The book version of that Rise of the Creative Class article I linked to a while back is now in the publication media blitz stage,
writes Dan Lyke, with Salon and SF Gate articles:
[A]s it is, I will merely point out that there happens to be a good, sound reason to embrace the freak show -- and I mean that in the best sense -- that is Bay Area boho culture. According to Richard Florida, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, the very people who like to sit out in the desert next to a hand-painted banner of an alien crouching on a mushroom are the ones we should be thanking for making this place an economic powerhouse.
I choose to construe Laurel Wellman's this place
not as San Francisco specifically, but also these United States as a whole--our social equivalent of unlicensed spectrum is not only the commons we've endangered but the contemporary engine of wealth, and we're all the worse off when we lose it--because I'm like that.
