Children and adults walk along a San Francisco street. New generations of people have shaped the city’s constant change.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
A group of children, part of the Alpha Generation, sit on a dock at Angel Island.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
A big crowd of young people spilled out of a club in SoMa. Music, noise, fun. High techies high on life. Gen Z living the San Francisco life, on the forefront of a new city.
But not everyone sees it that way. A lot of older San Franciscans think Gen Z is ruining the city. They cite an old cliché: San Franciscans love progress but hate change. It’s a war of the generations.
The idea that generations all had names grows out of the study of demographics and a sort of public me-tooism where these days everybody wants to be part of something.
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Being part of an upbeat generation was also a great sales tool. It was a bit of a drag being a baby boomer, until early in 1963 when the airwaves were full of Joanie Sommers singing a new commercial: “Come Alive! You’re the Pepsi Generation.” It linked youth and lifestyle to a soft drink. It had a huge impact. The website History Oasis claimed “‘The Pepsi Generation’ changed marketing forever.”
It also made it seem that every few years brought in something entirely new.
It all started, you might say, with the Lost Generation, people who came of age in the 1920s, but mostly American writers in Paris, who felt themselves adrift. But unless you were Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein, people in the U.S. during the Roaring Twenties weren’t lost. They acted as if there was no tomorrow. And all that jazz.
Everything changed when the stock market crashed on Black Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929, producing the Great Depression, followed by World War II. People who lived through it became the Greatest Generation. That was the title of a book by journalist Tom Brokaw who called it “the greatest generation any society has ever produced.” That generation has largely faded away, but memories of it have lasted.
Next came the Silent Generation, born 1928 to 1945. They were only children during the Depression and World War II, but millions of the men of that generation served in the Korean War and the long years of the Cold War — but they had no Brokaw to tell their story.
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Next came the celebrated baby boomers, born 1946 to 1964. There were 76 million babies born in that period. The oldest boomer is now 79 and the youngest 61.
After that came Generation X, born 1965 to 1980, then the millennials, born 1981 to 1996, then Gen Z, born 1997 to 2012. They are mostly in their 20s now, though the youngest member of Gen Z is still a kid.
Generation Z sounds like the end of the line, but there’s a Generation Alpha (2010 to 2024) and even a Generation Beta, born in 2025. Two generations in only 14 years? Time flies.
Time does indeed fly in a place like the Bay Area where new generations of people have changed everything. I’ve always respected the Greatest Generation, especially in this part of the world. They went through the social upheavals of the Depression, built the two big bridges that became the symbols of San Francisco, saw the region transformed by the war, by shipyards, by growth and social changes.
Yet the Greatest Generation had its dark side. It accepted the racism of the time. Both the Golden Gate and Bay bridges were built by all-white labor, the police and fire departments had no minority members, and racial covenants in housing were the rule.
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I would also put in a good word for the Silent Generation, which began the movement toward increased civil rights and the role of women in politics. Dianne Feinstein was a member of the cohort the demographers call the Silent Generation. So was Nancy Pelosi. And Harvey Milk, who was hardly silent.
But perhaps the generations with the biggest impact on the region are the baby boomers and Generation X. They spread the region out beyond the core cities — out to Contra Costa County, down to the Santa Clara Valley, up to Sonoma. They designed BART, and they built the San Francisco skyline.
It was the time of the Beat Generation, the Summer of Love, Jefferson Airplane, Anchor Steam beer and Willie Mays.
Those were the years San Francisco became a gay mecca and when changes in federal immigration law brought new people from Asia. Now San Francisco’s population is one-third Asian American, and 33% of Daly City’s people have roots in the Philippines.
It’s a very different city the next generation inherited. A city of single people, a city of transplants, a city with more dogs than children.
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As to the millennials — well, they invented the Internet, didn’t they? Changed the city, changed the region, changed the world.
I’m not so sure about Gen Z. When they’re not out partying and riding around in driverless cars, they’re busy perfecting artificial intelligence, which may transform how we live. They’re young, some still in school.
Just the other day I was in the Marina for lunch and took Muni’s 30-Stockton bus toward home. The bus stopped at Fillmore and Chestnut streets just as school let out. Kids came running — a wave of young people, young teens, all Gen Z, jammed on the bus. My heart sank. A bus full of kids used to mean trouble a generation ago. Fights, threats, pushing and shoving. Sometimes a kid with a knife.
But these Gen Z kids were nice as pie, talking among themselves a thousand miles an hour, checking phones, flirting. No trouble.
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The same thing happened on the 49-Van Ness/Mission. They offered adults a seat. That Gen Z is a new generation. You’d be surprised.