On Finding A New Life in San Francisco

The chunk of the city from Sutro Tower to USF is close to my heart. (Paolo Bicchieri)

It’s not a facetious question to ask at this point: How many articles taking San Francisco and the Bay Area to task will we, the people who live here, suffer in the year of our lord 2023? The New Yorker is the latest publication to enter the fray, citing billionaires and chefs and locals alike in asking for solutions to the myriad problems the Paris of the West is facing. And I won’t be blasé and pretend there aren’t any: rampant wealth inequality, a total dearth of housing options, and the list goes on.

Still, I want to throw in for why moving to San Francisco — and actually living here, rather than standing on the peripheries of the vibrant city while complaining about the poop on the sidewalk — was one of the best decisions I ever made. I’m not the precocious offspring of the elite moving here for my internship-to-project manager pipeline position at Google, Goldman Sachs, or a consulting firm. I’m not living in one of the suburban fringes of the Bay where we’re told are the only places a working class or poor person might be able to live, though shout outs to Antioch and Pacifica all the same. I moved here after a childhood dreaming of San Francisco in small town America with a cast iron pan from my grandma and a few hundred dollars in my bank account. That was in 2018, and I haven’t looked back.

Living in San Francisco was on my mind all throughout my childhood. My mom lived south of San Francisco and in Glen Park in the 1980s, attending a now-closed Christian university in the city. My dad sailed to the Golden Gate before I was born, spending a New Year’s trundling through downtown in search of a good time. When I was 14 years old my brother and I road tripped to the city with my dad; every time I drive past the panhandle I remember him telling us in 2009 to take all your stuff out of your car in a city, so unlike our hometown in Washington. I got ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s on Haight and Ashbury streets, singing happy birthday for free sprinkles thanks to a promotional deal. I ate pizza at Amici’s on Lombard Street. It was the coolest.

Green Apple Books’ 9th Avenue outpost is a delight. (Paolo Bicchieri)

Little do many know, goats roam Sutro Forest to tend to the flora and fauna in the woods. (Paolo Bicchieri)

And let me say I was ultra depressed for the great majority of my teenage years. This road trip was major for me, putting spiritual gas in the proverbial tank for those dark days. I would read articles about the Bay Area while cutting chemistry class to drink at home junior year, not quite grasping what made it an “area” rather than a city. But once I realized how much money people who lived in San Francisco were supposed to have, and how much money I did not have while working at McDonald’s in high school, I tabled the idea of traveling to California ad infinitum, putting it up there with living in New York, New Orleans, wherever to escape the bigotry and cannibalistic nature of my hometown. It wasn’t until I was 23 and the tail end of a panicky relationship brought me, suddenly, to San Francisco at long last. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, and, after that relationship ended and I was feeling the perennial loneliness that comes with moving to any new area, I was all the less confident. Those memories of my genuine joy in the city, though, made me think I just needed to stick it out.

The view from the Marin Headlands is tough to top. (Paolo Bicchieri)

It’s corny, but the rest really was history. I found communities of volunteers, poets, runners, cooks, bartenders, surfers, bakers and cyclists who folded me into their lives like egg whites to meringue. I got my first non-service job, though I’ve worked two or three at the same time to keep the lights on in our mega expensive city. I’ve hiked through Sutro Forest countless times, the goats tending to the weeds along the urban trail’s edge. I danced in the Castro ’til sun up and kicked all — or most — of that depressive thinking to the curb. I fell in love and tried to get clean and got a cat and sang in the symphony hall and lived through the worst of the pandemic and got married and even went out on a boat in the Bay Area like my old man.

And I didn’t do it with a trust fund or regular checks coming through like an IV drip. I still work multiple jobs and wipe sweat from my brow when the bills come due. I have a strong support system, which is a shout out to low income mental health services, and I do cook with that cast iron pan I got here with every night. For me, moving here and living here was a lifeline more than a death sentence.

I recognize even picking up and going, with a few hundred dollars in your bank account or not, is just not an option for some people. And reasonably many more just want the comfort of a home with a two-car garage and a picket fence out front. I can’t speak to that in San Francisco; as long as I live here, I’ll be renting and spending my money on coffee and fancy produce like throwing newspaper in a dumpster fire. But it’s been a treat, a total wonder, and I can only say that taking the first step toward a life I had only dreamt of, and not to be too confused by the demoralizing headlines, was huge.

“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” That’s a quote from Benjamin Disraeli, apparently a 19th century English politician, that my dad wrote on a tiny orange square of paper for me when I was 13 years old. It remains a helpful reminder these days when the Hot Takes pile up, just as it did when I was a middle schooler wishing for a future in foggy, phenomenal San Francisco.

My cat, Kristofferson, sunbathing in “foggy” San Francisco. (Paolo Bicchieri)