Concerning San Francisco

San Francisco will humble even the pickiest of picky people. My dear, this city is not for the superficial of heart or stomach.

There are bounding hills everywhere, homelessness runs rampant, the weather is downright depressing, rent will bankrupt you and there exists a concerning lack of beautiful people. Topographically speaking, or regarding the subject of scenery or topography, if you study maps, if anyone at all still uses those archaic things, or whatever you want to call it (perhaps land?), it’s actually very pretty. But it pretty much ends there. Mother Earth got all the looks in northern California and beat her people unmercifully with the proverbial Ugly Stick (El Palo de Feo).

But look closer. This is a city of colloquial inner beauty, for sure – also of organic foods, free-range chicken/turkey/beef/dairy/child development/hair/etc., fine wine, activism, venture capitalism, affluence, technology startups, bi/tri/quadlingualism, canine appreciation/celebration, tourism, bike enthusiasm, messenger bag variety, free-trade coffee, not having children (aka “population control”), six-figure salaries, six-figure condos/apartments/small abodes/adobes, pride, eminent earthquakes, bridges, BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?), etc.

The pace is fast, competition and ambition run deep, and it is hard for one not to feel life passing him/her by – rolling like the fog rolls over this peninsula, through these buildings every day as if they were fingers raised from the palm of the earth, pointed toward space – like the frigid water that channels through the painted legs of the Golden Gate. In stride with this feeling, it is also hard for one not to want to disappear amid the shuffling, or stop life’s busy little movements altogether. Or at least for a short while.

Actually, maybe just long enough to take a lunch break a couple times a week.