Silicon City

by Cary McClelland

  During this period, there were many “small world” moments. One entrepreneur I met at the start-up weekend in Egypt, he was nineteen at the time. He had way too much swagger for somebody his age. A year and a half later, I get a call from one of my CEOs at a hot venture-backed stealth start-up in the Valley. And he’s like, “We finally found our guy.”

  I said, “Sure, tell me about him.”

  And he’s like, “Oh, he’s from Egypt, and he said he met you at this event there years ago. He remembered your conversation.” Turns out the same kid had managed to find his way out to the Bay Area, within six months had this place completely wired, and was now debating whether he should take this job at this cool start-up or start his own. Ultimately, he decided to start his own. And I wrote him a check.

  But more importantly, you felt like these conversations were having a real impact on people. You connected to actually making a difference in someone’s life. I came back from trips, and I was like, What is the point of having all these resources—being alive when we are, where we are—if we’re not doing something that matters? So that took me down this whole new path.

  I started taking a species-level view on a lot of things. (You can only do that if you’re in certain places in Maslow’s hierarchy.) And there are a lot of things that are happening in the Valley that feel like they will have species-level implications: from a health perspective, from a genome perspective, in research labs, changing how we work, think, move, how long we live.

  I was spending time with two friends of mine, one who was in my freshman dorm at Stanford—we had all been thinking about this. What are the products and services that feel like they’re actually additive, that are environmentally friendly, and what are business models that are aligned with these values? How do we get the smartest people—the same thinking that made Airbnb and Lyft—working on the most important problems?

  My thesis used to be, Just bet on good people, and everything else works itself out. But I started thinking, It’s not just about good people, we also gotta think about the real values behind what they want to do. And guess what? When you get the world’s best people working on really meaningful problems, pretty amazing things happen.

  We met Ben Rattray, a guy who was very much focused on citizen engagement as today’s single biggest challenge for democracy to function: How do we build an informed populace that can actually have an impact from the ground up on whatever issues that they care about? That’s what he wanted to make.

  We raised a fund to invest in his company. It took a few weeks. Came back and said, “Okay, here’s your check.” We were the first institutional investors alongside Pierre Omidyar’s fund to support Change.org.

  And word got around.

  We didn’t know how many more companies like this there might be. But it turns out, there were a lot. The next thing I know, lots of other people are talking, “Hey, we’ve heard about you guys and what you’ve done.”

  And on the other side, we didn’t know how much money would be available for these kinds of things. But it turns out some of the biggest, deepest, well-known pockets in the world—some pretty awesome people—had gone through their own personal evolution.

  So fast-forward to today. We’ve deployed tens of millions of dollars in a portfolio of companies run by some of the best people in the world, animated by values, tackling problems worthy of their lives. And we’re seeing it in the returns. When you marry all those things together, you don’t get a handicapped company or a “social venture.” You get the potential for the best companies in the world.

  And that’s what we’re on a mission to prove now. That there’s no reason that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can work on the biggest problems in the world, and not just build businesses but, in fact, be conscious world leaders too.

  In Silicon Valley, you gotta have one example of something that works, and then the momentum builds. At this point, we have lots of companies that are executing this way and we think are going to be successful—if they’re not successful already. They employ a lot of people, and they train a lot of people. Those alumni are going to go and start their own companies—up the game for everyone. That’s how this starts.

  We are helping build the future not just for our families, or local communities, but often the world. So I feel a big responsibility to do it right. If you think the inequities are bad now, they can get drastically worse. So the need for responsible stewardship is greater than ever. And so much is contingent on whether we do it right or not.

  There are no silver-bullet answers. Better economic opportunity, better mobilization of local resources, better housing, justice. Frankly, these are not problems that the Valley is good at solving. At least historically, it hasn’t been. The market has failed, our public institutions have failed. And people have a right to be angry.

  But there is an awakening of consciousness that’s happening. For me, it’s about how do we get resources into the people’s hands who are going after meaningful problems. And let them experiment and figure some of these things out. Let them come up with the models for the future, new institutions, new tools. Help them build cultures around that kind of thinking, and that kind of empathy, and hold them accountable.

  And let’s see—I bet we can take back capitalism and remake it in our image.

  EDWIN LINDO (CONT’D)

  In April 2016, two officers fired seven bullets, killing a forty-five-year-old homeless man named Luis Góngora after he rushed at them with a knife. By many counts, this was the twelfth death in two years that resulted from the San Francisco Police’s excessive use of force—deaths that may have been avoided had officers followed proper protocol, deescalated the situation, or just been less quick to pull the trigger. For all its liberal bona fides, San Francisco was part of a national epidemic of police violence against minority communities. In response to the killings, Edwin Lindo and four others began a hunger strike outside the Mission Police Station, calling for the resignation of police chief Greg Suhr and demanding widespread reform. And stories about protests in San Francisco, once again, traveled nationwide.

  We just got a new name. “The Frisco Five.” We love the name. It’s only white people that hate the name Frisco. Black and brown people, we love it. The Frisco Low Riders were the original low riders.

  We’re on day thirteen. For me, day fourteen—I stopped eating the day before. We came here with five chairs. I haven’t changed or showered. And all of this was donated to us. All of it. These tents were donated, chairs were donated, umbrellas because the first night it rained and our bodies were soaked, all we had were our blankets to cover us.

  It’s a response to a breaking point. Continuing seeing black and brown people taken indiscriminately—the value of the human body that has melanin so diminished—relatives and friends who live around the corner from me—holding the hands of the parents, knowing they will never see their son again. It could have been me. It could’ve been my daughter.

  All in the “most progressive city in the country.” Progressivism is a veil, and we’re trying to rip that veil apart. How can you be progressive and have 25 percent unemployment in the Mission for people of color? The irony is we are going hungry in a city that has starved our community for decades.

  We’re taking back the power of our humanity, the value of our bodies. We will no longer allow you to destroy our bodies; we’re doing it ourselves. And all of a sudden the gun is meaningless, the policies are meaningless, because we’re saying, You don’t have the power to hurt us.

  We’ve had thousands of people. Yeah, thousands of people come here every single day. Bringing us broth. Books. Talking to us. People are honking every minute. We have second graders writing us letters of support. We have college students who are sleeping here at night to watch over us. The homeless have stayed with us. Tech workers have sat down with us and said, “What do I need to do to let colleagues know what’s happening? Because I know they will get behind you.” All kinds.
They’ve hung out, they’ve come, they’ve gone. This is community living. This is a community space.

  Al Jazeera did a video. It has 1.2 million views. Lebanon did a piece on this, Egypt, Rome, Tokyo. The biggest newspaper in France. I mean, I got a text message from someone in South Africa, saying, “We stand in solidarity with you.” Harvard Law School had a contingent with sign that said, WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE FRISCO 5. University of Washington, the law school I went to, the dean wrote a letter to Ed Lee, saying, “You will not let an alum of mine die, you need to fire Chief Suhr.” She sent an email to the entire student body, saying, “This is the type of leadership we need in our country. This is not people sitting on the street for a publicity stunt. This is shaking the consciousness, people willing to put their lives on the line for justice.” Shaun King sent me a message and said, “Brother, you are our heroes.” And I don’t know what that means—I haven’t left this block in thirteen days.

  My dad . . . at first, he was . . . he was supportive—just on principle . . . it’s his son doing it. Then, we got into day four and five, and he got scared. I had passed out and collapsed. My blood sugar went down. I think it was the shock. Ambulance came . . . and my dad’s like, “You gotta go. I’m going to take you now.”

  But I said, “No, no.”

  “Son, this guy, this mayor will let you die here.”

  And, I said, “Dad, we have it, we have him.”

  Then, on day nine, he came back, and he said, “Son, I will be here every night. I had a revelation. You’re cleansing this city by cleansing your body. ’Cause what’s happening in this city. See, the people that are running this city are committing genocide.” He meant the gentrification and displacement, the bad education system, and the killing and imprisoning of people. And he said, “So it took a while but I understand what you’re doing. There’s going to be some pain because these people, you’ve called their bluff.”

  This has become a spiritual journey. Last night, I didn’t feel the concrete was below me. I felt like someone was holding me up. Where I walk, I don’t feel the earth, I feel like I’m floating. I’ve got to the point where I’ve realized that the purpose of our bodies is to be the vessel to carry our minds. I’ll be honest, your senses get heightened, and I feel people now. I see through people—their energy, that’s what I see now—I see their heart.

  I meditate a lot. Before, I’d have all these thoughts running, and the first part of the meditation is to just clear my mind. I don’t have that anymore. I close my eyes, and I get to this point of connection, and it’s . . . it’s euphoric. And this process showed me that we live in a gluttonous world. Everything we do is excess. This process removes all the toxins. I haven’t felt hunger in four days. My body’s weak. And it puts the world in perspective. Choosing hunger is a privilege, a blessing, because it means I had something to eat before. There are people on the street that are in this state every day.

  Things were going to stay the same—in this city, in this country—unless we shook up the consciousness. I think I’m put on this earth to make people feel uncomfortable. Because when people are uncomfortable, that’s when they change.

  Democracy is not stale, it is a living thing. It has to innovate. Governance has to innovate. Policing, schools, structures, systems have to innovate.

  People need to know that this city is back to the people. People need to know that they can make an impact. People need to know that they can run this city and hold elected officials accountable. The city, the country, needs to know that the people can win. We’re going to show the world a different way.

  That’s why this all had to come back to where it started. To the Bay Area. Where the Black Panthers formed. Where the Brown Berets were formed. To Cesar Chavez, to Harvey Milk. To the protesters that got us these public spaces and these parks and fought for ethnic studies at SF State. To the resistance, the culture that people were attracted to.

  The city is something special. It raises people who seek justice. It provides you a sixth sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. And there aren’t many cities like that.

  * A campy musical revue that has performed in North Beach for more than twenty-five years.

  † A style of midcentury-modern house ubiquitous in Northern California.

  CODA

  DAN ZELINSKY

  He slides up on roller skates, a wrench in one hand, the other stretched out for a handshake. We’re standing in a warehouse at the end of a pier at Fisherman’s Wharf. Outside, there is a line of old seafood haunts, each with starched tablecloths in back, fried clams and shrimp out front. Inside the warehouse, we are surrounded by old coin-operated arcade machines: player pianos, games of strength and skill, mechanical fortune-tellers, fantastical diorama—all of which come to life for only a quarter. We meet next to a machine called Cactus Gulch, where the Old West is frozen behind glass until someone drops a coin in the slot.

  It was in my basement growing up as a kid. My dad always had antique coin-op all around. It was his passion. He just loved antique machines that would do incredible things when you dropped in a coin.

  I was always tinkering with my dad. While he was tinkering, I was, I guess, un-tinkering, taking things apart. Dad got pretty good at putting things back together. And I never really paid much attention until I started working at one of my dad’s arcades—that was in 1972.

  Eventually all the employees starting retiring and passing away, guys that my dad hired to do all the repairs. And then I noticed I had a lot of broken stuff. It got to the point where if I didn’t know how to keep this stuff working, none of it’s gonna work.

  [He looks around, pats down his jean pockets.] Let’s talk about how easy it is to lose a tool when you haven’t taken one step in any direction. You put it down and then you go to pick it up, it’s not there! I drive myself crazy.

  Now my whole thing is make ’em work like they originally did. So I buy a lot of original parts. And battle, battle, battle.

  I’m still here, I’m happy. I think it’s been sixteen years, every day. I’m set in my ways, and my course is really dedicated to keeping old-school things up and running. Modern day has nothing to do with the old school, so I’m kind of alone doing this and trying to present it to whoever happens to meander in.

  [He points to an mechanical arm-wrestling machine called the Golden Arm.] This one wins a lot. You get two plays, so you can hurt yourself twice for only a quarter.

  The city is changing—whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent. I’m getting older. I’ve traveled, but I’m comfortable here. I don’t really have a reason to live somewhere else. And this is a major sanctuary, so it’s my passion. I’m just trying to keep machines working every day and make as many people as happy as I can, because that’s what’s happening to me.

  Tech is a fad that will wear out, and everything makes a comeback in time. That’s why antiques are sought after. So let them play with their new toys, let them get old and boring. Kids that are into their modern games come in here and they’re intrigued by it, because they actually get to interact with something mechanical. Not a common event anymore.

  My favorite part of the collection is the music. There’s great music here. Best way to start if you’re gonna learn how to play the piano, just listening and watching the keyboards go. That’s how I learned. I can now play most things by ear, and I play a lot of ragtime.

  [He points across the room.] See the three or four people standing there? They’re having a blast! They’re enjoying that piano for one quarter. That’s pretty damn cool.

  Admission is free. The doors aren’t closed to anybody. There’s a lot of weird people when you’re open to the public. Oh my God! But I find that what they really want to do is enjoy any moment of their day, as much as anybody else. They come in here after panhandling sometimes, and they get to play the machines that they grew up with. They’re having a blast. I’m not taking that away from them, no way.

  People walk in here and all of a sudde
n the nostalgia nerve gets struck. Because they grew up with this stuff as kids. They were playing it with their grandparents, or their parents, so the history is kept alive. They are just like kids again. I mean, nostalgia is a real powerful drug.

  It’s crazy. This lady came in, my age, really old. She comes in with her daughter and she remembers Laughing Sal from Playland. And she says, “I’ve got to play this for you!” Her daughter is maybe six. “This is the best thing from my childhood. This is the best!”

  And the daughter is just all excited. She starts Laughing Sal, and her kid is terrified. She hides behind her mom, and she’s yelling, “Mom! Are you sure this is fun? Let’s go!” And her mom is going, “Yeah! This is great! Isn’t this great?” She goes, “No! Mom, let’s go home!”

  So times may have changed, but that machine has terrified kids for decades.

  Acknowledgments

  This project grew from my own community. It began as part of my graduate studies at Stanford University. My thanks to so many colleagues and mentors who helped nurture the seed in its early days: Larry Marshall, Joan Petersilia, Michelle Anderson, Norman Spaulding, Jan Martinez, and Cathy Glaze. Thanks also to Anna Nelson and Claudia Dreifus for teaching me to love the interviews.

  Then it was raised by friends: especially Richard, whose faith in the project was blind and steady. My gratitude to Ahmad, Alexandra and Murphy, Alexis and Anna, Ares, Arwen, Barry, Basho, Ben, Bill, Brett, Brücius, Cameron and Tatiana, Cheryl, Christian, Christen and Mark, Curtis, Daniel, David, Dean and Clary, Deborah, Deirdre, Elis, Eliza, Emily and Mark, Eric, Fred, Gary, Gerald, Greg, Heather and Andrew, James, Jamie, Jess, Jesse and Gavri, Jim and Shirley, Joe, John, Joy, Kahlil and Ashley, Kari, Kat, Kate and Tom, Kelsey, Kim and Brian, Kristen, Laurel, Leez, Leslie and Kyndall, Linda, Liz, Lorenzo, Lucia, Matt, Marijeta, Mark, Marta, Michael, Min, Nadia, Nigel, Nikki and Gab, Omid, Paul, Pete, Rachel, Reihan, Sadia and Andreas, Sam, Sara and Mike, Sarah and Roy, Stephen, Teresa, Troy, Victoria, Veronica, and Wes for inspiring me along; Aysha, Cat, David, Karin, Matt, Megan, Rafay, and Susan for lending fresh eyes; and Alex, Bridget, Marilyn, Richard, and Rob for giving me somewhere to call home in San Francisco once I had regrettably moved away. I feel very lucky to have worked with Kristina at Wylie and Matt and Remy at Norton, all of whose support and insight refined this book more than I could ever have done alone.