09
February
2006
|
16:45 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Oh dear . . .

. . . the transparancy of the past


This is an excellent example of why you should not burn your bridges when you leave town. They will come back and bite you . . . (mashup metaphor #14).

This is an extract from Peter Hartlaub of the SF Chronicle's recent hagiography of Nick Denton a former FT colleague, about Mr Denton's return to San Francisco with his blog site Valleywag.


I don't think it was very fair of Mr Hartlaub to include that quote from Nick just before he left town. I would never have revealed it. That was private conversation.


Unfortunately, I remember Nick was very passionate on the subject of San Francisco for a while, and it crept into his writing....


From the Peter Hartlaub article in the Tuesday Datebook section of the SF Chronicle:


...read a piece Denton wrote for Management Today in March 2002, where he lays out what he hates about the Bay Area -- taking San Francisco down in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood evisceration.

"The city is entirely lacking in glamour," Denton wrote. "The old money is inbred, and the new money is too geeky. The pretty people are in Los Angeles or Miami; the intellectuals are in New York; and the carpetbaggers left as quickly as they came. San Francisco's Clift must be the only Ian Schrager hotel where visitors pitch up with their tradeshow tote bags."


It's a bit of an awkward situation, because whatever Denton said about Bay Area residents in the past, the future of the site will rely upon their help.


"We're totally dependent of tips." Denton says. "The truth is, I'm in New York and Nick's new to San Francisco -- we know nothing."


Nick, I think that was very unfair of Peter Hartlaub to try and inject some controversy into an otherwise gushing piece. There should be a statute of limitations on asinine comments--gods knows we all could do with one.