:

-Gosh, who doesn't love our "Golden Boy" Mayor?

Mmm...Golden Boy pizza.

There's a bit more to it, actually, then that, mainly about all the new developments going up and how we're changing the nature of the city. Nolte's saying that things are happening and how exciting that is. As the song says, "the future's so bright, we gotta wear shades." And boy, did we hate that song when it came out.

Now before you get all snarky, the story does talk about some of the bad things going on. Like the loss of middle-class families and expensive housing. There's no appropriate response to the loss of the middle-class families, but as for housing, well, that just shows what a neato place we live in because everybody wants to move here! As for the homeless and the dirty streets, yes, it's bad, but you should have seen San Francisco during the Barbary Coast era. Now that was some filth.

Not mentioned in the list of things that makes our city so great is MUNI, parking, potholes galore, and violent crime. We're pretty sure a lot of people in Bayview don't think we're living in the Golden Age right now. In fact, to get an opposing view, we asked Wanda, the local crack head what she thought and her response was, and we quote "mumble...mumble...mumble...accckkk...what you looking at?"

Now we'll refrain from weighing in on what we think of all this. There are some good points made, some not, and Nolte is certainly correct when he says that one of the things that binds everyone in this city together is the lament about how much better things were back in some unspecified day.

So, we throw this out to you to see what you think.