In my view it's exactly the opposite:

    (-> (california) bay-in city-on) ; "The Californian bay's city"

vs.

    (city-on (bay-in (california))) ; "The city on the bay in California"

The former ("->") starts with what's fed into the pipeline, the latter starts with what you get out of it. In addition, "->" avoids the nesting of expressions regardless of the number of steps, which might be useful in some cases. But both styles have their place.