An Anniversary
11 years ago to the day I took a one way flight to San Francisco on Tower Air. I checked two huge duffel bags containing random things that I wanted but probably didn’t need - yards of gold lame fabric that I’d draped into a toga for a Halloween costume the year before, a bunch of books, old journals dense with words and new ones not yet written in. I had never lived anywhere else but New York City at that point (and I haven’t lived anywhere else since.)
Four years later I moved back to NY. The duffel bags stayed behind, I think they’re still in the garage of a friend I’ve lost touch with, and the gold lame fabric might still be tucked away in one of them. My belongings accumulated during my time here arrived in NY a few days after I did, in a cross-country move that cost $4000.
I came to San Francisco to grow up. I learned to drive. I got a job. (Actually I had lots and lots of jobs.) I had stock options and a 401K. (Both long gone now, alas.) I bought furniture that wasn’t from IKEA. (That stuff’s still around.) I made a life for myself here that was pretty good, but so much has changed that I can’t place myself in it any more.
I was stubborn about leaving San Francisco and said no to the job I was offered in NYC at least 3 times before I was (thankfully) persuaded to say yes. (Not because the job was any good, but because it got me back to New York just in time and my boss from there is a dear friend to this day.) Once I left, I never missed it all that much and I never once had the urge to come live here again.
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- Published:
- 07.15.07 / 1am
- Category:
- Random
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- Greetings From San Francisco
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July 15th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Some of us left NYC earlier. I was 24 in 1968 when I left New York City for Berkeley. It took awhile to get used to the change in seasons (NYC has 4, SF Bay Area has 8: fall,spring,fall,spring,fall,spring,fall,spring). NYC in the sixties was a very different place than today. Life was hard. Those of us who left for California early wanted out. But Berkeley in the 70’s was just as different then from today. Maybe the grass IS always greener. I left New York for Berkeley on TWA the day Robert Kennedy was shot in L.A. Visiting NYC in the 70’s and 80’s was like visiting an old friend in serious decline.
I’m still here, but I hear the cobble stones in 7th Avenue at Sheridan Square are gone.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I’m not a native of either NYC or SF but have lived in both. As many others do, I have that god awful, requisite love/hate relationship with both cities. I now live in LA and have since January 2002, and like many others, I left SF as the dot-com bust was turning the city into a ghost town. Unlike many others, I didn’t leave SF because of the bust, conversely, I didn’t move to SF because of the boom.
I have strangely, found memories of South Park when it was full of junkies and trash. In 1994 I began courting a girl at Cafe Centro and watched that neighborhood transform… literally overnight.
I was on my way back to NYC when SF stopped me. New York City is where I began my career and it was where I was going to revive it… I’m very happy it didn’t turn out that way.
July 15th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
It’s interesting to hear other people’s stories…
I certainly don’t mean to malign SF in any way. It’s a wonderful place, and some of my favorite people live here. I love the weather, fog and all, and the landscape and that the fact that even the oldest things here are still kind of new. (Built things I mean.) It is also home to my favorite bookstore on the planet, City Lights. And it opened me up to a whole different way of living.
As for NY - I always tell people who have moved there that I think it’s an awfully brave thing to do. It’s an amazing place and it’s as challenging and can be as lonely as it is amazing. I live there because it’s home, and I think I’ll always be impressed by the gumption of people who are brave enough to go there and give it a shot. (And I know it’s most certainly not for everyone.)
When I was leaving SF in 2000, it was a choice between LA and NYC. LA was awfully tempting, and it a way it remains so - I love it there, and I am especially enamored of the current art scene there. I’m glad I didn’t move there back then - it was for a very Hollywood kind of job. The contract negotiations included discussions about a leased Mercedes Benz and a decorating budget for my office, not because I wanted either but because my lawyer felt that I simply had to demand such things otherwise I’d get no respect. (Ah, LA is screwy.) I’m not a very Hollywood sort of girl, and I watched from the East Coast as that company went through a very public disintegration embodying the worst of Hollywood AND Silicon Valley. The company I moved back for didn’t fare much better, in the end, but at least I was back home.
Richard- the cobblestones may be gone in Sheridan Square, but they’re still to be found on many small downtown streets. I recently had the misfortune of riding my bike down still-cobblestoned Mercer. Bond St.’s cobblestones have been famously preserved. For entertainment value you might visit the Meatpacking District on any given night and watch women teetering atop ridiculous shoes as they attempt to navigate cobblestoned streets.
Robert, you weren’t the only one courting at Cafe Centro! On my very first visit to the city, I had a lunch meeting with a business associate there. He asked me to join him for Mediterranean Food and music later that evening - in my typical clueless way, I didn’t realize it was a date ’til he dropped me off at home and planted a kiss on me. We dated for a while and are close friends to this day. I met him at SFMOMA yesterday, and with time to kill beforehand I took a stroll down to South Park. Centro, trash and junkies: all still present, even if the buildings flanking the park have more of a gleam to them than they did before.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:48 am
…it was spiralbound clairfontaine journals for me, from 1986 through 2004, 21, count’em….don’t get me started on pens…