What it means...

The City by the Bay

So once again, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something decent to post...and it occurred to me that people are always asking me what it's like to live here and why I love it so much. Therefore, this blog post is a bit different but I hope you enjoy it anyway. I decided to give you a breakdown of what it's like...at least what it's like for me:

For those of you who are always asking, "What's it like to live in San Francisco?" or "How can you afford to live in San Francisco?" or "What's so great about San Francisco?"...well, buckle up. I'm about to answer all of those questions and then some...all the good, bad, and ugly as I see it.  Now assuming that you are an average person with an average education in an average field of work, this is what it means to live in the City:

Affording life in this city means....

San Francisco Guardian

...that no matter where you live, there is someone sleeping or "getting it on" on the other side of your wall...maybe even in your shared apartment...you've undoubtedly heard things in other languages that really weren't meant for human ears. It means you have probably worked at one time for a non-profit, smelled weed as you were waiting for your morning Muni bus to arrive, sold your clothes to a

The couch you're willing to sleep on for $1500/month

clothing exchange, looked into selling your plasma at the Blood Centers of the Pacific, contemplated selling your eggs to one of those places on the back of the Bay Guardian, participated in one too many focus groups about dog food just to get the $100 Visa card, thought about starting your own dog walking service, provided babysitting services for your boss, sold weed, asked strangers on the sidewalk for "a minute of their free time to talk to them about Greenpeace", checked the "free" section on Craigslist on an hourly basis...all in an effort to scrape together the $1500 a month to sleep on a stranger's couch....and you thought that was a deal and totally normal.

Irony in this city means...

Your new BFF!

...that you secretly have a crush on the guy who makes overpriced salads at the trendy overpriced restaurant by your work, but you eat there anyway while promising yourself that you will pack your lunch the next day...and realizing that buying that salad means you may have to forgo Happy Hour this week. It means smelling weed (as you run out for lunch) coming from the alley where the suits take their "smoke break". It also means that you spot that same salad guy performing at a Happy Hour drag show in the Castro (you'd recognize that butt anywhere!)...which leads you to contemplate if he has "made the change" yet...You end up becoming best friends and swapping outfits in the bathroom after the drag show.

Your neighborhood pride means...

Karl hanging out in the Sunset

...going YEARS without setting foot in the Marina because you aren't part of the 3% who work in Silicon Valley, you carry a $12 bag you bought on sale at Ross, at don't have the coordinating jacket to go with your yoga pants. It's knowing that the Panhandle, Cole Valley, Asbury Heights, Buena Vista, and Upper Haight are all really the same neighborhood. It's walking through said neighborhood and smelling weed six different times within 3 blocks. It's knowing that the Mission will ALWAYS be 10 degrees warmer than where ever you are. It's constantly convincing people that the fog in the Outer Sunset reminds you of growing up in Maine and that it's "not really that bad"...Besides, your City's fog is actually known on a first name basis as "Karl" (it's true...check out @Karlthefog on Twitter). You also have a local bum that you kinda look out for, slip him a buck or two, and go along with it being his "50th birthday" almost every time you run into him for the past 8 years.

Loving the City means...
...not getting attached because places that you love will close up forever without any kind of notice, apartment buildings will seemingly sprout out of the ground overnight, friends will have kids and move to Berkeley, friends will quit their non-profit jobs and join the Peace Corps, friends will end up in rehab, friends will move back to wherever it is they came from...it's also living in constant fear that the "big one" is coming and will destroy the City anyway...it's accepting that change is inevitable.

The weather in the City means...
...you NEVER leave the house without wearing at least 2 layers and bringing a sweater or jacket. You

Dolores Park on a sunny day

will own a hoodie in every color. LOTS of hoodies. Oh and LOTS of scarves...you will have Summer AND Winter scarves. Scarves you bought on Haight St., scarves you bought from the Chinese lady who sets up her stand in front of your work, and scarves you learned how to crochet that time you had to stay in a hostel for a week because the roof of your apartment caved in during the rainy season. It's not unheard of to call in sick to work because it's 80 degrees out and you want to go to the beach in February...just so you can say you went to the beach in February. It means there will be someone smoking weed at the beach. It means you endure the "June gloom" of cold and fog so that you can soak up Indian Summer in Dolores Park....while worrying that the term "Indian Summer" may be offensive.

The randomness in the City means...

Hammer working out at our gym

...holding on to hope that a celebration/street fair/some naked event will break out at any given time on a weekend. For this reason, you keep a box of costumes at the ready for events like Bay to Breakers, Burning Man, Halloween, Santa-con, Folsom Street Fair, or a holiday party you might get invited to...where EVERYONE is smoking weed because EVERYONE in this city has a medical marijuana card. You never know when you could end up dancing in the streets...ie: when Obama won, when DOMA was overturned, when the Giants won, when you ended up at The End Up at 5am after a night of said dancing in the street...or when you might run into a local celebrity like Robin
Williams in a comic book store, MC Hammer at the gym, Chris Isaac at a surf shop, or those guys from Mythbusters while waiting for your $8 latte in Starbucks.

Making friends in the City means...

Random people drinking beer

...you now have an eclectic group of friends that you will accumulate...sex workers, friends with PhD's, gay friends, straight friends, friends who could swing either way, friends who don't work but you're afraid to ask what they really do to pay the rent, vegan friends, computer geek friends, friends who speak 6 languages, heavily tattooed friends, friends who still do graffiti, friends that you met on Muni, friends in bands, friends who are older than you but still ride skateboards, friends who used to be a man, had a sex change, became a woman, married another woman, impregnated her new wife
with her frozen sperm from when she was a man, and now have two kids kinda friends! (That last one is true!) It means being completely open-minded and accepting of all people, unless they're Republicans.

Sports in this City means...
...you have no clue about sports but as soon as October rolls around, you know the entire starting lineup and who's pitching for the Giants. You jump on the bandwagon...unless the A's are doing better and then you jump off of the Giants bandwagon and onto the A's. It's really not giving a shit about the America's Cup...but breaking your neck to glimpse of those boats as you cross the bridge.

City pride means...
...the feeling you get at seeing the Golden Gate bridge and smiling at the way the fog sits right on the top...or driving over the Bay Bridge, seeing the skyline of the City and knowing that you are almost home. And when you're away from the City, it means visiting other parts of America and being thought of as some kind of liberal gay hippie...and being ok with that. They can call you a hippie.

Old hippies in Golden Gate Park

The houses are just as wacky as the people!

You recycle, you compost, you have a Nalgene bottle and a Kleen Kanteen to match nearly every outfit, you can swing a cat (but you wouldn't because you volunteer at the SPCA) and hit a grow house...and you don't hesitate to remind middle America that they are going to hell for not following in your carbon free footsteps! But being away means missing burritos, missing pupusas, missing Tapatio and Blondie's pizza. Being away also means getting teary eyed watching re-runs of "Full House" because it's set in San
Francisco and they all presumably live in one of the Painted Ladies....something that you've dreamed about since you moved here.

Then there's Muni...that great equalizer. It doesn't matter where you're from, where you work, how much money you have or what part of the City you're going to. Living here means riding the Night Owl and thinking you're gonna get mugged by the teenagers in the back (see previous post about the Owl). Taking the 48 from the quiet shore of the Outer Sunset through stroller-riddled Noe Valley and ending up in the bullet-riddled Bayshore and observing the City's varying degrees of humanity. It means at any stop on any bus you could encounter humans weeping, sleeping, peeing, drinking, shitting, fighting, smoking weed, shooting up, screaming, singing, and raging against whatever demons live in their head. It means you could be sitting next to a woman carrying a $2,000 Chanel bag on your right, while the guy on your left snorts a line of coke off of his iPhone...and you end up giving up your seat to a toothless 107 year old Asian woman with a 55 gallon drum full of cans and a live chicken in her wheelie cart. It means when the bus breaks down, you're ALL late...whether you're going to work, the beach, the nail salon, the Chinatown market, or to meet your acupuncturist at the medicinal marijuana dispensary. Yes, Muni is the great equalizer...It does not discriminate. We ALL deal. We ALL endure. We ALL are at its mercy.

Living in this City means complaining about Muni, writing a blog about it, and loving it all at the same time....


Thank you for riding Muni!

Yours Truly

Here's your SAM:

Wonderland

City Hall during Pride weekend

Dude, is 10 cents going to break you?

Wow! Well here we are smack dab in the middle of 2013, and those Mayans were wrong. This post is long overdue and I apologize. It doesn't feel like July...I know you are probably melting in this heatwave and are trying to invent new ways to combat boob sweat where you live, but I just got used to writing 2013 on my checks...ok, seriously, who writes checks anymore?! My point is, this year is flying by! Along with the new year, comes new laws...such as: you must obtain proper permits in San Francisco if you are cooking baked goods in your house which contain meat, and are then selling these items to the public. Well so much for my venison cupcake franchise! Now San Francisco is known for some really great laws such as no single-use plastic bags and charging 10 cents a bag for paper bags.

Old naked guys at Bay to Breakers

There's also the "no sit/lie" law which is supposed to keep the homeless people from camping out on the street, but apparently the homeless don't have cable, high speed internet, or a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle because they seem to be completely unaware of it. There's also the newly passed "No Public Nudity" law. That's right. All this time I could have been rocking out with my "hoo-ha" out right in the middle of Union Square in front of Macy's....but noooooo, I just assumed it was illegal. I clearly missed the boat on that one! Well, being San Francisco, a law like that wasn't going to go down without a fight...so district representative, Scott Wiener (I swear I couldn't make that up!), who proposed the law, amended it so that you can still get naked in public, but only at street fairs, festivals, the infamous Bay to Breakers race, and Gay Pride. And since there is almost one of these things going on every weekend, you can still get your freak on should you feel the need. I'm all for habeas corpus, but why is it always the old guy who has to be naked, and not the cute boy that makes salads at the deli??

Douchey hipster

Now if you live in the City, you could easily come up with half a dozen things that should be law on a daily basis...such as: No walking 4 people across on a sidewalk, no more than one Starbucks within a two block radius, no wearing Lulu Lemon yoga pants to work and trying to pass them off as "professional", and no handlebar mustaches...especially when paired with a quirky tattoo of the aforementioned mustache!
 I'm sure there's a whole other set of laws that we could devise for MUNI. Such as the following:

Oh, go right ahead sir...make yourself at home!

No, no...it's ok. I can stand the WHOLE way to work while you apply your bronzer!

I say no more than 2 clashing patterns allowed in one outfit, but hey...I'm not the fashion police.

Probably the biggest and best law that has been passed was the striking down of the DOMA and Prop 8 laws last week. Every so often in life, you happen to realize that you are in the exact right place at the exact right time when history is made...and for me, that was being in THIS city at THAT time. Knowing that at long last my friends, co-workers, and neighbors (and half the people in this city) all have the same rights that I do, is truly humbling and heartwarming. Also the thought of all those fabulous gay wedding receptions (think Celine Dion) did get me a bit excited, I can't lie.

A newlywed couple in the Pride parade.

 I recently took a trip back to the East Coast, and was reminded by a few friends and fans that I have not posted in a really long time and that they actually enjoy these posts. Who am I to let down my fans? It's not that I don't like posting to this blog; quite the opposite. I LOVE this blog! The problem is that my brain is constantly thinking of topics for a blog post that nothing seems to come to fruition....it just turns into a random spewing of my stream of consciousness, and sometimes it's funny.

Blueberry Beer! I know!!!

As I mentioned, I just got back from a trip to the East Coast where I indulged myself in "lobstah for dinnah" nearly every day and had a "wicked nice view of the habah" from my hotel room. After enduring what felt like the longest flight in my life (I swear I thought the captain was going to come on the intercom and say that we would soon be landing in Qatar, Uzbekistan, or some other really far away place!) we found ourselves in Boston. Boston is a city rich in American history and tradition and it just has a welcoming feel to it...like any local you meet on the street would be happy to direct you to the nearest bar and buy you a drink...and by "local" I mean one of the preppy frat boys that seem to appear in throngs around every corner. Now you would think that my favorite part of our time in Boston would have been the bar hopping and blueberry beer...and you might be right!

...Or maybe it was being in the midst of all the locals during the Stanley Cup Playoffs...seriously, they put hockey jerseys on their statues! Statues of basketball heroes nonetheless!

Red Auerbach, basketball Hall of Fame coach

Charlie Card for riding the T

But honestly, one of the best moments I had in Boston was riding the "T". The "T" is Boston's version of MUNI....only different. (Don't ask me why it's called the "T". I'm just telling people it has something to do with that massive Tea Party way back when). A few of the glaring differences would be: instead of Clipper Cards, they use Charlie Cards. Charlie? Who the hell is Charlie?! And, two people can use the SAME Charlie Card! This would cause all kinds of problems in San
Francisco. Guess those Bostonians are just a bit more refined and conservative than us San Franciscans. Also, all of the seats on the "T" face inward towards the center aisle, whereas Muni has seats facing all directions...front, back, and sideways. Again, it just seemed like the "T" with it's perfectly facing seats was mocking those of us from the West Coast with our seats all "willy nilly". Also, there's no graffiti. None. Not one tag, one scratched up window, phone number, sticker, or burn mark scrawled into a seat. Nothing. It felt like we were on the Monorail at Disneyland.  For those of you keeping score, it is now T-3 and MUNI-0. Anyway, as the blue line pulled up to the Airport station and we were about to board, I couldn't help but notice the sign on the front of the train said, "Wonderland".

Now I don't know about you, but Wonderland sounds a whole hell of a lot better than Embarcadero or Balboa Park....who WOULDN'T want to go to Wonderland? Just the name conjures up visions of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole and the Red Queen, Mad Hatter, and the Tweedle brothers...Dee and Dum. Seriously. WONDERLAND!?! Visions of Willy Wonka, Disneyland, Oz, Target sales racks, and margaritas danced in my head....you know...all the things I LOVE! It's enough to make you day dream on the train and almost miss your stop! Alas, we were NOT going to Wonderland, but to Government Center.  Government Center doesn't sound too appealing when compared to Wonderland...I just pictured George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, Michelle Obama and that fat governor from New Jersey having their own version of the "Boston Massacre". It brought back memories of Mr. Bolduc's High School social studies class and having to memorize the different branches of government and their functions....yuck! My response to those test questions was always the same..."What does the Legislative branch of the government do?"...."Um, nothing?"...."Ok, well than what does the Judicial branch of the government do?"...(again)..."Um, nothing?". Hey, as a kid, you always hear adults saying that the government doesn't do anything, and you take that for the truth! Who was I to argue? Anyway, we disembarked at Government Center and were immediately aware that this was NOT Wonderland. The station felt very claustrophobic with its low ceilings covered in pipes and wires and the thick humid air that just clung to you as you ascended the 3 flights of stairs to fresh air. So now the score is T-3 and MUNI-1. That's one thing that we have going for us...decent MUNI stations with escalators! While we found our way to a local seafood restaurant and a couple rounds of Shipyard beers, I couldn't help but dream about what was at the end of the line in Wonderland.

After being home in New England, I couldn't help but realize how far away I had gone. Friends said, "Oh, I want to live your life!" and "It must be so amazing to live in San Francisco" or "I just love your posts about The MUNI"...(I don't bother to correct them and say, "It's not The MUNI. It's just MUNI...and it pronounced Mew-knee not MOO-knee). Oh sure, I live such a glamorous life in the big city paying more for rent than what most of my friends pay for a mortgage with 10 acres of land...and when was the last time they had a homeless woman blow a snot rocket in their direction while they were waiting in line to get lunch? Looking around at the lobster boats, seaweed covered rocks, and pine trees I couldn't help but long for those days of familiarity, community, and a quieter way of life. It didn't take long for someone to pipe up and say, "Yeah, but could you stand the Wintah?!". That remains to be seen. My response was, "Yeah, but could you stand MUNI, earthquakes, homelessness, naked people, no back yard, no parking....?" Seems that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (or country in this case) but it's just as hard to mow. I guess we all just have to make our own "Wonderland", wherever that might be....but I can't help but wonder what the grass is like in Wonderland?

Wonderland Station

Here's your SAM:

Apparently he's praying for someone to steal his iPhone 4 so that he can get an upgrade!

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @IrideMUNI