I have it on good authority that San Francisco ain’t what she used to be. The cool gray city of love has lost its soul.

You hear that all the time from people of a certain vintage. “It’s not the city where I grew up,” say the natives. “It’s not the city it was when I got here,” say the transplants.

It’s the damndest thing. A lot of cities are going to hell because the economy is going down. San Francisco is going to hell because the economy is going up. People are mad because the city is booming. Too many people. Too much money, dammit.

We here in the Native Son corner of the paper take these things seriously. So we conducted our own unscientific study. We walked the streets, rode Muni buses, prowled the waterfront, talked to carefully selected types, like expatriate San Franciscans, a cab driver or two, and a couple of artists. A cross section of my pals.

Their conclusion: San Francisco is as good as it ever was. Better maybe.

“There is such a mix of people,” said Richard Perri, a painter. “It’s a city that still attracts young people who want to come here. It’s a good city.”

This all began to dawn on me one day recently when we were having lunch on 18th Street in glamorous Potrero Hill.

“You grew up on Potrero Hill,” my luncheon companion said. “Where did you go to lunch back then?” Lunch? We didn’t go to lunch back in the Good Old Days. Potrero Hill didn’t have restaurants then, just coffee shops, with a top-of-the line grilled cheese sandwich. Kraft cheese, too.

It’s kind of a yin and yang thing: The city has changed; it’s changing all the time. Every time I hear of the sad demise of some dive bar, dark and full of memories, something new opens. Last week, it was a new beer-themed joint called Old Devil Moon, out on Mission Street at Cortland Avenue. Nineteen draft beers, I hear, including Rodenbach Grand Cru, a Belgian brew famous among beer aficionados.

Rodenbach Grand Cru on Mission Street? I went to school in the Mission. Our idea of upscale beer was Rainier Ale. We used to call it “The Green Death.”

On a recent visit to the United States — that is the world outside the Bay Area — we noted how bland the food is elsewhere. How spoiled we are. While some people are still mourning old favorites like Foster’s English muffins we noted the arrival of a bakery on Arguello Boulevard that serves the world’s grandest croissants.

Gentrification may be a curse word, but it takes people with money to support the kind of food and drink we now take for granted.

People say the city has lost its soul. That’s because they are not looking in the right places. The other Sunday morning, I rode the 30-Stockton bus out Kearny, up Sutter, through the tunnel through Chinatown. It must have been a shopping day; the sidewalk was packed with shoppers patronizing open-air stores. It wasn’t your Norman Rockwell Sunday morning WASP crowd either. The crowds were all Asian Americans. It was like taking a bus through another country in the heart of the liveliest of American cities.

Later in the week, I took the F streetcar along the waterfront. A warm September day, and the sidewalk was packed with people jogging, strolling, soaking up the sun. The cruise ship Grand Princess was docked at Pier 27, ready to sail off that afternoon north to Alaska. I’m old enough to remember the old waterfront, crowded, dingy, a bit dangerous. This one is better.

The city is a strange mix, no doubt about it: homeless people sleeping in the doorways of expensive shops at night. High prices. Low expectations. Beautiful views, dirty streets.

It’s a city of neighborhoods. Something different is around the corner, “little pockets that surprise you,” said artist Elaine Baggerly Arnoux.

It should be no surprise that demographics are driving the changes.

I dropped by Gino and Carlo’s in North Beach the other night and hailed a cab on the street. The driver was surprised. “Nobody hails cabs anymore,” he said. “They get a ride with an app on their device. That’s what they do. It’s a young person’s city now.”

That’s true. It’s a city of Millennials, and those of a certain vintage envy them, like Ponce de Leon searching for the fountain of youth.

“I came here in the ’60s with flowers in my hair,” said Perri, the painter. “I was a long-haired, dope-smoking hippie. I came for the music and the art, the scene. Now I’m an anomaly, an old, straight white guy. But everybody’s an anomaly here. The city still attracts young people. It’s still a city of different cultures, different races, sex practices. Always an attraction.

“It’s still a good place. If it’s going to hell, I’d rather dance with the devil than walk with the angels.”

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf