We should all be so lucky to live in San Francisco, even if there are a lot of things about living in our fair city that piss me the fuck off. I took time from my busy schedule of being an embittered old veterinarian to compile this list of my least favorite things.
Political Canvassers
Always trying to pull you in like a tractor beam of guilt to donate money (that you don’t have) to causes you most likely agree with, always with that needy puppy-dog look, like, “Excuse me, do you have a minute to talk about blah, blah, blah?” No I don’t. I have to go take a shit!
Little Free Libraries
These things are always filled with a bunch of crappy books no one wants to read. They’re the Port-O-Potties of the literary world, consistently stocked with lusty Danielle Steele pulps and Croatian travel guides stained with piss. Last year I got a mystery novel from one and found that somebody had ripped out the last page. Thanks a lot, jerk. I hope Agatha Christie drop-kicks you in hell.
Harold*, the guy who harasses people on the N train
This fucking guy is constantly hammering Popov vodka as he berates people during the morning commute; usually by noon, he passes out on the Muni and is whisked away to the drunk tank, gets out two days later and repeats the whole thing again. It’s like if Charles Bukowski wrote Groundhog Day.
Millionaire pickpockets of North Beach
These modern-day robber barons will steal your wallet just for the thrill of it and use your credit card to finance their night out at a strip-club champagne room, laughing about it as they blow their noses with your twenty-dollar bills.
Cyclists who ride on the sidewalk
You want to be treated with the same consideration as an automobile, but I’ve never seen a goddamn car casually drive down the fucking sidewalk!
The entirety of the SF shoegaze and chill wave music scene
It’s not the music I hate—I just have contempt for anyone who says things like “good vibes” while maintaining a disgusting peach-fuzz moustache (although I’ve been 86'd from most of the music venues in SF because of my irritable bowels, so I’m making some assumptions).
People who complain about cigarette smoke on smoking patios at bars
Drinking and smoking go together like peanut butter and jelly, and most of the time, smokers step outside to avoid talking to squares in the first place. If we can’t smoke on an airplane, fine! But let us keep our fucking smoking patios.
Pushy Haight Street drug dealers
You can’t walk down Haight Street without someone pushing reefer on you like a carnival barker. “Nugs? Trees? Dabs?” I buy my marijuana from my local dispensary like an upright citizen, sir! (Admittedly, the last time my medical card expired, I had to buy my pot from a street dealer named Ferngully; turns out he sold me catnip!)
High-end toast / expensive peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Really, is this where we are now? Ten-dollar fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and toast! It takes three minutes to make these at home, for crying out loud. When did toast become bourgeois and shit? What’s next— artisan ants on a log?
Ukeleles
If you’re not from Hawaii or its vicinity, I do not want to hear your shitty cover of Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” you damn haole.
*The editors forced me to change his name for the purposes of this article.
[Editor’s note: Charles Duggery’s opinions are not necessarily those of The Bold Italic. We happen to love ukeleles, especially when they are present in shoegaze songs.]
