The word ’boutique,’ like the letter ‘i’ can be put in front of any other word (hotel, winery, law firm) to make it instantly desirable to San Franciscans. (Who wants a boutique law firm? I want a law factory when I’m in trouble. Something that can throw some weight around. Not a place that sounds like they might sell Precious Moments figurines on the side).
Unlike the letter ‘i’ the word boutique actually means something. It means small and specialized, but usually if a business is calling itself boutique it just means small. As hotels are already places specifically built for people to sleep in, I’m not sure how a boutique hotel could be any more specialized, “This is the place where you sleep lying down. This is not a hotel for horses.”
Imagine if someone combined the two best premodifiers and made an iBoutique phone – “It’s so little and fancy. It does a limited number of things really well, and other things it doesn’t do at all, because it’s too good for those things!”
Of course, someone already invented that phone, but this is also how a lot of people in San Francisco might like to describe themselves, which is one reason the iPhone is so popular here. San Franciscans consider themselves to be the iPhones of the human race.
This total adoration of boutique may be why it is difficult to find a Target in San Francisco, unless that Target is in Daly City. San Franciscans either don’t like or don’t understand the concept of getting everything into one place at one time and then buying it all.
At least this would seem to be true by the frequency at which garbage trucks are driving down my street at 5 a.m. Where I come from people talk about ‘garbage day’ like those words mean something, but it turns out they don’t. In San Francisco everyday is garbage day.
This probably has something to do with a boutique garbage collection strategy – Monday mornings are just for Odwalla bottles. Please keep your pickle jars in your homes until Thursday. They will be picked up via incredibly loud pickle jar collection truck on Friday morning. 5 a.m. is a great time to wake up, in case you didn’t know.
