The Fail-Safe (San Francisco, Part II)
I’ve noticed that whenever I’m anxious about present realities, I fantasize about escaping to greener pastures as a kind of defense mechanism. I dream about running away to some fabulous yet impossibly perfect place and starting a totally new life, thinking, “How much better things would be, if only I could get there!” The mere thought of this fail-safe gives me comfort, though I rarely entertain the reality of actually leaving.
San Francisco is one of those places for me. Having never visited, my notion of the city was a pretty collage constructed from bits and pieces of a cultural imagination. To me, SF represented freedom, love, tolerance, individualism, artistic spirit—a place where you could be whoever you wanted to be. I saw the city through the lens of photographers I admired, and dreamt of those sun-soaked hills and misty mornings. Rationally, I knew I had an idealized, overly romanticized understanding of the city, and prepared myself for disappointment. But I couldn’t help but feel my breath catch in my throat my first night there, when I drove to the top of a tall hill and saw the lights of the city unfolding before me like a sea of stars. What if San Francisco was just as beautiful as I had feared?
Of course, as with all things in life, the reality was far more complicated. As with any city, San Francisco was in the midst of grappling with the double-edged sword of change. The friends I spoke to sensed a specter of “sameness” hanging in the air, threatening blandness, a profusion of overly trendy boutiques and health food stores, worsening inequality, and uniformity of thought and personality in the form of young, Ivy-educated, denim-clad programmers and software salesmen promising to “make the world a better place.” As one Uber driver (a San Francisco native) put it, “I just think it’s ironic that you have all these kids coming here, who all think they’re connecting the world—but the truth is, they don’t even know how to connect with people in real life.”
While I discovered that there was certainly some truth behind the stereotypes, I was cautious not to be overly critical. How often do we fall into the dangerous trap of glorifying the past and demonizing changes we don’t understand, particularly when those changes involve an influx of some seemingly homogenous Other? After all, I had only spent a few days exploring the city, and still found many things there to be grateful for—specifically, wonderful people I’m thankful to call my friends, high-quality coffee shops (even if I did pay $7 for an oat milk latte), healthier attitudes regarding work-life balance, proximity to nature, and of course, those gorgeous, gorgeous hills.