Shaking the Snowglobe

Typically you wave and say goodbye to a place that means a lot to you when you leave it. My decision to depart SF happened slowly and then suddenly, so I didn’t feel like I had the chance.

But no reason I can’t say a farewell now 🙂

This began as a long, drawn out post, but I’d like to make it simpler. For every house I lived in, one photo and memory that does it’s best to sum that period up. And a little spiel at the end.

An Airbnb on 18th and Mission Street (The Mission). February 2020

It was my first month in SF and I was homesick. My Airbnb roommate, a mezcal salesman from Guadalajara, told me to run up Bernal Heights at sunrise the next day. I did it and could not believe how beautiful the city was. A new era of my life settled in. The first of many, many hills I would run up in and around the bay.

507 1/2 Lyon Street (NOPA). Three blocks from Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle. March 2020 – February 2021.

In pandemic boredom, Collin and I measured how many beers can fit inside of a frisbee. It’s roughly five. But more importantly, right when we poured the final beer, Rob walked in and introduced us to Maddie for the first time. They just moved to Boston together, roughly five years later.

1236 Arguello Boulevard (The Inner Sunset). June 2021-May 2023

This was a period of immense new-ness. New hobbies, new people, new roles at work. The irony was that my roommate was someone I had known since the second grade. We had a lot of pleasant nights that looked like this.

Alpine Meadows, Lake Tahoe. Winter 2023.

(The ski leases count as houses!).

Doug Coombs, the father of US freestyle skiing, said in his high school yearbook, “There is no such thing as too much snow!” Well, I agree mostly. But Tahoe pushed that boundary while we stayed in this house. Sometimes it snowed so much that we could not physically leave. It looked like a Dr. Seuss world. It was amazing.

225 10th Avenue (The Inner Richmond). July 2023-September 2024.

We had a private backyard, lived a fifteen minute walk to the beach, and had a national forest at our doorstep. Living here was, as Alex put it, “a triumph.” We threw a big Halloween party in October 2023. I bought a bunch of baby blue rec soccer jerseys and covered them in fake blood as a costume from the movie Kicking and Screaming with Will Ferrell.

Cedar Avenue, Homewood, CA. Winter 2024.

This ski lease had a sauna.

739 Haight Street (The Lower Haight). September 2024-November 2024.

My final home. It was more temporary than I expected. A small step eastward that preceded a more giant leap back to NYC. Living by myself granted some clarity. I missed my family. Four and a half years is a long time to live so far away. But it was cute.

San Francisco is very transient; I saw many people come, never truly arrive, and leave. I don’t blame them for just dipping their toes. On it’s surface, as a city, it doesn’t all make a ton of sense. It’s not that walkable because of the hills. The weather can be frustrating and middling in between a comfortable warmth and cozy jacket-requiring chill. The amenities of the city can be inconvenient, putting everyone to sleep at early hours.

But it is a deeply special place if you give it time and attention. I fully submerged myself in the Bay, quite literally, and it was not easy at all to bring myself to go. To have so much natural beauty within the boundaries of any semblance of a prominent city is something to cherish. Building friendships and relationships in the ocean, in parks, on trails, in the mountains, and hilly golf courses creates powerful and unique bonds.

City cultures are ecologically and historically shaped. There is an optimism in SF, granted by the mild climate and easy environment. It shows up everywhere, even in the economy where venture capital money flows wildly into unprofitable sci fi projects on the assumption that one of those ideas might change the world. The environment is kind to us, brings us sunshine and plenty of food. Why wouldn’t life be the same? Cold weather cities foster a gritty togetherness and an ethic towards toil as a means of surviving. There is a seasonal emotion to those cultures. By the end of my time, a dissonant reality settled between SF’s calm, season-less contentment and my own emotional nature. One morning I woke up in my final apartment on Haight Street and felt a strong desire. I wanted it to be cold outside. I threw on a heavy sweater and walked out, but to my dismay the sun had broken through and warmed my body. I texted a friend, who I expect will be in the Bay for a long time, and lamented the warmth. He gave a quick, confused reply. “That’s some crazy talk. Let’s go to the beach.”