San Francisco: a Retrospective
I sat on the upper level of the Sightglass in Soma during one of my last weeks in San Francisco and wrote out a long, whiny piece about why San Francisco wasn’t the place for me. I delayed publishing it, for the sake of my presence in the city and since the tone of the whole bit felt accusatory.
There are a lot of tidbits in there that I still agree with and will publish here, but after taking a step back, I figured I’d write something more even-keel. There are a few reflections that I’ve made after being able to distill the contrasts between San Francisco and the rest of where I’ve been. First, a quick story.
I landed in SFO with Jacob late on Friday. He and I sat on the tarmac for too long—we missed our shot at going to Big Lantern that evening as they closed at 11. We ate there three years ago after I physically moved to San Francisco; it was the only place that was open late in the Mission after the long drive in the U-Haul.
We sat on the plane. “Bet you it’s 64 degrees outside,” I said to Jacob. We checked, it was 61.
We finally got off the plane near 10:40, and I had Uber-luck—a trip to 16th and Mission was only $30, so it was barely more expensive than the $10 each for BART tickets. I felt nostalgic as it may well be one of the last times I make that short, expensive drive for a while. I admired the rolling fog and the lights of the homes on the hillside.
We got out and immediately I remembered the mental load that living in the city places upon your senses. People and faces swarm your psyche. There’s music playing in the distance, people sit on the street. We made our way up to Michael and Pie’s apartment. I punched in the code.
“It’s like your fight or flight makes you remember,” Jacob joked.
Michael, Jacob and I went out to Bender’s and I saw some of the usual crew, then we ate pupusas. We adhered to Michael’s “reverse-curfew” and made it to bed near 3. Unlikely that we would see Michael in the morning, we said our goodbyes.
Pie and I spent a while in the morning discussing their recent trip to Europe. She mentioned that it felt like I was just in San Francisco, which struck me as odd because my perception of time has been the opposite—the past few months have not been a blur. They have been full of new experiences and changes, but without the hectic sense that I have to fill all of my off-time. We noted that it’s how San Francisco feels; people always call it a “black hole,” as you lose your time and space to the city. Time goes by in an instant—Pie lamented that she just got back from Europe, and wanted to keep it easy for the next bit, but one gets sucked into trying to make plans for the weekend or fill her schedule. It’s one of the easiest places to get FOMO.
I coughed up the $1000 for the U-Haul to move out of California. I guess since everybody is leaving the state, they have a shortage of trucks, so it’s more expensive to leave: California tax. $350 there, $1000 to leave just three years later, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Jacob and I loaded the truck and made decent time, albeit dodging fires in San Bernardino and floods in Mesa Verde. We saw more truckers misbehaving than I have ever witnessed on that drive. We arrived in Phoenix just past midnight, got up the next day, made some coffee, and unloaded the truck. We celebrated with burritos.
Back to San Francisco: my prevailing issue with the city is that it is unhealthy. I distinctly remember joining at Baton, and everyone commiserated about their shoulder injuries. Lo and behold, I joined their ranks only a few years later. I knew at the time it was an omen, but I didn’t quite realize how fucked up it was. There are patterns of behavior which take keen observation to identify as problematic, and I think I only knew due to the contrast between life in SF and Phoenix (see esoteric My Only Friend La Croix). I found people “fake-healthy,” in that they were active and fit, but lacked time to train mobility or work on themselves holistically. It’s hard to be healthy when you’re running from work to the gym and only have time to eat a burrito in between—more on that later.
Stick with me on this:
I’ve been studying for my personal training certification and I’ve been learning about altered length-tension relationships and postural distortions. After my shoulder injury, I almost had the feeling that there was a lack of depth to my breathing, which is probably caused by a tight pec minor, antagonist to muscles of the middle of the back. To me, this points to upper crossed syndrome, which can cause shoulder impingement, which was the primary symptom that I was feeling.
I acutely injured my shoulder, but I know that upper crossed syndrome is worsened by smartphone usage. Overactive neck extensors are the result of holding your head down to look at your phone. This brings me back to San Francisco: it’s a place where your smartphone offers you a hell of a lot more value than most other places. There are people pinging you fun! exciting! new! things to do constantly—come check out this show on Friday, or let’s get together for coffee, or climb together on Tuesday. Be aware that someone Slacked you. Check Partiful and observe if that girl you like is going to be at the park on Wednesday. Urgent! Look at Maps to find out exactly where you’re going.
The problem is that smartphone use begets smartphone abuse. In Phoenix, by contrast, my smartphone offered me less, thus I grew a disdain for the addiction-device. When good things get mixed in with shallow dopamine, things get fuzzy, and you’re more inclined to chronically abuse the thing. I could navigate most of my life in Phoenix without a phone—plans are made and kept without further tinkering, and I can find my way around with a cursory look at a map.
I found that this was just one aspect of many unhealthy behaviors within San Francisco. I can largely categorize the rest as being caught up in the “personal rat race,” as opposed to the “professional rat race.” I do think there is much carryover between the two. Typically this amounts to trying to do more, trying to go-go-go. The consequence becomes a city full of anxiety, ready for the next thing, never able to slow down or be bored. (I found much of the art made within the city itself shallow due to this—it was rarely made slowly, intentionally, or even lazily. Most was done in a manic, let’s-get-this-done manner.) Most people were trying to acquire as many personal badges for their sash as possible—attend the most niche parties, climb all of the hard routes in the Bay, ski the most black diamonds, make the most friends. I found intrinsic motivation a rarity, and those who purported it set off my alarm bells of skepticism. I felt myself mirroring these anxiety behaviors with more time spent in the city—I used to “waste” weekends in AZ and Spain (is it a waste if you’re bored?) and there was always a loathing associated with that waste in SF.
I often say that in SF, “the social fabric has degraded,” by which I mean that common courtesies and empathies have gone by the wayside. Despite this, I consider people in San Francisco to be empathetic overall—if you talk to most people there, usually you will find that they’re capable of deep empathy for others. However, I honestly believe that the populace skips over the low-range of empathy. One learns to gloss over the people in distress on the street. People rarely make eye contact in the street, and they carry that behavioral tick with them into venues.
I think this also relates to the persistent cultural conflict between tech and “not-tech.” I don’t know what to call “not-tech” because I could rarely identify a unifying thread as opposition—tech and art isn’t the dichotomy, because I found many of those antagonist to technology with no identification to art. Tech and what-was-here-before might make the most sense, given that people liked to praise the characteristics of the city before “tech moved in,” although I found many in vehement opposition of the technology scene were younger, so they don’t quite fit the bill of “old, authentic San Francisco.”
In any case, the conflict fueled the fire of an already-divided San Francisco. I rarely encountered actual debate; the effects of the schism were subliminal, and it acted as an undercurrent to color everyday interactions. I attended an art show four times while in SF, and each time I could feel people sussing out (but rarely directly asking) if others identified with tech. Honestly, I get it—most of the time, you don’t need a direct answer to be able to tell, as there are common patterns of behavior that those who primarily work in tech exhibit. Many of them are not positive. People categorize them as a lack of empathy, a lack of social skills and awareness, and blatant privilege—the ability to leverage money without taste or class.
Regardless, I found the constant skepticism unhealthy. I caught myself going to cafes, rolling my eyes at people when they discussed AI or venture capital at the next table over. It seemed like most of the people in SF were acting similarly—the assumption was that most people worked in tech and they were generally not to be trusted. Transient, shallow. I found myself on both sides of the debate, positioning myself on the defense, trying to ward against the stink-eye of “non-tech” while simultaneously performing such “sussing-out” myself. I prefer to live in a place where most people give the benefit of the doubt to others rather than leading with identity and establishment of participation of an in-group.
In the end, between the general wariness of catching the eye of a crazed stranger or accidentally associating yourself with the tactless tech bro, you might as well just always be on-guard in San Francisco. I didn’t find this a good way to live.
Here are a few looser notes about SF, which I feel conflicted about listing here, but they were in my original list. Read on for whiny gripes:
People often praise the “objective quality of life” of the Bay without categorizing it against the subjective experience. Sure, there’s a proximity to the beach and to mountains, and you can get world-class food, and the weather is “great on average,” but they neglect to mention the fact that you have to sit in traffic to get anywhere, you will get cold mist in your face most days, and everything costs you an arm and a leg. People have Stockholm Syndrome about it: I often heard “oh yeah, I used to hate it here for the first five years, now I LOVE it!”
It’s bad for your attention span. The place is filled with micro-interactions: you have a 45-minute coffee with a friend then run to a 60 minute yoga then run off to a quick park hang then show up at a party for exactly 90 minutes. Within each of these, you’re always determining if plans will shift or if something needs to get scheduled. There was a lack of depth there in any one interaction—I found myself having unstructured time to chill only once or twice a month. This is antithetical to art production, where you need ample time to zone out and be bored.
It’s a humorless place. I found that when I was back in Phoenix, I was able to sit down in the living room with some friends and we were quickly chatting and goofing off, making silly voices and jokes that didn’t make any sense, laughing hysterically. People in SF seem like they’re on their best behavior, afraid to take a risk and look silly (but they’re OK with looking weird).
On being weird: people glorify being “weird.” I met so many people who told me that I would hate LA, and that they hate the Marina because the people who go out or live there are shallow and vain. Those living in the Mission place themselves on a pedestal because they’re edgy or NotShallow(TM) and only focus on real attributes like how much ethically sourced coffee they drink or how authentic they are about their passions or how much they hate tech bros (their personality consists much of how much they hate, how much they hate shallow people, how much they hate car culture, how much they hate capitalism, how much they hate hate hate—while signaling the virtue of acceptance of all walks of life). I find this ironic and hypocritical because they are judgmental, just for different characteristics, and they pretend that they’re “not like the image-focused people down in Los Angeles” or otherwise. Again, I found this to be another facet of the self-loathing of the city; best to put yourself on guard that you don’t come across the wrong way.
With all of this on the table, I’m reflecting on my past few years. Before I moved to San Francisco, I was living in Phoenix, and before that, Spain. I had been doing a whole lot of nothing (well, nothing explicitly constructive) and it was glorious. I was doing whatever the opposite of spinning wheels was: I wrote a lot of junk poems, read a lot, drew some shitty pictures. I ate a lot of jamón ibérico and I enjoyed every bite. This time was immensely valuable as it reinforced the acceptance of being okay to just exist and do what is interesting, which is a capacity that I found that very few had in San Francisco. Everyone was super anxious about their life, or what they had to show for it. I’m excited to go back to a slower pace of life.
