[2025-04-10] when i think about san francisco

When I think about SF, first I think about whether I should be saying its full name instead. Someone once told me that only people in tech refer to SF as SF. I don’t know if that’s true, and I don’t care to fact check. All I know is that it’s definitely not San Fran.

When I think about SF, I think about how things were really different pre-Covid, when there was life happening downtown and probably not as much poop in the alley behind Safeway and my house wasn’t flooding because we weren’t experiencing a once in a decade rainfall. I mean, people tell me it used to be different and I believe them. Again, not one for fact checking.

When I think about SF, I think about how the best things about SF are outside of SF, like Yosemite and driving along the coast and the redwoods and camping with friends and building a fire, except I’m not building the fire because I don’t know how to, but I do know how to set up a tent and now I have a sleeping pad that a girl recommended me at a party once when I first moved and I wanted to be friends with everyone, but maybe she wanted to be more than friends and maybe I panicked and let myself disappear in maybe an ambiguous way and maybe I still feel guilty about it.

I actually realized pretty early on that I like east coast nature better anyway.

Mike and I once took the steepest bus route in the city for a music video - I want to say it was a 17 degree incline. The hill outside my apartment is 14 degrees, and on clear days, I’ll walk past the really weird bunny skull statue on the way up and hit start on my phone right as the road flattens out and the light turns green. I use the Nike race app for training and Strava because I too am susceptible to peer pressure, and I found that Strava always told me I was running farther and faster. I’m not saying it’s scientifically proven, but my ex’s roommate who worked at Strava did tell me that he had seen it too and it was probably to boost people’s egos and keep them on the app, and this is why we can’t have nice things anymore.

When I think about SF, I think about the billboards on the drive up from the airport. Not to be dramatic, but the first time I touched down I wondered if this was what people more academic than me referred to as modern-day dystopia and was I maybe living in a simulation? In a chill way though, because California is very chill and so am I.

The first couple miles in the Panhandle always feel transient, and I know that isn’t the right use of the word, but I too am transient, just as every person in the Panhandle is. Hundreds of runs and never recognized a single person, except for last week when I bumped into said ex and I knew it was my time to leave.

When I think about SF, I think about the first time I heard an older Asian cashier speak fluent English without an accent at the register, and the time I went to a museum and an elderly Japanese couple, impeccably dressed, held hands on the benches, and I cried. I looked past the billboards once, sitting in my friend’s car on the highway over SOMA as the sun was setting, leaving behind a purple glow over the rolling city. When I imagined San Francisco, I pictured a gentle fog that would tickle the top of my head. Cloud watching in a park, eyes glazed like donuts. I imagine the city submerged in a slow-motion mist and a little windshield wiper in my brain scraping away the sludge of feelings better left in New York.

I think about the person I’ve become, and whether I’m temporary, and whether groundedness and less spontaneity just come with being less mentally unstable or whether it’s a permanent change, a shard of San Francisco embedded in me. I wonder if I’ve become boring or if this is just part of the natural process of aging.

It took sitting in my friend’s car driving up to the Marina to realize how close the ocean is. On long run days, I’ll follow the road through Golden Gate past the paint-crackled piano in front of the botanical garden, past the weekend Salsa dancers, past the bison, past the windmill tulip garden that looks a lot nicer on Instagram than it does in reality, and I feel the air change as the trees clear and the ocean melts up into the grey sky. If I take out my earphones, I can hear the waves and the wind and the families on the beach and the volleyball players and the bikers. I give myself that hands-reaching-full-body kind of stretch and let the tension release, just for a moment.

You get used to the things you so desperately wanted a year ago.

There’s an easy joy here. It’s a joy that doesn’t feel like it has to be earned. It’s the joy of rainy day cafe jazz & journaling next to a friend, the joy of renting out a whole concert hall for an hour just to play board games and tippity tap on a grand piano. It’s the joy of tea time and long foresty runs and smiling every time a different colored F train jingles past, doing a little dance every time a gingko tree is in sight and the highlighter yellow wildflowers on the drive to work. It’s the joy in cliches - stopping to smell the flowers, and pausing to exist. There’s joy in having things to be grateful for.

When I think about San Francisco, I think about the 360 degree pastel sunsets and the median poppies and the people I love.

And when I leave, some things will change, but nothing will be left behind.