Dear San Francisco

A love letter to an unfairly hated city

I used to carry film cameras around with me all the time. So glad I printed these.

Ben texted a photo of Dylan’s today which is now called something else. The perfect little local bar on the corner of 20th and Folsom where we used to drink away almost every night of our 20s and then our 30s before we started to drop off into marriages and new cities and jobs that became more important than late night conversations with friends. 

I never seemed to get hungover back then. Was it because we drank so much that our livers were in the best shape of their lives? Strong and ready to fight off the booze sweats, focused on their job of keeping things filtered and running, keeping us going.

San Francisco holds a million secrets to a million lives I’ve lived and it’s amazing that three of us on that text thread are still here, haunting this city. We’ve all threatened to leave it so many times that now it just rolls its eyes at us when we go on about better cities, cleaner streets, more vibrant places. It takes a big hit of weed and blows it on us in a disguise of fog ‘shut the fuck up’ it says as we pull hoodies over our heads. We’re still here. Through kids and many jobs and so many different lives. All of us slowly creeping towards 50. How the hell did that happen. I swear we were 25 two seconds ago. Drinking endless gin and tonics going home with bartenders and regulars. Being the night creatures we now cross the street to avoid. 

It’s not a sad state we’re in. It’s just different. We used to chain smoke and now we sip tea in front out of our giant monitors. We try not to stay out too late or drink to much. We’ve swapped bourbon for edibles and well whiskey for expensive champagne. We spend our money on nice meals and fancy shoes. And San Francisco just lets us be, throwing us a good time in a sunny day every once in a while. 

Holga photos of SF

I am starting to think when people tell me they don’t like San Francisco it’s more a reflection of them than the city. New York is easy. She opens herself up for everyone. You’d have to be a really miserable person to not find something you like about New York. There’s so much packed in per square inch. LA is cool again even though the New York kids still like to trash it. But it’s never been cool to say you like San Francisco. Too full of tech bros and startups and the streets are dead and the homeless population is out of control even Fox news says so. 

I don’t know how to change that perception and I guess I don’t care anymore. But I’ll automatically think less of you if you come to San Francisco and try to tell me what a horrible place it is. Unless I already like you then I will just roll my eyes at you and feel sorry for you for not being curious enough to find the good stuff. The tiny art galleries and restaurants out of garages and crusty old dive bars hosting aging punk bands and the new indie sleaze. Maybe it’s not your thing but there’s a culture waiting to be found here if you just pop open the lid.

Baby me and Andrew, a good friend who passed many years ago

I grew up in New Jersey where we were taught at a young age that New York was the center of the universe. We went to Brooklyn to visit my grandparents every Sunday since I was a baby. My Dad grew up in Bay Ridge, my Mom moved to the Bronx from Sicily when she was 12. New York runs deeps in my blood and yea there’s no place like it. But I was still confused when my college friends started moving there. Brooklyn was for family and old people. And yes I’m writing this so you know I experienced New York before you. I have the magnetic pull of a pigeon to go back there. But it hasn’t prevented me from appreciating other cities and I stopped judging places by how cool the restaurants were when I was in my 20s.

I couldn’t hate San Francisco if I tried to be honest. My history is too wrapped up in its concrete. In the buildings that have been torn down and rebuilt. In the dank floors of dive bars and the tall green grass of Golden Gate Park. The fog holds my name. The streets keep my secrets, they have heard me crying on the phone with my mother, shouting at a lover in a drunken rage at a stupid age, seen me laugh with joy and trip after first kisses. It holds all the friends no longer living and all the years that got swallowed up before we could write them down and remember them. I couldn’t hate this place if I tried. Which is maybe why I get so defensive when coworkers and friends from other cities talk about how lame SF is. Who goes into someone else’s house and tells them how horrible it is? Without respecting the layers of bark, the gnarled roots spilling out from the walls, without admiring the language only the trees of this place can comprehend. Without taking the time to ask, what do you love most about this place? Show me.