As I walk into the homey Inner Richmond apartment of Vetiver singer Andy Cabic three days before Christmas, the
first thing I notice are the boxes lining the walls — an all too familiar sight in San Francisco these days. When asked
about the changes the city has faced over the last five or so years, Cabic sighs and looks out the kitchen window
toward the Presidio, a view that he soon would no longer be able to enjoy. “Artists would not be able to live here if it
wasn’t for rent control,” he says. By New Year’s Eve, his apartment building will change ownership and Cabic will be
forced to say goodbye to the railroad-style apartment where he and his partner Alissa have lived for more than a
decade. Everything was still uncertain when I spoke with him, echoing a refrain that the displaced San Francisco
band Two Gallants used as the title of their 2015 piano ballad, “There’s So Much I Don’t Know.”
It’s easy to focus on how the city has changed (simply walk down Valencia Street in the Mission, which is tree-lined
and crowded with wine bars), but hyper-gentrification has manifested itself in more subtle ways, biting deep into the
psyches of many musicians who once lived there.
“It makes me really sad and, honestly, I try not to think about it because I love it so much,” says singer-songwriter
Jessica Pratt, who relocated to San Francisco from Redding, California, when she was 18 years old. “It’s my home
and it always will be, but I feel like I got kicked out.” She’s one of many musicians who’ve departed San Francisco for
Los Angeles, nearly 400 miles down the long and lonesome Highway 5.
