A 23-year-old woman who relocated here in October recently put it bluntly: she's been trying to form deep connections and it's been really hard. Her experience isn't unique — it's practically a rite of passage. The responses she got ranged from genuinely helpful to darkly funny. As one local put it, people here are too busy "working on their AI native B2B SaaS startup" to grab a coffee.

There's a structural problem here that nobody in City Hall wants to talk about, mostly because it's partly their fault. When your cost of living is so absurd that residents are working multiple jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, social life becomes a luxury good. As one Bay Area resident noted, "We're too busy working 2-3 jobs just to survive." Hard to build a friend group when your schedule is dictated by survival math.

San Francisco spends roughly $14 billion annually — a budget larger than some countries' GDP — and yet the city offers shockingly little in the way of accessible, affordable community infrastructure for young people who aren't plugged into tech money. Our parks are hit-or-miss on safety, our public spaces are poorly maintained, and our community centers are an afterthought. The city talks a big game about equity and belonging but invests almost nothing in the connective tissue that actually makes neighborhoods feel like home.

The advice that resonated most came from people who'd figured it out on their own: join a subculture. Bouldering gyms, local music scenes, pickleball courts, partner acrobatics — the common thread is recurring contact. One resident explained that "Bay Area flakiness is real," but if people know they'll see you regularly in one place, friendships form more naturally.

That's solid wisdom, but it shouldn't require a workaround. A city this expensive, this highly taxed, and this aggressively progressive should be able to foster basic human connection. Instead, we get lonely newcomers posting into the void, hoping strangers will DM them.

Maybe the $14 billion budget could carve out a little room for that.