Further, as a nerd who lives in flyover country but has at least made the mandatory pilgrimage to San Francisco, I think jwz offers some (admittedly jaded) insight into the culture of SF as a whole. The dnalounge blog and his own LJ feed are practically required reading for those of us who wish to hear what goes on beyond the silicon valley echo chamber.
My degree is in Engineering and I'm still constantly amazed at the amount of sophistication that goes into all the things we take for granted. Scaling web apps to x-million users? Ha, that's nothing compared to what other people do every day.
This is true. He bought it, didn't build it from scratch, and he most certainly has concerns above and beyond what the average bar owner faces. Of course, the average bar owner in San Francisco seems to face quite a bit more trouble than a bar owner in many other places in the US, so YMMV.
Agreed,many of his concerns came from trying to convert it to an all-ages club. This is very difficult in most areas. He also got screwed by the ABC and is still fighting that fight.
SF can be tough on business owners, but his issue with the ABIC is actually a classic sort of SF vs. The Feds sort of issue. In that case SF mostly couldn't care less and generally actually gets pissed when the feds start crap like this. We see similar issues around marijuana busts. Generally SFPD doesn't give a shit about marijuana (in general the SF DA won't prosecute these cases and they if someone does get popped its a misdemeanor), but every so often an overzealous US Attorney comes in and makes an easy, and high profile bust.
It should make a potential bar owner ask himself how the police feel about the bars in the town though. It only takes one guy to be a pain in your ass.
I think if you peruse his site a bit, there are lots of rants about how difficult it was for him to get this started.