This article is part of I Love San Francisco, a feature series of essays that highlight what makes San Francisco iconic and irreplaceable.
For years, I complained to family, friends, my therapist, and strangers on the street about how badly I wanted to get out of San Francisco. Ten years in the city had taken its toll on me, and when the pandemic hit, I made the move to Los Angeles for grad school. So why do I miss this place so much?
I’m a city mouse and a New Yorker at heart. Growing up on Long Island, I spent many weekends taking the train into Manhattan to visit my father’s family, go see Broadway shows, and go clubbing once I got my fake ID. The problem with growing up in the shadow of New York is that you believe it’s the best city in the world, even if you haven’t seen any other cities. I definitely suffered from this limited worldview when I moved.
I hated that restaurants closed early here; MUNI was an unreliable mess, and there was no way I was going to live at the top of one of San Francisco’s notoriously steep hills. After a while though, I started to see what made the city special and different from anywhere else in the country. Those things took longer to grow on me, but once I stopped trying to view San Francisco as a West Coast version of New York, it all clicked.
I loved watching the fog roll in over the Panhandle as I got home from work every evening. It made me feel so romantic and poetic — the perfect climate for a moody, angsty transplant. I loved the house party culture — back in New York, we all lived in shoeboxes, so no one ever entertained. In SF, I was regularly going over to people’s homes for dinner parties or to watch the latest HBO show on Sunday night. I even began my own tradition of hosting an epic Christmas party, complete with cookie decorating and a giant fake tree. Living on Fell Street, I hosted Bay to Breakers every year, getting dressed up in an outrageous costume and inviting friends over to hang out of my bay window while we watched the parade of naked and cleverly costumed San Franciscans pass by. For once, my apartment actually felt like a home.
I may not have been able to get a late night meal, but San Francisco’s culinary scene was complex and varied. I discovered that even though I grew up eating Mexican food, I had no idea what it was actually supposed to taste like. My usual staples of pizza and bagels turned into late-night burritos at Taqueria Cancun and tea leaf salads at Burma Superstar. I still dream of the dry fried chicken wings at San Tung and miss the brunch buffet at Farmerbrown.
I fell in love with local, neighborhood shops. I haven’t been able to find an optometry office more friendly than HyperOptics on Haight or a bookstore I love more than City Lights. I love that San Francisco has avoided becoming a city full of big chain stores. I truly felt like I had a relationship with the owners of the shops I frequented, week after week. When the pandemic hit and lockdown started, I remained fiercely committed to my favorite restaurants — I wanted to support them, the way their food supported me through all of the good and bad times the city threw at me.
Don’t get me wrong, it was never perfect here. My first go-round happened after I graduated from college and took a tech job; I moved into a three-bedroom apartment on Haight Street with some colleagues. As my parents helped me move in, we watched a large group of naked folks speed down the street on bikes. Several people offered my Boomer father drugs as he went back and forth to the car to pick up boxes. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
One time, my New York friends came to visit me during a period of homesickness. I was so excited to show them the city and take them around that I even met them at the airport. While we sat on BART waiting for the train to depart, a police officer came rushing in. There was some commotion and they removed someone from the train, the man sitting right behind us. As we wondered what the hell happened, the same officer came back in and apologized for the commotion. The man behind us had been vigorously masturbating. Welcome to San Francisco!
On the other hand, San Francisco was where I found community. As a Black woman, there weren’t a lot of folks that look like me on this side of the Bay Bridge, but I found that the community that did exist here was fierce, friendly, and supportive. Because there are so few of us, we have created networks and spaces that allow us to connect and help each other out. I can’t even begin to count how many times the community has come to my aid when I had a question — whether professional or personal — or needed a connection or an introduction.
Most of my friends in the city were transplants like myself, with families thousands of miles away. We had to build our own support systems not only to celebrate milestones like weddings and children, but also to be there if someone needed a ride home from surgery or comfort after a breakup. When my brother passed away, my San Francisco friends rallied around me the way family would — sending over food, checking in on me, even sending me a gift certificate for a massage. I couldn’t have made it through without that support.
It’s been three years since I left and given how eager I was to go, I truly didn’t expect to look back on it so fondly. Maybe it was because I never got the chance to truly say goodbye. I moved in August of 2020 amid the pandemic, so I never got to do the big farewell tour. There were no goodbye parties or bar crawls. Three of my close friends came and met me in Alamo Square park, where we ate lemon ricotta pancakes from Plow and reminisced about old times. I often wished I’d gotten to have more fanfare around my move, instead of slinking out like after a bad one-night stand. Something about my time in San Francisco feels unresolved.
But much like Karl the fog on a cold summer evening, San Francisco has gotten into my bones and doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon. Honestly, I don’t mind — I like leaving the door open for a return.
Tara Vega is a writer and producer in New Orleans. Her work focuses on highlighting Black female sexuality in its many expressions.
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