Tale of Two Vastly Different Cities Has Giant Role Reversal

Game 4 was in my living room, Angels and Giants in a dogfight, and I’m not going to lie to you.

I was going with the Giants.

I grew up on Mays and McCovey, dressing like an Eskimo to go see ballgames, and then kicking around in the city afterward. I spent my first 30 years in the Bay Area, where Giant fans set Dodger pennants on fire at Candlestick Park, and where all good children were taught to hate Southern California.

Frankly, I haven’t lived in the Bay Area for years, and I really like the way the Angels play. As if they don’t know they aren’t supposed to be in the World Series.

But let’s be honest here.

San Francisco or Anaheim?

Paris or Bakersfield?

Come on.

San Francisco is, was, and will be, one of the most beautiful, dreamy, forward-thinking cities in the entire universe. I was enchanted from the moment I first set eyes on it, and part of rooting for the Giants was rooting for the city.

When the World Series began last week, the barbs started flying at Southern California from up north. They took aim at Orange County and Anaheim in particular, and although it stung a little bit, the criticism was hard to refute.

We’re a bunch of car-loving, tract-house-buying mopes, and if we’re not riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland, writing inane scripts or getting our boobs done, we’re either at the Reagan library or a John Birch Society meeting.

OK. So it’s an exaggeration, but only by a bit.

San Francisco, on the other hand, is San Francisco, home of sophisticates, poets, revolutionaries. Sure, the yuppies took the place over for a while, doing combat with those who would love to maintain the city as a progressive theme park.

But the city’s soul is intact, which I can attest to from periodic trips back home. I wanted evidence I could hold in my hands, though, so I did some reading and studied the latest census figures.

Can this be right?

I should have left well enough alone.

Guess which city is conducting an all-out war on its most destitute citizens -- the homeless: proudly progressive San Francisco or backwater Anaheim, which sits in the heart of historically conservative Orange County?

The answer is San Francisco, which has no fewer than 33 billboards screaming for a crackdown on its lost souls.

I was shocked myself.

Here’s another.

Which city stiffed its public transit system, creating hellish traffic jams and inciting crazed motorists to run eco-friendly cyclists off the road: European San Francisco or car-crazy Anaheim?

Again, San Francisco. Although in fairness, Anaheim doesn’t have much in the way of mass transit unless you count the Monorail.

Which city is more diverse: Famously eclectic San Francisco, or white-bread Anaheim?

The answers are clear as day in the 2002 census figures, and they must be wrong.

In Anaheim, Latinos make up 43% of the population. In San Francisco, it’s 12.2%, if you can trust the U.S. Census Bureau.

I was sure it was higher than that. This might lead critics to assume that before its campaign of terror on the homeless, San Francisco successfully crushed Latino immigration.

Latinos are practically everywhere else in California, constituting 32.4% of the state’s residents. Based on these stats, there might be more Latino characters in Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” attraction than in all of San Francisco.

San Francisco has it over Anaheim on Asians, 31.1% to 12.3%. But then I made the mistake of looking at the numbers for whites.

A mere 35.9% of Anaheim is white, compared to 43.6% for San Francisco.

Has Anaheim become the new San Francisco, openly embracing everyone and anything?

Not quite. But San Francisco, home of the American pinko movement, appears to have given up on socialism and now excludes by class, as well as by race.

The median S.F. income is $55,221, compared to $47,122 for Anaheim. And when it comes to high rollers, 24.6% of San Franciscans--nearly one-fourth!--rake in more than $100,000 a year, as opposed to only 14.6% in Anaheim.

While I wasn’t looking, San Francisco became a city of millionaires and panhandlers. I suppose this explains why fixer-uppers in gentrifying neighborhoods go for more than $1 million. San Francisco has apparently come to resemble Newport Beach, but with different sailors. Given the real estate prices up there, it’s no surprise the San Francisco Giants make $16 million more as a team than the hungry upstarts from Anaheim, city of the people, city of the future, se habla espanol.

Go Angels.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes .com.