January 9, 2014.

How Techies Are Transforming San Francisco

"It's a church, or at least it used to be. St Clement Danes its name was." The fragment of rhyme that Mr Charrington had taught him came back into his head, and he added half-nostalgically:

"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's!"

Twitter's TWTR -0.09%  headquarters. A high-rise apartment building where visitors sign-in on iPads. A jar of handcrafted applesauce for $14. Skyrocketing real-estate prices.

To his astonishment she capped the line:

Nearly five decades after the Summer of Love transformed San Francisco into the epicenter of the hippie movement, a new generation is redefining this city's culture again. No longer content to live and work in the quiet suburbs of Palo Alto and Menlo Park 30 miles south, thousands of young tech workers are migrating to the city, seeking a more urban, multicultural lifestyle. They are bringing with them a stampede of tech companies and venture capitalists, and inevitably attracting some homegrown resentment for jacking up housing costs and gentrifying once gritty neighborhoods.

"You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's, 

When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey----"

Last year, venture capitalist Greg Gretsch, managing director at Sigma West, which has $1.5 billion under management, moved his office from Menlo Park to San Francisco's Jackson Square neighborhood, a historic part of the city dating back to the 1850s that is now attracting the new digerati. He now walks to work from his Pacific Heights home and walks or bikes to visit startups in the South of Market, or Soma, district.