Greg Gopman has a very fitting name. The University of Florida grad and founder of the now-defunct Weekend Gator bus service moved to San Francisco in September 2011 to form a startup, AngelHack. After two years, the wannabe entrepreneur is apparently still appalled by the homeless population there. Gopman, who hails from Aventura, recently posted a Facebook diatribe about the "degenerates" who live in the City by the Bay.
"Just got back to SF. I've traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco," the 29-year-old wrote on Tuesday. "Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little."
When his insensitivity was called into question by national media outlets such as Slate and the Daily Mail, and after the Huffington Post wrote that it "may be the biggest social media blunder of 2013," Gopman took down his rant. On Wednesday, he posted an apology that wasn't well received by all.
It's fair to say Gopman probably encountered quite a few displaced, unfortunate souls during his upbringing in Miami-Dade. Anyone who has ever walked through downtown wouldn't be surprised to know that about 800 homeless live in the city today. However, in Miami, a middle-class family can afford about 51 percent of the homes for sale.
In San Francisco, things are much more dire. Only 14 percent of homes for sale in that city are affordable to the same demographic.. Of course, Gopman and his techie friends are part of the problem. Thanks to an influx of wealthy people looking to start "like, a cross between OkCupid and Yelp," the median rent in SF went from $2,968 in 2010 to $3,414 this year. Additionally, no-fault evictions are pushing out the Bay's natives to make way for people like Gopman and his friends.
AngelHack advertises itself as "the best damn hackathon you've ever seen," and CEO Gopman prides himself on offering "gourmet meals, toys, shirts, shwag, and massages" to its participants. Weekend Gator, his first startup, was apparently a bust. "It was on its way to be a $1,000,000 business, but as fate would have it, I chose partners poorly, and greed ended up destroying things as the money started to pile up," Gopman wrote on his LinkedIn account.
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