A few years ago I was invited to a dinner party in San Francisco by a guy I’d known growing up in San Diego. I hadn’t seen him in years, but the last time we’d hung out, he was completely wrapped up in the party promoting/bottle service scene in SD. During the time in between he’d apparently left that life to find greater purpose and follow a more spiritual path.

This originally appeared in my Broke-Ass City column for the San Francisco Examiner. I’ve been doing this whole Broke-Ass Stuart thing for 13-and-a-half years. If my brand were a Jewish boy, his bar mitzvah would’ve been last summer. And I’m sure he would’ve done marvelously at his Torah portion. Thirteen

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Maybe, instead of calling it socialism, we should call it “health-care-and-education-for-you-and-your-kids-ism.” Because that’s what it is.

As decades pass, etiquette evolves. Many things that were once thought of as rude or improper are eventually considered casual. Similarly, things that were once considered polite, can become old-fashioned or stuffy. There was a time when wearing a hat indoors was considered completely inappropriate.

At this point in time, good, smart and honest media is as important as ever, but it’s being funded less and less. The New York Times and The Washington Post are doing absolutely stellar jobs in digging up the nefarious doings of the Trump Administration and they are doing it with newsrooms half as full as the days of Watergate.

I first moved to San Francisco when I was 21 for an internship in the booking department at Bill Graham Presents. It was the summer of 2002, a simply magical time in my life, and the genesis of the over 15-year love affair I’ve had with The City.

The last time San Franciscans talked this much about Oakland was in 1906. The City was ablaze and 100,000 residents fled across San Francisco Bay, many never to move back to San Francisco. They say the population of Oakland doubled in roughly 72 hours. 

Many of the things we shrug off as normal in San Francisco don’t happen in other places.