San Francisco Values
Here are some
SAN FRANCISCO VALUES
Our Minium Wage: $9.79 in 2009; $9.92 in 2011; $10.24 in 2012; $10.55 in 2013; $10.74/$11.05 in 2014/15 should have been two dollars greater.
Our Minimum Wage of $12.25 for 2015 should still be two dollars greater.
We banned cigarette/cigar/pipe smoking in the workplace in 1984.
We are the first city in the USA to ban merchants' plastic bags.
We are the first city in the USA to have a Health Care Security Ordinance
that requires medical insurance for employees.
San Francisco best for parks
The Trust For Public Land
ranks San Francisco's public park system as the best in the USA.
We recycle more than 70% of our garbage.
We permit, as of December 1, 2010, toys to be included
with children's meals that include fruits and vegetables,
with beverages lacking excessive amounts of fat and/or sugar,
that have fewer than six hundred calories.
The first-in-the-world two-way Green Wave traffic signals for bicyclists,
on Valencia Street between Sixteenth and Twenty-fifth streets,
became permanent in January of 2011
ending the test begun in 2009.
We are the first city in the USA to have memorials to
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
and the othersexuals murdered by the Germans.
San Francisco Values
by Derek Powazek
[Below edited by TouringSFO from The Original]
| ■ | WE VALUE BRAVERY. In the great westward expansion of the United States of America, the people who made it to San Francisco were the ones who didn’t give up along the way. We stopped here because we ran out of land. |
| ■ | WE VALUE LIBERTY. Most who live here weren’t born here. We came here because we couldn’t be who we were at home. We’ve come from all over to be our true selves. |
| ■ | WE VALUE TOLERANCE. If you value your own liberty, you have to allow everyone else the same privilege … celebrate the diversity. |
| ■ | WE VALUE OPPORTUNITY. San Francisco’s first boom was when gold was discovered … We find new opportunities and embrace them with gusto. |
| ■ | WE VALUE REINVENTION. In 1906, after The City shook and burned, we rebuilt. The phoenix is on our flag. |
| ■ | WE VALUE PERSERVERENCE. It’s expensive, foggy and cold in the summer, and Earth occasionally tries to swallow us. We’re here because we want to be. |
| ■ | WE VALUE LOVE. The summer of love happened here. Eureka Valley's Castro Neighborhood is here. The first of many equal marriages happened here. |
| ■ | WE VALUE GOOD COFFEE. I’d sleep more if I lived someplace else, but I’d live less. |
| ■ | WE VALUE COMMUNITY. I lived elsewhere for years and never knew my neighbors’ names. But I’ve always known my neighbors here. When a friend was walking our dogs a dozen people stopped to ask where we were. |
| ■ | WE VALUE IDEALISM. Sometimes our politicians make news because they’re ahead of their time, sometimes it’s because they’re just odd. But we believe in things and that’s good. |
I’m saddened when San Francisco values are used as political code for unAmerican values. I believe San Francisco values are the best American values: bravery, liberty, tolerance, and opportunity. Immigrants to San Francisco risked everything to live in a place where they could be free. I see people who decided, with a mix of idealism and insanity, that they could create a more perfect union that values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
San Francisco values are American values.
Do you still want to mock San Francisco values?
NATION'S WEALTH CENTERS
Ranks of Wealth of US towns with populations greater than 300,000:
1. SAN FRANCISCO
31. San José – 35. Washington – 43. Seattle – 52. Honolulu
60. New York — 62. Los Angeles — 152. Chicago
Quick Facts from the 2010 Census
Click for some other San Francisco Values.
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