"A beautiful day in San Francisco is the most beautiful day on earth."
Posted on | January 14, 2006 | 4 Comments
I used to hate San Francisco. Back in the early ’80s, when my sister was in college at Berkeley, I loved coming up to visit her but I only loved Berkeley; San Francisco was too East-Coast and thus uninviting and distant in a way that California never was for me. I had no interest even in visiting, let alone living here. Plus, the most loathsome co-worker/supervisor with whom I ever worked had moved to L.A. from here and was always going on smugly about how much better San Francisco was than L.A., reason enough to hate it.
Never say never. Now I love it and am happy to be here, even though this is not a city for the working class, which means it is a city of temporary residents and rich people. From our mayor’s office:
Only 12% of San Franciscans can afford to buy a median priced home which, in January 2005, skyrocketed to $666,740. And only 35% of San Franciscans own their own home. New York City is the only city in the nation with a lower percentage of homeowners than San Francisco. By way of reference, the national median priced home is $187,500.
That’s pretty dismal.
I borrowed the image above from my girl; it’s her work. I don’t have any photographs of San Francisco. I don’t think that’s the kind of day Mosley, as Easy Rawlins, was invoking with his statement (he went on to say, “The sky is blue and white, Michelangelo at his best, and the air is so crystal clear it makes you feel that you can see more detail than you ever have before.”), but beauty is different things to different people. Since reading it a few days ago his words have stayed with me. Is it true of the place I call home? Is it true because it’s the place I call home?
Now I gotta go think about Cuba.
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4 Responses to “"A beautiful day in San Francisco is the most beautiful day on earth."”
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January 15th, 2006 @ 11:10 am
SF is beautiful. Walter Mosley and Mr. Steve Perry got that right. It is also filled with too many rich people, and the mayor seems more likely to make this worse than better. D’s photo is gorgeous, btw. I would chop off my left arm to deal with SF’s drawbacks though. I thought Iowa would be more affordable for more people, but the truth is that people make much less money out here, so some of the problems are comparable. Iowa is also the Meth Capital of the US. And even though Iowa presents itself as friendly and welcoming, it is definitely not friendly to poc who aren’t assimilating/identifying with white Iowa culture. Iowa City is much more welcoming to international poc than U.S. poc. sure, the air is clean enough, and all that. but it’s cold as all get-out, and the food sucks big-time.
January 15th, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
You raise an excellent question, Carla. I’ve always been very proud to say that I’m a native San Franciscan (either a 5th or 6th generation on my father’s side). I come from the working class and I know that my ancestors couldn’t have afforded the San Francisco of today. Their large Irish families would be in abject poverty.
I hate that this has happened to my hometown. It has indeed become a city for rich transplants and those in transition. Natives of my generation don’t feel like there’s a prayer of owning a home here. The only way to do that is if you inherit one. Otherwise, you rent or you leave for the suburbs or states for which you have no connection, but which you can afford.
Despite all this, I love San Francisco. I love the memories that overwhelm me when I go back to the Mission, like the tamale man pushing his cart on a Saturday afternoon. I even miss cold night games in May at Candlestick Park drinking hot chocolate with my father. I love the sound of fog horns. I like the hills and the goofy one-way streets. I love that even though it was overtuned, we had gay marriages here and Armageddon didn’t happen.
It’s far from perfect, but I when I think of moving away again, it’s hard to imagine. I feel rooted here by family, past and present, by natural beauty, by political ideology and by the hope that the working class can someday thrive again here.
January 16th, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
Speaking about Americans not knowing or caring, yesterday I had some errands to run downtown on and around Powell Street, and as I was standing there waiting for someone I was taking in the scene at Market and Powell–you know, the wacked out man who sits with his big sign railing against homosexuality and fornication; the tap dancers who, frankly, aren’t very entertaining–and on this particular day there was a very articulate soapbox orator railing against the Bush regime and their myriad and mounting crimes against humanity and the rest of the world. He had a megaphone, so he was projecting, and there at that intersection of commerce bordered as it is by the Gap, Forever 21, and the San Francisco Shopping Center, I was heartened to hear this voice of reason and sanity amidst the hustle and bustle of capitalism and happy to live in a city in which people will freely stand on the street and voice their beliefs, but I was also noticing how few people even paid him any attention. Did they hear him, like me, and just take it literally in stride as they went about their day? It sure didn’t seem so. Then, not long into his oration the partner of one of the dancing performers cranked up the James Brown to effectively drown him out (the dancer never even danced). So it goes when you’re vying for the American public’s attention: do we wanna get schooled, or do we just wanna dance?
I’m so sorry Iowa sucks, and, you know, Cuba is intolerant of gay people. But hey, so is my country. That phenomenon of U.S. versus international people of color is one that is definitely affecting African Americans, as universities here, for example are increasingly accepting foreign-born black students and pointing to their diversity but the reality is that they are enrolling fewer and fewer plain old American blacks. Apparently we whine too much and are not that bright.
And yeah, Kelly, one’s connection to a place, however flawed, is so important. L.A. will always be my city because I know it so intimately. But they should ban cars.
January 26th, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
Of course, you know, you could also move up to Toronto, Canada. Yeah, Canadians were stupid enough to vote in Stephan Harper (A Bush-light, only more creepy).
Still, Toronto was steadfast again voting Conversative (right) and and we will fight to keep same-sex marriage in this country.
Unfortunately, while Toronto will still be home to immigrants from the world over, housing here is as expensive as it is in SF.