Of all the things San Franciscans like and don’t like the thing that they like the most and dislike the least has got to be San Francisco itself. It’s like when Oprah gives away her favorite things, and people go crazy because they want that thing so bad, and they know they’re getting it right now.
That’s how San Franciscans feel every morning when they wake up and look out their windows at the alien majesty of Sutro Tower, or the sun coming up on Market Street, or the 6 Parnassus catching air over a hill. San Franciscans don’t necessarily think that God created the rest of the world so they would have something to laugh about, but they know that’s why he created L.A.
Who can really blame them for all this crazy love? San Francisco is like the New York of the West Coast, if New York had mild winters and was also nothing like New York, bu what other city is going to be called the New York of the West? Portland? Didn’t think so.
So if San Francisco isn’t like New York, what is it like? If you were to hypnotize a San Franciscan and ask her/him to paint a picture of what San Francisco is to them it would be a picture so beautiful and filled with Gavin Newsom’s hair, day-drinking, open mic night at the bar, restaurant reviewing on Yelp!, Ocean Beach, mutant Great White sharks, Alamo Square at sunset, and Dave Eggers that even thinking about looking at it would make most people want to throw themselves off the Golden Gate rather than experience the ecstasy that San Franciscans feel on a daily basis.
People who aren’t San Franciscans (can they really be called people?) like to think that the weather here is similar to that of Seattle, and if they want to think that no San Franciscan is going to stop them. But the truth is, the weather is totally beautiful eight months out of the year. Under this ridiculously prevalent sunshine lies a city so goddamn pretty and filled with people in costume that it’s like a stage that was erected to show plays about earthquakes and the interactions that interesting people have with one another while they’re going out to dinner or composting.
Some people who are just finding out about American Apparel or who live in San Diego like to use the phrase, “Sorry for partying,” like it pretty much makes up for all the keg-stands they did last night. Well that’s fine for those people, but San Franciscans respect Their City enough to know that they should never (even ironically) apologize for partying in it. San Francisco is life; everything else is just details about last night’s party.
