I’ve been living in San Francisco for nine months – ten if you count the three weeks I lived in a hotel. Aside from a deep appreciation for the beauty and character of this city, I don’t have much to show for my ten months here: no girlfriend, no job, no newly published poems, stories, or pieces of writing. And yet, nearly every day, I feel as though I’m on the cusp of something bigger, as though opportunities (jobs, new friends, and inspiration) are just around the corner.
While not terribly methodical, there has been a process to where I’ve focused my attention and efforts these past ten months: first, find a place to live, then a job, then allow other things to fall into place (friends, dates, poetry). Most of my efforts have been focused on getting a job. It’s a slow process. I search. I research. I write cover letters, I interview, I try to sell myself. I don’t like trying to sell myself – I prefer to prove myself. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
There’s only so much one can do on the job search front, though I’m sure I could do more (attend networking events, volunteer, make connections, apply to more positions). I have days when I tell myself that I’m going to apply to every job that is even remotely interesting and will pay the bills (or even not so interesting but will still pay the bills). For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to do that. I hit some mental wall in the search process in which I would feel like a fraud trying to say that I’m interested in selling snake oil from the Acme Snake Oil Company because I love snake oil and believe everyone should have three bottles of snake oil on hand at all times and ASOC is the best snake oil company in the world. As such, I avoid the snake oil jobs and am still only applying for those positions where I’m genuinely interested in the position/organization and can get excited about the work. This can be a very limiting approach and at times, because I take the process seriously, I get tired of trying to imagine myself in whatever new position or company I’m looking at.
When I’m not applying for jobs, I’m reading or writing or enjoying the city (which is most of the hours in my day). A week or two ago I went to a literary magazine release party in the alley by City Lights Books (Jack Kerouac Alley). There was music and free beer, sunshine and people reading to the crowd. Yes, there was a crowd for a literary magazine release party (which I can’t imagine happening in many other cities). The writers had all written “letters to San Francisco.” The journal/magazine in which they were published was an attempt to counter the doom-loop narrative that had taken hold in the national press. As an aside, reading through the magazine, I’ve already come across two stories of people who, like me, started literary/comic magazines in the 90s – which of course makes me feel like I fit in here. A week after the reading, I went to a First Thursday block party. There were bands and DJs (including a mobile DJ booth – imagine a food truck, but with booming speakers and turntables). There was dancing and lots of people enjoying a gorgeous evening downtown.
Nearly every week of the ten months that I’ve lived here, I’ve found a new gem or new reason to absolutely adore this city. Nearly every week, I’ve talked with some stranger who shares with me their love for the city – people who have lived here for fifteen or twenty years and still find it to be charming and magical. At the magazine release party, I talked with some of the writers along with the guy who organized the whole thing (he once ran for mayor). They all say the same thing: they’re never bored with this place. It’s beautiful, temperate, vibrant, and funky.
I visited SF in March of 2023 when the doom loop talk was at a feverish pitch. I saw a very different city than the one I was reading about in the news. Yes, I saw some of the problems first-hand: people folded over in the fentanyl stoop, homeless encampments in the alleyways, shit on the sidewalks. Nevertheless, I felt undeterred. I also saw murals and colors and diverse neighborhoods. Not only did SF feel like a vibrant city with tremendous opportunity, it was a far cry from some of the rougher or more run down cities I had visited in prior years (Memphis, Greensboro, St. Louis). In those cities, the vacant building seemed more noticeable and the lack of foot traffic seemed more isolating. SF has its share of vacant buildings, but it never looks abandoned. Every day, there are people walking around and doing things, tourists walking along the water front or taking pictures of the bridge. Temperature and sunshine have a lot to do how active this city is. According to Wikipedia, SF gets 3,061 hours of sunshine per year. By comparison, Philly gets 2,498 hours, Memphis gets 2,888 hours (State College wasn’t listed though it has made the USA today list of least sunny cities in the US).
The weather and landscape will always be a draw. They’re two of the reasons I give for moving here. The third reason (culture) is the one that is most in flux and perhaps most in jeopardy. There is a sense that the city has lost some of its character and bohemian charm. Gentrification from the tech and finance folks has driven up the cost of just about everything and driven out a lot of the artists and lower wage earners. But, at least among some of the people I talk to, there’s also a sense of renewal and revitalization, a sense of fight against these outside forces, a sense that as a city that has seen more booms and busts than any other city, it will redefine itself in new and interesting ways. And that’s one of the things I’m noticing. This is a city of transplants, and they tend to fall into two camps: those who wish to remake the city in their image of what it should be and those who love the city for its organic messiness and storied/dreamer past. The one camp, perhaps in an effort to achieve a homogeneous sense of the pristine, seems to see nothing but decay fouling the streets and sidewalks. The other camp sees a rich tapestry full of quirky characters and diverse complexity. I know which camp I prefer.