When I read this post from Caroline McCarthy about moving from New York to San Francisco, my first thought was, “you’re going to hate it.” […] Look. You can certainly be a Mission hipster or Silly Valley type and have a wonderful experience here. But to do so you have to get off Valencia street and make some friends outside of the industry. You have to figure out what drew people here in the first place before it became populated by those stereotypes. It’s a great place to live. But you’ll never know that unless you truly live here.
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Mat.

To whit: get dirty with the 30 Stockton, drink a beer at 6am with old men in North Beach, freeze your toes in the ocean in December, cruise the Polk and remember when it was the queer neighborhood to end all queer neighborhoods, make eyes with strangers at the Castro Theatre, come on to a rich man at the Fairmont, do the girls brunch thing but do it at the Palace and wear last night’s mascara, and skin your knees in the Stockton Tunnel at Bush Street in too high heels while staring up at where the fog eats into all the deco neon still shining up there. I ended up fortunate for avoiding the Mission for six years before moving there and picking up a slacker boyfriend. That way, wandering into Ritual every day to blaaaaaaawg for a job-sort-of could feel like a game, not the game, until it wasn’t and it was done.