a love letter to san francisco

i will miss you

O San Francisco, our time together grows short. Soon, I must leave you for the other coast, give up my home within you. I wonder how I will live without you: the city that made me into the man I am, the city where so much of my life began.

You have no seasons, weather barely changing throughout the year or defying all logic. On a Monday in January, you’re the warmest you’ve been in months, the most beautiful I can ever remember you being. I plan to go to a cafe and end up at Point Lobos on your western edge, watching a fisherman throw his line into the crashing waves, the Golden Gate Bridge standing tall along clear blue skies.

Sea breeze stings my eyes, and they well up with salt water of some kind. It’s the most incredible sight I’ve ever seen — something cameras completely fail to capture. It only took one bus forty minutes to get here. Children scream in delight at the waves, water turning into an explosion of white bubbles. Tourists take turns posing in front of the vista. How far have they traveled to see what is so familiar to me? How incredible is it that I’ve gotten to live here for so long?

How can I leave you, San Francisco? Each piece of you brims with meaning and memory. Every day I walk around, I see memories of all that I’ve experienced here: hands held among the verdant Panhandle, laughs over ramen in Japantown, competitive dart games in Noe Valley. I’ve fallen in love so many times across this city, my heart shattered so many times in this city. Every feeling below the clouds I’ve experienced here.

Do you remember the mini-golf place next to my apartment in the Mission? The one I only ever went to once? Do you remember the karaoke spot off Polk Street that we used to go in the basement of the sushi restaurant? The night in Nob Hill, at the Korean-Mexican fusion place where we all decided to buy the t-shirts they sold? The shirt doesn’t fit me anymore. The karaoke spot closed down.

You were so quiet during the pandemic. I would walk the streets aimlessly, wondering how to make the time pass toward a more normal future. I learned to love you more then. I grew to adore the street names pressed into the concrete on every street corner, found joy from the familiar trees in the park, remembered what street art and graffiti appeared where. There were no answers, but your beauty felt something like one.

In the years since, I kept discovering more of you. Friends kept appearing, showing me all that you have, reflecting their brilliance onto you, and you theirs. We danced under disco balls and bright lights, screamed our lungs out in joy on your concrete piers and hallowed venues. We soaked the ground with meaning until the whole city glowed. We can’t even look at you without smiling anymore.

Now, I don’t know how to say goodbye. I wonder if I even know why I’m saying goodbye. I live so close to so many people I love, I live with several people I love — these are dreams I once had, dreams I now live every day. But there’s the awakening at the end of it: the sun must rise and bring forth a new day.

I must see what else the world holds for me, another city by the water. I want to see my family more, I want to see more art and be overstimulated in ways that you could never make me. You are the calm and the quiet, but now I yearn for tumult. You are perfect to me, and I need to be marred by imperfection.

Once I’ve gotten my fill, I will come back to you one day. I picture settling down here — maybe a wife, a dog, a house in the Richmond or somewhere like it. Time would change you as it would change me. I would watch the fog that has long draped over you dissipate as the climate changes and the water rises, shrinking you into the sea from whence we all came.

San Francisco, I love you. Of course, I do. Our time grows short, and I miss you. Already and always.

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We must do what we can to push back against the genocide in Palestine and the invasion of Lebanon. Consider donating to Care for Gaza (grassroots organizations delivering food to Palestinians), directly to families or by buying e-SIMs to keep folks connected to their families. Lebanon is suffering too— consider donating to the Lebanese Food Bank, The Zahra Trust, or Beit El Baraka to help provide relief and resources.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• PLAYLIST - it was, in the end, the best kind of adventure - YouTube has been recommending me these dark ambient playlists with a knight illustration that have been oddly calming in a strange time

• ARTICLE - “in defense of san francisco” by Celine Nguyen - I remembered Celine’s very thoughtful essay about San Francisco while writing this!

• POEM - “i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense” by Danez Smith - i know, i’m strange, too much light makes me nervous / at least in this land where the trees always bear green.