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INTRODUCTION
What’s On Fast-Forward Now “One day, if I do go to heaven, I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.’” — Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle Walking around San Francisco, you keep finding yourself stopping in mid-stride, doing a double take, then spending the next five minutes grinning bemusedly and muttering to yourself, “Well, I did not see that coming!” This city knows how to charm and fascinate you. When I was growing up, if someone asked where I hailed from, the moment I mentioned San Francisco I’d get envious looks and comments like, “Boy, are you lucky!” My city was world famous for its cosmopolitan character, countercultural charm, and innovative genius; they called it “the city that never sleeps because it’s too busy inventing the future.” Heady stuff. In recent decades, hoping to profit from its popularity, the city has devoted staggering amounts of time and money to marketing San Francisco as the pinnacle of Instagram-worthy leisure. Ads show glorious weather, gourmet cuisine, and gorgeous scenery enlivened by a scattering of colorful characters — the perfect backdrop for vacation selfies guaranteed to arouse jealousy in the hearts of your social media contacts. The reality is that in summer’s high season (meaning the tourist influx, not a rise in street drugs), heavy fog covers the city from June Gloom to Fogust, threatening the lightly clad with hypothermia and obscuring those famous views. Yes, the food is wonderful, but often the prices are hard to swallow, especially when you’re washing them down with wine at $17 to $25 a glass. And while colorful characters abound, not all of them are amusingly picturesque in ways you’d want to share on Facebook. But you don’t go to San Francisco just to rack up gorgeous selfies (although yes, you can certainly capture plenty of those if you want them). This city has always been on the cutting edge of tomorrow, launching social trends, technological breakthroughs, and groundbreaking entrepreneurial experiments that are about to redefine the narrative of the nation’s progress. You come here to catch a glimpse of tomorrow’s possibilities — and have some fun while you’re at it. Then suddenly, a couple of years ago, everybody started referring to San Francisco in the past tense, using the kind of hushed tones usually reserved for murmuring, “So sorry for your loss.” The media stopped reporting on tech startups and overpriced pinot noir and started publishing photos of ragged tents and empty office towers, creating a horrifying “doom loop” narrative about the city. In 2022 Newsweek wrote, “Struggling with rampant homelessness, a drug crisis, surging crime, and several business closures, San Francisco is no longer the thriving city it used to be. Its decline in recent months has led some to say the city ‘is dying.’” San Francisco — dying? Hogwash! Naysayers have been drafting the city’s obituary since five minutes after the Gold Rush. San Francisco wasn’t on life support in 1855 and it isn’t now. Oh sure, it’s had its share of problems lately. What city didn’t suffer staggering social and economic setbacks during the pandemic? Luckily San Francisco knows better than most how to handle disruption; frankly, that’s always been our default state. Think about the Gold Rush years. The 1906 earthquake and fire. African-American Rosie the Riveters upending racial and gender discriminatory practices in our Liberty Ship yards. Beatnik nonconformists redefining freedom of speech. The Summer of Love. LGBTQ pride. HIV-AIDS. The 1989 earthquake. Dot coms. iPhones. Airbnb. Twitter. Uber. And now driverless taxis, artificial intelligence, and pizza delivery robots. So my initial reaction to all the doom loop talk was a snort of derisive skepticism. Surely the news stories about San Francisco disintegrating into an apocalyptic hellscape were greatly exaggerated. I suspected much of the sneering was politically motivated; the Left Coast is always a popular target. And after decades of writing about how cool San Francisco is, no doubt many jaded journalists couldn’t resist the chance to jump on the bandwagon and get snarky at the city’s expense. This was likely just another case of the media writing click-bait alarmist headlines based mostly on hot air mixed with outdated info from the pandemic years. But I wanted to know for sure. So I came up with a plan. As a travel writer, I spend much of my time visiting foreign cities and doing the research and boots-on-the-ground legwork necessary to dig deep into local history and character. I seek out intriguing people, offbeat bars, irresistible comfort foods, fresh perspectives on iconic landmarks, and a sense of the community’s forward momentum. I decided to put my professional skills to work investigating San Francisco. “People keep talking about the city’s dystopian atmosphere and high prices,” I said to my husband, Rich. “I’d like to explore the cheap and cheerful side of San Francisco. Why don’t we see how much good fun and great food we can have for easy money? And while we’re at it, we’ll keep an eye out for signs of the apocalyptic hellscape — see if it’s really there or is nothing but a media-inspired myth.” “You had me at ‘explore,’” he said. Rich adores travel adventures of any kind, the quirkier the better. “And you nailed it at ‘cheap and cheerful.’ I’m in.” We committed six months to the project, visiting the city once a week, taking the morning ferry across the bay from our home in Marin County, wandering a neighborhood or two, having lunch, and returning home in the afternoon. Each week I wrote about our discoveries on my blog, Enjoy Living Abroad. I maintained the same spirit of honest inquiry (OK, sheer nosiness) that had propelled me through railway journeys in Eastern Europe, into countless rural kitchens for The Great Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour, and over to Seville, Spain, my home base in Europe for the past two decades. My twenty San Francisco posts, expanded, updated, and in chronological order, form the basis for this book. In these pages you’ll find a concise introduction to my home city, with helpful information for creating your own adventures. You’ll learn the curious histories of beloved landmarks and discover lesser known neighborhoods that are unexpectedly fun to visit. I’ll pass along tips for finding terrific food at affordable little diners and taverns. And I’ll give you the inside scoop on our urban legends, outrageous characters, and wildest scandals, as well as cozy bookstores, picturesque gardens, and outlandish dive bars. I’ve included menu offerings and prices as I found them in 2024; some will no doubt have changed since then. Throughout the text I’ve included links to key locations and travel information, so if you’re reading this on your smartphone, you can easily look up directions, opening hours, photos, and additional details as you go. To help you get around, I’ve provided transportation tips to help you make use of our vintage streetcars, iconic cable cars, ferry boats, and — if you’re up for it — driverless taxis. Just about the only things you won’t find in this book are the photos that appeared in my blog posts. In my experience, e-readers don’t show pictures to advantage; all too often they look confusing, muddy, and drab. Curious readers are invited to check out the photographs on my website, EnjoyLivingAbroad.com. I think you’ll agree some are well worth a thousand words. I don’t know if the late Herb Caen would be pleased or outraged that the 2024 World’s Best Cities Report rated San Francisco the seventh best city in the world. Clearly Mr. Caen would expect his city to be proclaimed top banana; the rest of us are just relieved to get an honest assessment that doesn’t suggest it’s already burning in a dumpster. “Despite San Francisco’s meticulously documented challenges,” notes the report, “job opportunities and infrastructure buildout pave the way as the world continues to rush in like it always has … High salaries that draw global workers [make it the] number one place for start-up innovation.” With all due respect to Mr. Caen, the claim that San Francisco surpasses Paradise itself may be a slight exaggeration. But he and I — and the data behind the 2024 World’s Best Cities Report — can vouch for the fact San Francisco remains one of most happening places on the planet. I’m not going to keep you in suspense; twenty weeks of diligent research showed me that San Francisco is not caught in a doom loop or spiraling down into the lower depths of Hades. The city is vibrant as ever, rushing along on the fast track to a future that’s likely to surprise us all. Right now San Francisco is standing by to dazzle you, charm your socks off, and invite you to open your heart, dream big, color outside the lines, and take home exciting new memories far more precious than any selfies you might post on Instagram. |