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.

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.

I’m still here, but I hear the cobble stones in 7th Avenue at Sheridan Square are gone.