You won’t get one from me. I’ve seen variations on this SF v NY, Stanford v New Jersey, West Coast v East Coast, theme a few times over the years. And while I spent 8 great years in the Bay Area, I can’t really speak much to NYC’s tech scene. Besides, I just love big cities in general, so I take all of these harangues as the venting of a singular individual with a decidedly narrow viewpoint.
But every now and then you have to admire the overall writing quality of an unhinged rant. Witness Antonio Garcia-Marquez just unloading on New York:
New York will never be more than a tech sideshow.
Thinking the New York tech scene will ever equal Silicon Valley is as foolish as thinking San Francisco’s puny theater district will one day take on Broadway. Both Silicon Valley and Broadway are unique products of the cities that spawned them, and every attempt to create a Silicon Alley/Silicon Sentier/Skolkovo/whatever in various parts of the world have failed. So far, no one’s managed to do it, and New York sure as hell won’t either.
…
In the Bay Area, you drive through Atherton or Woodside and see the mansions that Netscape, Apple, and Oracle built. On the Upper East Side you see houses built thanks to the depredations of previous generations, and owned by the predators of today (probably their children).
In the Bay Area, new money is better than old. In New York, it’s precisely the opposite. The mythology is all wrong.
I suspect Garcia-Marquez was mostly yanking chains, but the tone is just smirkingly self-righteous enough to make you nod your head occasionally, even though you don’t believe a word of his BS. And it’ll squeeze a chuckle or two out of you.
Not quite a Shivers class rant, but I found it quite entertaining.