How to Make Friends in San Francisco

Are you new to the city?  Maybe you’re a software engineer who’s a bit socially awkward?  Maybe you’ve made enough Fortnite friends this year, and it’s just time you met some real-life people? Anyway, whatever it is, don’t worry.  We have some foolproof ways to make friends in San Francisco.

1. Ride a scooter

Huge bonus points if you wear heels on your scooter, girls in SF love wearing heels

Local San Franciscans LOVE scooters.  Everyone thinks they’re ‘hella cool‘.  If you’re not scootin’, chances are, you’re missing out on a ton of really cool parties and friendships in the city.

2. Buy a French bulldog and brag about how much you spend on its Asthma medications

If you want to meet other sophisticated San Franciscans, who chose dog parenting as a safe alternative to human parenting, you should save up $10,000 and spend it on a french bulldog with some kind of fashionable genetic disorder.  Then you’ll have something to brag about at the Duboce Park, while you’re Frenchie named ‘Dakota’ runs around in a circle because it was born with one hip larger than the other.

3. Always use your smartphone while crossing streets

In fact, you should use your smartphone everywhere, to do everything.  There are tons of great social apps these days that will give you access to thousands of potential people to meet in real life.  So while your commuting, or taking your lunch break, use your smartphone to search for potential friends you could be meeting.

4. Wear a Patagonia vest to your finance job

There’s an unspoken uniform that all the cool, hip, people wear downtown.   And it involves dropping the sleaves, and showing your clients you may, or may not, be car camping that evening.  It’s the ultimate statement in urban ‘performance wear’ that says, “I totally care about ‘sustainable fashion’, but at the same time…I have no idea what that means.”  If you want to make sure people know you work for a corporation, AND that you have no sense of personal style, get yourself a Patagonia performance fleece. (Also available in Northface.)

5. Win at bar trivia 

Let everyone know that you are the smartest person in the room!  People always want to be friends with the smartest person.  So don’t be shy, look up trivia answers on your phone, and tell people that it’s just ‘work texting’.

6. Complain about gentrification in your neighborhood, while gentrifying your neighborhood

This works really well if you’re a white person, looking to meet other white persons.  And even better if you have a tech job that picks you up in a bus.  Use the line, ‘Oh man, the Mission has changed so much since 2016, I don’t even recognize it.” Or, “This city is so expensive! I mean, my favorite avocado toast place just had to raise its prices?”  People will notice how woke you are in no time.

7. Remind people that you are ‘hella woke’

You read Jezabel right? At least you see their pictures on Instagram.  Don’t be afraid to let people know how enlightened you are.  San Franciscans love this.  And if reminding people about how woke you are isn’t working to make you friends, try saying ‘IPO’ more often in conversation.  This will make you sound rich.  And people love money.

8. Ask people if they want to ‘hack with you’

This is a great way break the ice at work, and let people know you can be an edgy, disruptor.  Wait until your target is sitting down, walk up behind them and ask them in a whisper, “hey, you wanna hack with me this weekend.”  Or, bring it up in casual conversation around the watercooler like, “Oh, Chad, that was a really funny joke, anyway, I gotta run, I got a ton of hacking to this Sat.”  And leave them wanting more.