Garry Tan will never have a skyscraper.
James Lick is probably one of the most well-known names in the Bay Area. He had landed in Yerba Buena several days before Sam Brannan stepped off the ferry and announced he was laden with bags of gold from the American River. He landed in San Francisco with his piano-making tools, thirty thousand dollars in gold, and six hundred pounds of chocolate. He started buying up all the land as soon as he heard, and set up shop at the corner of Pacific and Montgomery building pianos. At some point, he tried out gold mining but quickly realized that the real money was in real estate. He was a pioneer and a weird one. He didn’t care much about his appearance and made an imprint on San Francisco as one of its founding fathers. He’s the OG San Francisco landlord. He has buildings named after him. He has OBSERVATORIES named after him. Without him, we would not have Ghiradelli chocolate.
This is completely unlike anything that Garry Tan has ever done.
Mr. Lick made a bundle of money even after the gold petered out. When the banks moved in to take advantage of the people who had overextended themselves on credit, he sold them the land they built their buildings on. He sold the piano shop at Pacific and Montgomery to a man named William Tecumseh Sherman who had traveled here after resigning his commission in the Army to head up a bank, and the bank he built remains at that corner to this day. Bill Sherman is more well-known for getting frustrated with banking and going back into the army when the South seceded from the Union. His first battle was the Battle of Bull Run. He was hit by bullets and guided his troops to an orderly retreat under fire as a colonel. When Lincoln met him he impressed him so much that he made him a brigadier general on the spot, and that won the Civil War for Lincoln. Sherman didn’t stop until he reached the sea, and I found the remains of his march in the backyard of the house I grew up in just south of Atlanta. He is a divisive and controversial figure in American history, and it seems appropriate that there is a building with his name on it in San Francisco.
This is all completely unlike anything that Garry Tan has ever done.
There are a lot of buildings in San Francisco. One of my favorites is the Transamerica Pyramid. In 1928, A.P. Giannini formed a holding company called the Transamerica Corporation to hold the corporate entities of the multitude of banks he owned after founding the Bank of Italy in 1904. He’s the reason we have the Bank of America. Over time, this holding company controlled names we know such as Budget Rent-A-Car and United Artists in addition to lending its name to one of the most well-known jewels in San Francisco’s crown. A.P. Giannini was an amazing businessman and his empire is felt to this day.
This is all completely unlike anything that Garry Tan has ever done.
By his own admission, Garry Tan came in second. He moans in interviews about working like a dog for Peter Thiel and his machine of genocide, Palantir Corp. He inherited Y-combinator from Sam Altman, which kind of seems like he’s coasting on whitey’s coattails, to be honest. He’s had the great fortune to grow up in the Bay Area at its height of influence on the world but grew up learning from his richer neighbors the mistaken idea that you can buy power and respect. When he finally has more money than he knows what to do with, he channels it towards trying to buy power and respect from our local politicians instead of the community. If he’s donated to anything other than a campaign then I can’t find any real mention of it. To be honest, focusing on him feels like giving him more attention than he’s worth. And this all makes me certain of one thing.
Garry Tan will never have a skyscraper.
