San Francisco

Cities have had a rough go at it in recent years. After having moved to a significantly smaller town about a half-dozen years ago, I’ve observed, albeit from a distance, how life in urban areas has gotten more difficult. There is no shortage of stories in the news about how this city or that city has struggled to deal with homeless or rampant drug addiction. Lots of cities have simply gotten trashed by vandals. The cost of housing in many American cities has severely limited people’s options, and many have been driven out in search of something better in places they would not have seriously considered even five years ago.

I try to take stories I read and pictures I see in the news with a grain of salt. Journalists with biases both left and right have a way of writing their stories to draw you in emotionally and to keep you coming back for more. Photojournalists have a tendency to zoom in and frame their shots in such a way as to make some limited area or subject look like a representative sample of a larger situation when in fact that small area or subject is just that: a small, limited something or another that doesn’t really show overall what it feels like to experience a place or event in person.

More as a spur-of-the-moment getaway than anything else, my wife and I made a quick visit to San Francisco last week. We spent a lot of our time taking in exhibits at art museums or casually window shopping in various neighborhoods. But in the back of my mind, I was curious about what daily life was really like on the ground in one of America’s truly big cities. I wanted to see the situation for myself insofar as I could during a quick three-night stay.

In spite of what I’ve seen in the news media, San Francisco—or at least what parts of the town I saw as my wife and I wandered around the city—really wasn’t that bad. Or at least it wasn’t worse than what I had always experienced whenever I visited a major city. Indeed, the streets looked like they were in good shape, and we encountered kindhearted politeness more often than not. If things were worse than what I saw, then a tip of my hat goes to those who helped clean things up. Honestly, the biggest challenge we faced was keeping an eye out for widespread dog poo on sidewalks. (Folks, is it really that hard to pick up after your dog?)

Among other things, I also observed the way in which San Francisco kind of lives up to its reputation for obscenely high housing costs and unconventional retail businesses.

In the evening, I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at real estate listings for neighborhoods we had wandered through earlier in the day. It didn’t take me long to understand how much of one’s income would be consumed just by putting a roof over one’s head there. Whether the problem takes the form of rent, purchase prices, or property taxes, few places have housing costs that are more expensive than those in San Francisco. I can only imagine that, for many, the tradeoff between that cost and what one gets in return is worth it.

And at great risk of offending folks who like the Bay Area’s alternative uniqueness, some of the shops we encountered were a little beyond the pale. To be sure, a good part of the teenaged AFS exchange student in me is still alive and kicking. I’m always willing to try something new. But the crabby middle-aged former Rust Belter in me smiled wryly upon seeing places to seek out suspicious health care treatments or high-end accoutrements for Fifi.

One of my lasting memories after wandering around everyday San Francisco for the first time was the sheer volume of small shops, the sameness of them all, and the fact that both my wife and I never really felt drawn into any of them.

But all that aside, San Francisco’s beauty is hard to deny. On our walk, which at times felt more like a slog than a casual stroll especially when we encountered those famously steep inclines, we saw part of what makes life in San Francisco so appealing to many.

Over the course of our brief visit, I persistently wondered what it would be like to live in San Francisco. On one hand, I don’t think I would ever run out of subject matter for doing street photography. And similar to what I experienced in Seattle last month, I was reminded how freeing it is to walk around with a camera in a place where it’s far easier to operate (or at least feel like I’m operating) inconspicuously.

But you often want what you don’t have. Although there are times when I feel stifled by living in a smaller town, I have to remind myself that what feels great to experience every now and again may not be something that I would want to live with day in and day out.