To the esteemed Mr. Jacksich and one anonymous poster misspelled 49'r- IIRC, this is a forum related to railroads of all stripes, not a grab-bag for slanderous political comments of the ill-informed and juvenile varieties. If it matters to any of you scoffers, I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and worked in S.F schools as a teacher, and my late brother waS with SFPD for 8 years, and to my certain knowledge the gentrification and attendant exorbitant housing costs and demographic skewing of the dot.-com era are far worse in their effects than anything you can cite, and all of that without a shred of evidence other than your febrile imagination. Drew, I too am an old acquaintance of the Valley of Heart's Delight (from about 1954), and when it became The Pit (as we called it) it was due to the machinations of petty pols like 'Dutch' Hammann and the Mercury-News/courthouse gang, with nary a Pelosi or any other Democrat in evidence. My Urban Planning professor at SJSU had a fund of stories about the Valley before 1960, and their baleful effect so, "Been there, done that, got the real scoop"…45 years ago!