In the next few weeks, ET and I will be moving out of San Francisco, perhaps for good. I am living up on the promise I made back in April and leaving. Over the past weekend I was struck by how picky I’ve become, particularly with where I live.
For starters, living in San Francisco, I live in a place with:
- A thriving bicycle culture, which is only looking to get better
- Hundreds of restaurants with all sorts of delicious food stuffs
- Surprisingly few douchebags (hipsters and Mission bartenders not-withstanding)
- Fantastic weather
- Low violent crime
And I’m still not happy with it.
In the past, I’ve lived in places where enormous cars are a status symbol, giant belt buckles that double as shields are accepted; truck nuts. Moving here from Texas I left, stale, windless 100+ degree heat, random people shouting “faggot” at pedestrians from their cars, no tolerance drug policies coupled with binge drinking and drunk driving. To its credit however, Texas is cheap and areas like Austin are wonderful (not counting traffic). When I lived in eastern Germany, I was constantly confused, cold and more than once crashed a bike due to black ice on the roads. Before that, Northern Virginia, living dangerously close to the “south will rise again” group of folks, an area of the country where the Ku Klux Klan is still surprisingly strong, albeit more hidden than before.
Every place that I have lived has had its own unique set of problems, San Francisco included; the lack of progress for a progressive city still irritates the hell out of me.
There are so many parts of this country that unabashedly fucking suck compared to San Francisco, and I’m still not satisfied. What a silly problem to have.