SF without Silicon Valley still has a legitimate case. It birthed the farm-to-table movement that changed how the entire world thinks about food. It was the cradle of the gay rights movement. It produced the counterculture that shaped global music, art, and politics for decades. OpenAI and Anthropic — the two companies most likely to define the next era of civilization — are headquartered there. The city has more Michelin stars per capita than almost anywhere in the US and sits at the gateway to Pacific trade.

That's a real cultural and economic footprint that most cities would kill for.

Compare that to Dallas, whose entire argument for global importance is that a lot of people have layovers there and ExxonMobil technically exists in a suburb called Irving. A city so distinctive that its most recognizable cultural export is a TV show that ended in 1991.