When I lived in San Francisco, backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car. High-school students might carry a backpack, college students might carry a backpack, people on the bus might carry a backpack, but mostly not professionals who drove to work.

Maybe that's changed, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwWpqsI_3s purports to be from 02022, and in its first minute, I count 17 pedestrians of whom 4 are wearing backpacks. So maybe backpacks are mainstream in SF now.

Maybe it's just startup life, but living in SF during the 2010s decade, I didn't know many people who drove to work. Who wants to sit in traffic and then pay like $300 a month in parking fees when you can sit in traffic on MUNI vehicles for much less, while doing something useful?

Even people who lived in the farther-out suburbs usually drove to BART.

Even if it's marginalized, you can still just use it. I think I used to think that way in high school, but it's hard for me to understand functioning adults avoiding a type of bag, otherwise useful, because it's associated with being poor.

> backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car.

The majority of all commuters in SF do not commute by car: https://www.sf.gov/data--vision-zero-benchmarking-commute-me...

This has been true for at least a decade. The trend, even ignoring COVID, is that a decreasing proportion do so.

Isn’t looking poor a good strategy for being an unattractive target for theft?

>When I lived in San Francisco, backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car. High-school students might carry a backpack, college students might carry a backpack, people on the bus might carry a backpack, but mostly not professionals who drove to work.

Huh? By extension you seem to be implying anyone who doesn't drive to work is not a "professional", which is bananas.

Smart people took Caltrain, BART, or a company sponsored gentrification shuttle into work and reclaimed the time they'd spend driving to "work". (AKA shitpost -- I noticed a remarkable uptick in trolling during commute hours back in the days I lived in the bay during rush hour.)

Anyways, no, carrying a backpack is not a sign someone is "poor" in SF, or anywhere else -- it's usually a sign they value their back.

Some folks wear messenger bags instead, but those were usually bicyclists.

In this millennium humans have not yet begun using five digit years. Otherwise, nice job covering your time travelling tracks.

How long ago was that? I’m 40, grew up in the SF Bay Area, and never had that impression.

I see people who look like hedge fund managers wearing backpacks (obviously not Jansport). VCs and founders certainly do. Go on Bart- most people have a backpack. Nothing to do with whether you own a car. Driving to and/or parking in the city is a nightmare.

I'm in the suburban Seattle area, and many, many adult professionals carry a backpack...even when they commute a few miles by car and walk 100 feet into their offices.

What is 02202? A postal code?