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Sep. 27th, 2012 09:38 pmA friend linked me to this article today. It's interesting, but long, so I'll summarize it here if you want to skip it: San Francisco used to be home to the weird, the outcasts, the hippies who tried new things and lived art, but in the last ten years it's slipped into a new thing, a tech central filled with new money and young kids from Elsewhere who know how to program but don't know how to relax after work, and the entire culture of the city has changed. The old character has been priced out and replaced with the overflow from Palo Alto.
I noticed this. We got here and I started apologizing profusely to Jim. This is not the California I remembered, this is not the San Francisco I talked up, this is not the city I thought we were moving to. This city is harsh and fast and unforgiving. I remembered organic food and the smell of weed on street corners and lazy mornings spent lounging in the sun with a beer while discussing all the wealth of possibility the world holds. This is not that city.
The sad thing is that this is still home to me. I don't know what makes a place home, but this one is mine. I think of all the awful things, the high rent and the ridiculously out of place racecars and the feeling that nothing you do matters because no one cares... and then I look out my window and see the lights of a thousand apartments rolling over Potrero Hill to our south, and the fog rolling in from behind us to coat the buildings to our north, the smell of salt and the sound of sirens, and it just feels like home. I belong here. It's heartbreaking. What if I'd come here six years ago? How different would it have been? Would I have needed to stay here after it changed underneath me? How do I translate this feeling of belonging into something Jim can understand? Can I feel this attachment to other places in California? What the hell is wrong with me? Who falls in love with a 7x7 square of land?
I noticed this. We got here and I started apologizing profusely to Jim. This is not the California I remembered, this is not the San Francisco I talked up, this is not the city I thought we were moving to. This city is harsh and fast and unforgiving. I remembered organic food and the smell of weed on street corners and lazy mornings spent lounging in the sun with a beer while discussing all the wealth of possibility the world holds. This is not that city.
The sad thing is that this is still home to me. I don't know what makes a place home, but this one is mine. I think of all the awful things, the high rent and the ridiculously out of place racecars and the feeling that nothing you do matters because no one cares... and then I look out my window and see the lights of a thousand apartments rolling over Potrero Hill to our south, and the fog rolling in from behind us to coat the buildings to our north, the smell of salt and the sound of sirens, and it just feels like home. I belong here. It's heartbreaking. What if I'd come here six years ago? How different would it have been? Would I have needed to stay here after it changed underneath me? How do I translate this feeling of belonging into something Jim can understand? Can I feel this attachment to other places in California? What the hell is wrong with me? Who falls in love with a 7x7 square of land?
