By Eve O’Neill
Look, don’t let anyone give you sass. Because no matter what they say about your traffic or your construction or that S-curve, I am so into you. Because of you, the start and finish to my day are never drudgery. They are laced with infinite possibilities. You provide a dozen ways for me to get from my home in Oakland to my job in San Francisco and back — something to suit my every mood.
If I need a workout, I’ll put on all my bike gear and get to it. I’ll begin by spending 30 minutes fighting hills before tearing around Lake Merritt as fast as I can. I’ll skirt dodgy traffic in Chinatown just for fun, then I’ll descend into BART. There’s always a cluster of cyclists on the 8:52 a.m. train; it’s the first one we’re allowed to board. We will secretly admire each other’s shoes and bags. We’ll hold our breath when the train goes under the Bay and pray that the Big One doesn’t hit. I’ll spend a nightmarish four blocks navigating lights on Market Street, then have a tall, narrow stairwell to contend with; and I’ll feel invincible by the time I’m behind my desk.
Sometimes I’ll just walk to the BART train, and walking days are pastry days. Cappuccino is also imminent. I’ll cut through the Municipal Rose Garden, where seven beautiful acres are currently in full bloom. I’ll stuff myself with baked goods and rock out on my headphones, submersed in nature. It absolutely does not suck.
Other days, I need to get going, and you’ve got my back then too. I wander up the block from my apartment, stand on a nondescript corner until a random car driven by a stranger pulls up, then get inside. I give the driver a dollar to help offset the cost of the bridge toll. Then, I am chauffeured over the bridge while I answer emails on my phone, and I’m in the city in less than 20 minutes. This is the casual carpool, which is just a glorified version of hitchhiking, and by all accounts it shouldn’t work, but it does. Every single time.
That’s the short list of commuting options. There’s also the Transbay bus. Clean and outfitted with high-backed upholstered seats, it gives you 45 minutes of undistracted, quality writing time. And even on days when I have to drive, I’m still not upset with you, SF-Oakland Commute. I take some coffee and put on some NPR and zone out, wondering, “Is my love of this commute due to some subconscious childhood influence?” The city I’m from, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has more bridges than anywhere else in the world. Venice, Italy, comes in second place.
But no, I don’t think that’s it. I’m high on this temporary in-between state, magnified by the feeling I get when the San Francisco skyline comes into view. I’ll never forget the way I felt when I drove over the Bay Bridge for the first time. It was the dead of night, and the stark, fog-wrapped spires were quietly waiting. It felt otherworldly. It felt grand. Not once in the 10 years I’ve lived here have I felt jaded about driving over the Bay Bridge.
SF-Oakland Commute, you have provided me with a way to redefine mental barriers. Because of the choices you give me, traveling to and from work is no longer a monotonous bookend, a huge chore that balloons my workday into the one and only thing that fills my time. Instead my day is filled with sport and conversation and the never-ending possibility of snacks, rendering that mandatory face time with a computer screen to just a tiny blip on the surface of a vastly richer life.
At the end of the day, commuting is not so much about possibility anymore, but relief. I can go to happy hour with my friends, and getting home is easy. I can lazily pedal back from West Oakland. I can get on the bus, watch a hazy sunset over Angel Island, knock on the window as I go under the MacArthur maze and hope the Big One doesn’t hit. There is tangible relief when I’ve crossed the threshold to the other side, a physical feeling of having arrived home. Suddenly, it’s a few degrees warmer and a little bit sunnier, and I’m 1,000 miles away from the day’s problems.
Sometimes piecing the adventure together can get exhausting. But I’m the type of person who, every so often, in spite of my hardest efforts, just won’t get out of bed. The world is too sad or scary or bullshit to deal with. And so exhausting or not, SF-Oakland Commute, you are my pledge to fight immobilizing thoughts the best way I know how: by moving competently and effortlessly through space and time, open to every possibility, always building on the tool set that gets me from where I am to where I’m going. You are my daily rebellion against the forces that would have me do nothing, that want me to sit still and stop squirming, that conspire to make me immune to these things of grand beauty — the bridge, the bay, the sea, the sky — simply because I see them every day. So thank you.
This story is part of our week-long feature, Love Letters to San Francisco’s Quirky Bits. Learn more about it here.
