Relevance: The recent discussions[0,1] on the sinking Millennium Tower (and possibly Salesforce East/350 Mission, based on the ESA isometric plots in [1]). The map[2] clearly shows that the corner of Mission & Fremont was once just offshore.
Additionally, as someone who's been lucky enough to live nearby, it's just absolutely cool to be able to 'walk' through history like this in an area that is largely derided as being sterile and faceless.
so, even back then the SF real estate was so hot that sinking the still serviceable ships was profitable. I think i'll see in my life an artificial island 5-10 miles into the ocean connected to SF by a new super-Golden Gate (after all there is only 20-30m depth :)
One such ship appears in the recent book "Ajax Penumbra 1969" by Robin Sloan, the prequel to Sloan's "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore". It's a short fun read.
What? Why does that matter? From the political detox post:
> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments.
This article isn't political, but it is an intellectually gratifying story.
We asked people to flag political stories for a week (just one!) which certainly does not mean "flag all non-technical stories". The non sequitur there ought to be obvious.
There are more things than politics and tech, and those things are important here—important enough that the first paragraph of the site guidelines is explicitly about them:
I fail to understand how buried ships or tidbits about a city's buried ship histories "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"
Should a posting about the Walled City of Lahore [1] make it to the front page? I really don't think it should. Nor should historical facts about how Las Vegas' iconic casinos aren't really in Las Vegas, but in an unincorporated town called Paradise[2].
Why would a submission that basically says "I think this link is stupid and should not be submitted" not be flagged?
If it were a comment-less submission it might be interesting as an "experiment", although I personally would guess that it would fail to gather attention because wikipedia articles tend to be pretty dry and don't highlight interesting bits well. (assuming the subject itself could be interesting, I haven't looked into it)
If you mean to imply this doesn't gratify any intellectual curiosity, well, you're welcome to your opinion. Others appear to have their own.
Personally, I've generally been at least mildly interested in the juxtapositions of modern cities and 'ancient' history, and recall similar articles about ships buried in other cities - such as New York.
As such, I'm skeptical about how relevant San Francisco is in terms of generating interest. SF natives will be more aware of SF things to share, so we probably see more SF-related stories here, given the concentration of SF residents in a startups related community such as this, but that won't make e.g. SF politics, sports, etc. any more on topic.
I do mean it as a critique of the relevance of SF articles. (This particular article is actually more interesting than the usual faire that makes it here, like real estate prices and social politics of SF)
I'd guess that HN's traffic is 95%+ outside of SF.
Additionally, as someone who's been lucky enough to live nearby, it's just absolutely cool to be able to 'walk' through history like this in an area that is largely derided as being sterile and faceless.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12206158
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036377
[2]: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hpshpb_2014.jpg