Vogue's Horrible Guide to San Francisco

Vogue India's special guest blogger has written a truly astounding guide to San Francisco.  Since it kind of reads like gibberish, please- let me translate it for you. First will come the quotes in bold, then the translation. Okay?

"Living in San Francisco is an enviable lifestyle." 

Yes, the lifestyle of living here in SF is so enviable. Well said. 

...Wait, what lifestyle, you ask? Why, the lifestyle of the well-to-do tech professional who grew up somewhere suburban and has a ton of $$$ but needs to feel, like, real you know? Burning Man real. This guy don't wear no suit, carry no briefcase, man. He's got a messenger bag.  And those gross shoes that have separate toes that should only be worn for sort of physical activity but people wear on the street. This guy buys organic, ok? Sure, he goes into a taqueria and doesn't have his order ready on time and asks if they have whole wheat tortillas, but he is San Francisco.

And this guy and his wife, who is fashionable in a "paid full price for J. Crew ballet flats" kind of way, and their bilingual child Caleb recently moved to Guerrero Street from Boston or something and this is their reality. And the reality of everyone else not like him in the entire city does not exist. OK? Let's move on, shall we?

"Everyone with an idea and a smartphone wants to be strolling along the hilly sidewalks of this tiny glimmering city with perfect weather on the westernmost tip of Americana. " 

The westernmost tip of Americana.....wha? Is that a metaphor or something? And perfect weather? That's certainly debatable.

"San Francisco is a liberal haven where your body is your temple and there are no limits to where your mind can take you: two dazzling bridges leading into the peninsula * light the way." 

Statements like this are so powerful because they make so much sense.  Two bridges....and also no limits to where your mind can take you. On those bridges. Or, you know, guided by them. Not like other places, where they don't even have dazzling bridges to free their minds.

"...spend the afternoon browsing the casually curated boutiques in Hayes Valley."

I love curated things, but things that are casually curated...well, that's the wave of the future. I'd pay $95 for a casually curated t-shirt, wouldn't you?


" Jack Dorsey walks into a bar in North Beach, heads turn and tweets go out. 
But a sighting of Anne Hathaway at Flour + Water is just passé, you’re more busy recommending the 2006 Brunello to fellow superusers on Foursquare." 

Okay, I don't know who Jack Dorsey is, gonna guess he works in the tech industry. But yeah, Anne Hathaway in Flour + Water (most unnappetizing name for a restaurant ever...), it's true. I am "more busy" recommending the Brunello. On my phone. I don't need this Hollywood bullshit. I just need some really expensive wine, and my fellow superusers, and my brand new smartphone to use while I'm eating, and a $30 personal pizza. Cause I'm real. Now why the FUCK does this water glass have a mark on it time to write a negative Yelp review straight from the restaurant!

"The home of the New American cuisine movement, the Bay Area is a haven for the foodie; where words like organic and locavore should be dropped from menus and grocery stores as they can completely be taken for granted."

I can't argue with this statement. We all shop at Bi-Rite and Rainbow Grocery and coincidentally that $3 apple we all collectively buy there is organic. 

"The thickest of caramel ice cream and the darkest artisanal chocolate must always be sprinkled with the lightest grey sea salt; and toddlers happily chow down on quinoa, kale, truffle-drenched burrata, chorizo and kumquats."

I don't even know what burrata is. These toddlers sound like real yuppie jerks. 

"Echoes of the Beat poets resonate in the restlessness of a generation that has found its way to the tremulous edge of a continent that will always be physically isolated"

What isolated continent? North America? It's actually attached to South America, you know, through Central America. But, you know, tremulously. 

"San Francisco is a city of ideas. Where the power of a thought could change the way we travel, see, hear, learn, think, even love." 

The ideas are ideas for apps.

"People don’t go to work here; they follow their passions in offices parading as super-slick warehouse lofts stocked with art, colour, music, inspiration."

People here have really magical jobs. Working at a computer for ten hours in a loft building in the Tenderloin, ordering food online cause they're afraid to go outside. I mean, swirling around in a day-go mask and a feather boa in the fucking desert, man!

"The beat goes on." 
Yes, the very beat Sonny and Cher once sang about. 

Also, there's a photo of the blogger posing in the ethnically "hipster Mission" district.


On a more sober note, it saddens me to read about the city through this woman's eyes, and I can't help but wonder if this is truly her, and others, reality, at least to some extent.  In this version of SF, the locals, the diversity, the history, the gays, the unique neighborhoods, the working class, the sleaze and scum and grime, even the fog, have been effectively erased.

*Misuse of term "peninsula,", which typically refers to the South Bay, not Marin or Oakland (where the dazzling bridges go...okay, the bridges are dazzling, though. That is true.)

Looming Gentrification

Oh god. Mission and 15th.

The Excelsior: It's Not About "Potential"

When I was a kid, I was embarrassed to live in the Excelsior. I wanted to live somewhere "nice", like Noe Valley, where all the houses were freshly painted and there was no trash on the street. Back then, you would say the word Excelsior and no one even knew where you were talking about, even people from the city. 

Today, there are more hip young people and middle-class homeowners moving to the Excelsior than ever. I ran into someone I knew from Brooklyn; she now lives in the neighborhood. It was so strange that these people moved across the country to the little neighborhood I'd grown up in, one that few people had ever considered, that people had told me witheringly was "way out there."

But people need affordable places to live, and they are becoming increasingly scarce in SF. Plus, I knew she was aware of her role in gentrification; she and I had talked about the subject before. It wasn't like she was coming here to work at a startup and buy a condo.

Julia sent me a link to an article by a woman who considers herself "a pioneer of sorts" who recently moved to the "up and coming" (oh god) Excelsior, an, upon moving there, "longed to see a fixed gear bike or a tattooed girl walking down the street." Luckily, she managed to find some "diamonds in the rough," (all well-established Excelsior institutions) and came around to the hood, saying it has the "makings of an ultrahip neighborhood."

I met another young hip woman who worked in tech, she lived in the Excelsior too, off Ocean Avenue. She was really into Whole Foods. "Don't you love when you see hipsters in our neighborhood?" she asked.

Not really. 

It's not that I think hip young people are bad. I'm a hip young person. I'm sure people see me and think I moved here yesterday. (Once, while walking on 16th Street, some guy yelled "Hipsters!" in anger at my friends and I. True story.) Many interesting people are/were hip young people. My parents, and the parents of my SF native friends, were hip young people, some who moved here from across the county, knowing nothing about the city upon arrival. (My dad still likes to talk about, how when he got here in the 70's, he was shocked to find Haight Street "all boarded up.")

But I'm happy with how the Excelsior is now. In my dreams, hip young people and new yuppie homeowners like it too. 

"Urban" doesn't mean being surrounded by other hip young college educated people like yourself. It doesn't mean artisanal coffee and a wide variety of gluten-free prix fixe restaurants. Part of growing up in a city is being surrounded with people who are not like you and yet not being uncomfortable, not longing to see someone who fits in your own social group. Maybe you look around and people are not of your race or your economic class. Maybe the restaurants sell food you are not used to or do not look like the kind you went to back home. Maybe people speak another language than you. No one stares at you for the way you dress; no one is sizing you up; people mind their own business. 

The Excelsior isn't crying out for a Blue Bottle Coffee or a place that sells cured meats. Dry cleaners, hardware stores, pharmacies, hair salons, vegetable markets, inexpensive restaurants, thriving small businesses, handmade signs...aren't these enough? Why move to a city to go to a Whole Foods?

It's natural to want to be among your own kind; I get it. We all want that. And, historically, young people, especially hip ones, have shaken off the dust of their one-horse town to meet other hip young people and form a community in an urban area. And I know, for many people who have come from the suburbs, seeing a tattooed person or artisinal coffee shop might seem like a respite from what you're used to.

But if you want to be a citizen of the city, 4 real, you need a willingness to adopt local culture, and appreciate it for what is is, not what it could be if more white people moved to the area. To respect the local businesses and the ways of the hood. To not be grossed out by hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or upset by the lack of organic produce, or craft beer. 

The southern stretch of Mission Street bustles with activity and shoppers; there are few empty storefronts along a very long commercial corridor. The Excelsior doesn't suffer from urban blight or neglect or abandoned buildings, and crime is not a big problem. Many families live here, who own homes they worked hard to get. The Excelsior doesn't need to up and come, to wait for a brighter and more expensive future to fill the consumer needs of newcomers, even artistic young ones. These types of places are not what make a city great, and they are certainly not what make a city a city.  If that's what you want out of your neighborhood, you'll never be a citizen of San Francisco. 

Twin Peaks Properties

Now that Streetlight Records is closed (along with a lifetime of angsty teenage memories of buying CDs that CHANGED MY LIFE), there is no reason to go to Noe Valley (except to visit the city's best consignment store, Mary's Exchange!!!!); all the little neighborhood-y things that made it semi-charming get more and more swept away by dog pedicure places and $18,000 custom bike-eries very day. However, despite the death of the owner, realty office Twin Peaks Properties and its idiosyncratic window displays are still there. Noe Valley is obviously politically liberal (in a "I paid a million dollars for my two bedroom home to live here but I am just middle class and not, like fancy or anything,"/Gavin Newsom type way) and owner Harry Aleo was a real holdover from the area's working class roots, what with his pro-Reagan propaganda and "English Spoken Here" signs and whatnot.

While I don't agree with his views, I appreciate the effort he put into making these windows and the way he used them to further his own viewpoint and celebrate San Franciso's history- you can see old property prices, a Tonga Room menu, a 30's era photo showing a movie theater with a "NOE" marquee, and so much more. It's sad to think of this storefront being replaced. Also, check out the adorable old-school Noe Valley Merchant Assoosication logo! Way cuter than the new round one seen to the lower right.

PS: The Peaks Tavern, home to perhaps the best bar sign in the city, is another old school Noe Valley holdout at odds with the rest of the ultra-yuppie neighborhood. While I can't say I find the drunk 49-ers hatted men leering at me outside the bar at 4pm all that charming, it's certainly preferable to whatever it could turn into, like a wine bar or something. Anyway, I forgot to take photos of that. Also, remember oxygen bars? Hahahaha.

PPs; I stole this photo of The Peak's sign off flickr: It's a Tyrolean dog! Or something!

Discolandia

This is a little record store on 24th street in the Mission (from about Mission to Potrero)- an area that is rapidly gentrifying. 24th street is full of trees and old storefronts and businesses and great architecture, and shall feature prominently in Little San Francisco, at least until all the hipsters boring it up, with their American Apparels and expensive cocktails and whatnot.