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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael When a new store opens in San Francisco, for example, one that sells ice cream, you usually can't enter it during the first year of operation due to overcrowding. What I call "Internet lemmings" swarm around such stores like moths, and even if the line goes around the block, the millennial fool will still join the end of it. What's an hour wasted in such a meaningless existence as that of a hipster in San Francisco!
The store "Smitten Ice Cream" on Valencia Street around the corner from us had a similar experience. Initially, the ice cream shop was part of a mobile food truck caravan, then it moved into a store on the hipster strip, where it became so popular that you couldn't get in. But now, in about its second year of operation, the hipster crowd has moved on to newer ice cream shops, and you can simply walk into Smitten, order ice cream, pay right away, and start enjoying it within 5 minutes. The ice cream vendors there make the ice cream fresh when you order it, using dangerously hissing machines that, I believe, use liquid nitrogen or some other devilish substance to produce a few scoops of ice cream. The waffles also taste very good, which is why we treat ourselves to a portion every now and then.
The only bitter aftertaste, however, is the price, as a portion (waffle and a decent scoop) costs $7. Maybe I'm really getting old, but in my youth, a portion of waffle ice cream cost first 10 pfennigs, then 20, and today maybe one or two euros. In San Francisco, however, all popular shops now charge fantasy prices. Officially, the inflation rate is only a few percent per year, but anyone living here can tell you that the prices for everyday goods have certainly doubled, if not tripled, in the last 10 years. The salaries of high earners have also risen accordingly, so no one complains.
I only feel sorry for the tourists who come from Germany with their saved-up Euros, rubbing their eyes in amazement when they realize what crazy prices we pay for things that one could get in Europe at a fraction of the cost in similar quality. Well, the market will, as always, sort it out; eventually, every excess normalizes, and maybe then the hipster caravan will simply move elsewhere, and San Francisco will return to the sleepy hippie nest it once was. However, it is historically documented that such transformations can take decades, so I wouldn't speculate on it happening in the short term.
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