Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

The more I look at the London Tech boom the more I think ‘Bay Area, 1993’ #sex #drink #tech #coding

Evidence:

…etc, etc; be honest, all the Silicon Fen, Silicon Glen, M4 Corridor bullshit of the 90s and Naughties was just preamble to this, propped up by the DotCom boom and beholden to the power that was the Valley, far away.

We worked for the companies but we had to fight to find ways to connect with other humans in the evenings.

It was a challenge.

The thing is: developers, even/especially hipster wannabe-developers, want to work, drink, pose, party and get laid – and rural Berkshire, Cambridge and Linlithgow are small fry compared to the alcohol and flesh that is available within walking distance of Shoreditch. The whole point of Palo Alto was that you could wake up to cafe-culture breakfast, hire new staff from the Stanford and Berkeley graduate population, go to a gig, be at a libertine mini-orgy in a flat in the Haight one evening and still back in your cubicle (with what then passed for high-speed internet access) the next day at 0730* for global conference calls.

Compare this to Scotland and London’s win is immediately apparent; Edinburgh is beautiful and bijoux but it lacks scale – although the number of extramaritals which went down at the Champany would be truly staggering if totted up.

And your PhD girlfriend in Cambridge? She was really hard to maintain a relationship with from 100 miles away, M11 notwithstanding.

So what does this mean for the Government’s plan/hope/arse-covering maneuverer, to chivvy the tech sector over to Stratford when the Olympics is gone?

Well, they might survive, it might work, but they can’t do like the City and expect everyone to get drunk and evacuate the area – they will have to provide nightlife and clubs and cool renovations and grimy cafes and places to park your fixies … or a really rapid way to get to the same.

Some things you can’t just transplant.

—
* Californians often kept obscenely early schedules. Must have been the sunshine.

⊞

Comments

5 responses to “The more I look at the London Tech boom the more I think ‘Bay Area, 1993’ #sex #drink #tech #coding”

  1. alecm

    in a word: “sushi”

    Reply
  2. Dave Walker

    “* Californians often kept obscenely early schedules. Must have been the sunshine.”

    I got a different view, the first time I went over there; at breakfast (jetlag had me up over an hour before they started serving), the early-shift chef and I got chatting about the traffic jams on the Bay Bridge, showing on the restaurant’s TV. This was at about 04:30.

    He told me “Those guys are going to be late for work; they’ve got another hour”.

    I said “Really? They have to be in the office at 05:30?”

    He said “Yup, that’s when Wall Street opens”.

    This wasn’t my first culture shock of the day (that involved light switches being the opposite way around to UK ones), but I wasn’t used to the concept of life in a country spanning multiple time zones…

    Reply
  3. Dave Walker

    Ah, the perpetual London problem; quality of life (which is why I’m amazed the place hasn’t had a property price implosion and mass exodus – maybe after many have discovered the joys of telecommuting in the next few weeks…).

    If it wasn’t for involvement with some Very Nice People here in the UK, I’d move to Palo Alto in the blink of an eye. I’m also kinda nostalgic about Cambridge, although I recognise that the likely necessity of a regular commute into London would kill me.

    London, though – I’d have to be dragged there, kicking and screaming.

    Reply
  4. Michael Jennings

    I made the mistake the other way round once: I arranged to meet someone at the San Francisco office of the bank I worked for at an early evening time at which everyone would still be at work in most places. However, in San Francisco everyone went home at about 4pm, due to the fact that they started at 5am.

    Notice also that the people arriving on the red carpet for the Oscar ceremony are doing so at something like 4pm local time, and the poor starlet who announces the nominations a month earlier has to do so at 5.30am so that they can go out live on Breakfast television on the east coast.

    Reply
  5. Dave Walker

    “they will have to provide nightlife and clubs and cool renovations and grimy cafes and places to park your fixies … or a really rapid way to get to the same.”

    Having spent 3 days in London earlier this week, and been able to wring my shirt out twice on each of those days, that “really rapid way to get to the same” must be air-conditioned. Way back in the mists of 1995, I’m sure I remember someone saying that the Tube would get aircon in time for the Olympics; I don’t know whether this fell by the wayside in the Unbelievably Expanding Olympic Budget, or whether it’s just been postponed.

    As well as “somewhere to park a fixie”, there’s also a pressing need for “somewhere to park a decent car, where there is very low risk of it being vandalised”. In these happily post-Ken days, I hope this isn’t ignored.

    Reply

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