Dispatch #3 from the Magic Kingdom
A full day hike across the real San Francisco. How's it doing?
My first 2 dispatches from this San Francisco sojourn centered on neighborhoods familiar to visitors and highlighted often when the city’s condition is chronicled: the greater Downtown (surprisingly unsoiled) and the Tenderloin (unsurprisingly defiled). For this final dispatch I’m taking a wider city view, beyond the tourists maps and zones-of-the-moment. Blocks from the epicenters and out to where families have lived generation after generation, veiled in fog and happily immune to the ephemeral extremes of the city’s moment-to moment fortunes. Or are they?
Dispatch #3: Across the Universe
San Francisco is one of the world’s great walking cities. It’s small and intimate and lined with colorful, historic architecture. Settled by waves of immigrants, one passes through ethnic villages where Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Irish, Russians, Vietnamese and others recreated American versions of home, either pushed by escape or pulled by promise. Its hills offer stunning views east, west, north, and south. Cable cars rumble the ground and tribal aromas tease the nose, challenging any effort at a respectable cross-town pace. A quick taco here and a coffee-to-go there. Damn, those bbq pork buns look good. If you love having the senses tantalized then you must surrender; the sirens of sight, sound, taste and smell are calling.
A number of engagements last Thursday provided an excuse to cross the city on foot, through neighborhoods beyond the standard doom loop spotlight. A former colleague and I got caught up over a morning coffee at the Ferry Building, followed by a noontime visit to INSEAD’s Innovation Hub in SOMA. And later that afternoon, after a delicious lunch at Buena Vida Cantina, I met an old friend for coffee and a charcuterie plate at the Atlas Cafe in the Mission. No Ubers were called or metros taken.
I bid adieu to Leah in the early evening, hoping to catch a 48 bus coming up 24th Street, which would ferry me back west of Twin Peaks and close to home. But the bus was running late, the street all a-twinkle, and Energizer Bunny inside charged and curious. Would the noisy intersection at 24th and Mission Street be dirtier than remembered, missing its Mexican street vendors and feeling more hostile? No. Would the sidewalks of Noe Valley be void of baby strollers and moms in Lululemon, chai lattes in hand? No. As I made the steep climb over Twin Peaks and descended into West Portal I noticed the same thing, … no dystopian collapse out here in the Avenues, no massive tent cities, nothing that would signal impending urban collapse.
My heroic hike that day merited a glass of wine, so I pulled up a stool at the Que Syrah wine bar near home, where I’ve known the owners Stephanie and Keith since opening day some 15 years back. Their take on neighborhood conditions largely mirrored those I’d been hearing all week from long-time locals in different parts of the city. Awareness of an uptick in homelessness; but an uptick, not a wave. Concern with a rise in nonviolent crime; but no sense of anarchy or violent lawlessness. Real problems that required creative solutions, but a hope that they would be found. No one is packing up just yet.
The problems downtown are different than those in the Tenderloin are different than those in the residential neighborhoods. Ofena is an upscale Italian restaurant that just opened behind our home, and a family-run organic grocery store has replaced Ambassador Toys (my kids LOVED that store) near Que Syrah on West Portal Avenue. Old Navy and Nordstrom have pulled out of downtown, but IKEA is opening a new showroom there. Some startups have moved on but many entrepreneurs are finding their ways back, missing the creative energy and investment capital that no other region on the planet is close to matching. According to comprehensive.io over 20% of all AI-related job postings at the moment are in San Francisco proper (it sums to 50% if Silicon Valley is thrown in) and OpenAI just signed a lease for nearly a half-million square feet of space in the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood. Very promising.
I sit at SFO’s International Terminal now, waiting for my long flight back to Europe. I knew I’d finish this series of dispatches on a hopeful note. I can’t help myself, just too much love for and faith in the City by the Bay. You should plan a visit. The lines are small, prices lowered, and locals eager to entertain. Where to go? Give me shout, I’m always happy to play the effervescent guide. I left my heart….
Click these links to read dispatches #1 (All Quiet on the Western Front) and #2 (Welcome to the Jungle) from this San Francisco journey.