Where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars

Ariana Bindman remembers the San Francisco that was:

In the mid-2010s, long before ominous phrases like "generative AI" and "the singularity" became part of public lexicon, San Francisco's burgeoning startup scene could be considered quaint. In 2015, some of the most exciting fledgling companies were flower delivery services, T-shirt design websites, and secondhand furniture marketplaces. The CEO of one workplace social media app, cheekily called Slack, even wore a bow tie like a 1930s marionette. While Facebook was already well on its way to becoming a national political scandal — and Uber was slowly muscling its way toward a multibillion-dollar valuation — the tech scene still had at least some quirkiness and diversity amid its relentless expansion.