At the end of this month, it will have been eight months since we bade farewell to the shitty, crowded, bad attitude-inducing, life-draining pit of hell that is San Francisco, California.
I still think it was the best move we've ever made. We now own a car. A new car. We have a parking space. We pay way less rent for a way bigger apartment. We now invest our money. My biggest goal is to own a house by next winter. We have seasons. We get to go to New York or Boston for the weekend any time we want. While walking down the street one day this past fall -- the sky was all blue and the leaves were yellow and red and orange and it was just a little bit cold out and I had just had a great day at work -- I felt something I hadn't felt in five years (or more) -- I felt happy.
And even though I feel happy, people who I meet here on the East Coast still can't seem to believe that I've chosen to leave such a "great", "fun" and "pretty" city. What's with you people? You take a little trip to "San Fran" (as you all like to call it out here) ride up a hill on a cable car stuffed with 75 other idiot tourists, have some soup in a fucking sourdough bowl, take a picture of a crooked street and think you have the place all figured out? Ha.
San Francisco is a city that can simultaneously make you feel both good and bad about yourself. There is an illusion that you can do anything you god-damned well please -- you want to write a novel? Write! You want to be in a rock band? Go ahead! You want to open yet another breakfast joint? Be our guest! You're a non-conformist who wants to be pierced and tattooed with green hair? Whoopee! The bohemian, grass-roots, Do-It-Yourself undercurrent is still there, it's just been paved over by so many yuppie establishments that it can no longer be effectively tapped into. The answer I usually give to people when they accusingly ask me why I left San Francisco is "It was getting so expensive" because the question itself just rubs me the wrong way. Most of the time these people, most of whom I barely know, act as though I've somehow let them down personally by leaving. Not one of these people would be able to accept the real reason we decided to leave, which is that:
San Francisco is a Mighty Hostile Place.
The Number One reason why we were outta there is that by the end of five years, we found ourselves coming home from wherever we had been that day and bitching about San Francisco for a long time. Non-stop. Venting is an understatement. I think you really have to live there, or have to have lived there, to even begin to understand what I'm talking about. We bitched so much that in order to save our last remaining shred of mental health we had to start cathartically venting it all onto a website, for Christ's sake (www.scowl.nu). I probably would have cracked by now if we hadn't done that.
San Francisco forces you to choose a side and stick with it. Basically, you're either a yuppie or you're not. We lived in the Lower Haight district of San Francisco which, by the time we left this past May, was still more or less holding it's own in a city of quick and extreme gentrification. It was (and hopefully still is) a "colorful" section of the city -- many guidebooks favored the words "sketchy" and "dirty." It was where we felt the most comfortable. There was not a yuppie in sight, save for the weekends when they would all put on their best Sunday dresses and go slumming. Musicians, DJ's, bartenders, skate punks, the tattooed and the pierced all called the Lower Haight their home. I, however, as much as I would have liked to be a full time member of the alternative nation, had what I thought at that time was the unfortunate luck to work in an Investment Banking firm in the Financial District, which meant that I had to "dress up" (as much as you can on the ever-casual West Coast), put on my sophisticated "upwardly mobile young woman" act, catch a bus to work, act like the corporate slave that I was, come home and then do my hair differently, change into my cool urban outfits and platform shoes, show my tattoos -- basically switch personalities. I felt like one of the slumming yuppies on the outside, even though deep down I wanted to be the "real me" all the time and have a cool shoe store/bartending/coffee place job.
The denizens of the Lower Haight were (and hopefully still are) fiercely protective of their 2-block strip of Haight street. Yuppies were more than frowned upon -- they were insulted, harassed and made fun of with much vigor. If you had happened to go into the bathroom at the Toronado (the bar we went to at least four times a week) you would have seen stickers in response to the growing number of yuppies and gentrification, which at that time were invading the city with a vengeance, that read: "Y2K"-"Yuppies to Kill...We hate you, and some of us are armed." The Lower Haight was supposed to be what San Francisco was all about, man! Individuality, Revolution and Youth! We hated the Silicon Valley millionaires with their white sweaters around their shoulders disrupting the flow of bitterness and hostility. You didn't see us tromping through their fern bars wearing our boots, dirty sweatshirts and dreadlocks; what gave them the right to invade our dingy space?
The Lower Haight was not all peaches and cream, however. God forbid you did happen to put on some "nicer" clothes. Were you now one of "them?" Do you happen to have a cell phone because they're sometimes *gasp* HANDY to have when you need to make a phone call? Don't let them see you use it in the Toronado unless you want to endure the disapproving glances. Are you a lower-class geek (economically speaking) who happened to have saved enough money to buy a Palm Pilot or other electronic organizer? Keep it at home! I was between a rock and a hard place. I was definitely not a yuppie, though I did work amongst them, but I was not able to let myself completely become a full-blown accepted "member" of the alternative Lower Haight. I was sick of living like a schizophrenic, sick of having to choose a personality and stick with it rain or shine, sick of having to feel like I fit in nowhere simply because I could not submit to the "all or nothing" attitude. San Francisco is very black and white -- it was as if you either had to be Superyuppie or be the complete and total opposite of that; nothing in between.
The segregation between the "Haves" and "Have-Nots" in San Francisco by the time that we left was leaving quite a visible rift. The yuppies were driving up rents and gentrification was progressing at the speed of light. The "Mission Yuppie Eradication Project" called for any resident of the Mission district (another area of the city which steadfastly resisted gentrification up until the bitter end) who saw a Yuppie Car, like a Range Rover or a BMW or a Mercedes or the like, to slash the tires, scratch the paint, break the windows; new Yuppie restaurants should likewise be vandalized. Rich-Famous-and-Overprivileged-Beyond-Belief Mayor Willie Brown was having the top of City Hall painted in real gold leaf, appearing on Playboy's Best Dressed Men list and making a cameo on "Suddenly Susan" while a huge number of homeless people begged for change (in every sense of the word) on the street. Either you were wealthy, or you were getting owner-evicted so some hotshot "dot com" prodigy can live in your apartment for twice the price. You're either living large in SF, or you're pissing on the street and eating from a dumpster. If you're stuck somewhere in the middle, like me, then you're eating at one overcrowded restaurant a week and leaving the doggie bag on top of the nearest trash can so that someone else can eat, and growing more and more bitter every day.
A large amount of the hostility in San Francisco was brought about by the entrance of wealth, but the overcrowding situation didn't help any, either. During the last few years that we spent in SF, the city had in the range of a 1% vacancy rate for apartments. You couldn't move if you wanted to. We were "next on the list" for a one-bedroom apartment for three years. "Any month now, they'll probably be moving" our landlord told us. Yeah, sure. It was a couple with two kids in a one-bedroom apartment and even THEY weren't moving. Everyone had a roommate...we knew a 35-year-old bartender who still had one. Buildings in SF literally touch. If I did the dishes, I could look out the kitchen window to the left and see a guy not 50 feet away standing at HIS kitchen sink doing HIS dishes. Said guy could also look straight into our walk-in closet. If I looked to the right I looked into another kitchen. The view from our closet window also allowed us to see if yet another neighbor was entertaining guests in her living room. Out our main room window we were entertained by a girl who walked around with very little clothes on. You could practically reach out and touch these people. Get the picture?
If you put enough chickens in a pen, they're gonna fight, and eventually one of them is going to get pecked to death. The public transportation system in San Francisco runs poorly and is literally overflowing with bodies every time of day. I've seen more knock-down fights on San Francisco busses because someone accidentally stepped on someone else's toe than I care to remember. On SF public transit, one comment has the power to provoke a violent and extended reaction. There is absolutely no courtesy whatsoever in San Francisco. Imagine our surprise when we took a trip back to the East Coast last year and found more politeness in New York City than we had ever seen in San Francisco. It's true...and by the way? New York is a LOT less crowded and has WAY more to offer.
I don't tell people any of this (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, believe me), but I have tried. They looked at me like I have two heads and started rambling on about the Golden Gate Bridge and the wonderful weather, and I had to stop myself from wringing their tiny little narrow-minded necks while shouting "Didn't you ever hear the expression 'You can't judge a book by it's cover?' Sunshine and Victorian houses do not a perfect place make!" So, here's my two cents: if any of you have the desire to move to San Francisco, don't. There will be no cool Ally-McBeal-type moments where you will thoughtfully walk down the street with a song from the soundtrack of your life playing in the background. Truth is, you'll go broke and you'll become bitter. Luckily, we got out before the hate completely consumed us.
If you do go, then good luck. You'll need it.
*Note on the above article: as Dennis Miller likes to say, "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong."