Confronting the Urban Daemon

Two years in San Francisco. Damn.

Over the past two years, my relationship with this City has had its ups and downs. It's sort of like being adopted by your evil stepmother and trying really hard to love her even though she abuses and enslaves you in your own home.

San Francisco: it has such promise. If you look at it from the right angles and in the right lighting, it's urban perfection and beauty realized. But with your feet on the ground and in the daily grind, it's a most unlivable place.

I go through my day-to-day life despising this City. I hate the postage-stamp-sized apartment it makes me live in (even though our home is larger than most at its price). I hate the necessity of using the public transit system. I hate the dirt and grime and indigence. I hate the traffic and the daily drama of moving and worrying about my car. I hate the fact that even though the supermarkets are always out of everything, it still costs more than it would in a less-crowded, well-stocked suburban store. I hate the inconvenience of my neighborhood: the fact that it's the most car-friendly, and thus has all the disadvantages of a dense urban area and none of the advantages, like shops and restaurants and coffeehouses. I hate the unbelievable extra costs incurred for living here: from parking tickets to gas to food to the increased amount of time spent getting to places that would be easy and quick in any mid-sized suburb. The lost investment value of time alone in this City has me running a huge deficit...

The amount of energy I've expended maintaining my life in San Francisco is in drastic excess to what the same standard of living would have taken out of me in Fresno - and Fresno itself is not necessarily the most convenient or cheapest place to live. At the same time, I've yet to really reap any promised advantages to life here.

What are the advantages?

If I were a tourist, or an incredibly wealthy upper-management type, I'd better appreciate this City, I tell myself. It does have it's beauty. Those who can afford a sprawling suburban-sized home and a garage and a 15-dollar-a-day parking space downtown might have an easier time seeing the good side. Those who can afford a million-dollar edgy urban condo might better appreciate the niceties of a dense and thriving city. Might.

But even if this is the case, I am not in such a position, and the unreachable and ever-farther "ifs" are what most disappoint me about this place. I am a solidly middle-class twentysomething struggling with the everyday dirge of making it in a city which is specifically aligned to be as inconvenient and unlivable as possible for my specific class. I'm tired of that.

I take an occasional drive around the city and see the cute neighborhoods and the places I've grown to like: The Mission, the Outer Richmond, Bernal Heights and the Sunset, Polk Street and Nob Hill, North Beach and Chinatown. I almost get choked up thinking of how wonderful it would be if San Francisco made good on the promises boasted by these neighborhoods. But I know that the people who are fortunate enough to live there are for the most part no better off than I. Most of them are poorer, and struggling even more. Most of them are living in overcrowded dwellings and the cuteness of their neighborhood hides the lie which is the promise of San Francisco.

In the last two years, I've learned to see through that lie. It's been hard, and I'm often taken off-guard. I'm tempted by the casual workplace, the friendly faces and the tolerant authorities. I fall for the legends, I believe the stories. But with all the promises, they have yet to deliver. I've not made a single new friend here - something which wasn't as difficult before I lived in such a transient, anonymous, chemically-dependent place. I've not found a single spot of nightlife or coffeehouse splendour which met the expectations which even sleepy little Fresno set for me - nearness, friendliness, openness, coziness... Each month I realize I've been stricken with another case of lowered esxpectations, from work to school to play.

Broken promises. Legends full of lies. This is what San Francisco has shown me. Would that even a fraction of the promises were fulfilled, it would give me the motivation to stay - to work harder to make this City work for me, to seek out a future here that I could be happy with...

Trying to collect myself, I sometimes wax nostalgic of the original promise this city held - the light at the end of the tunnel: joining my husband here and spending our lives together. But then I laugh at how false that notion is: my husband and I found each other from a distance, my decision to move to his home was an expedient method of achieving both my need to escape my life at the time and my desire to live with him and to deepen our relationship. This happened independent of the very existence of San Francisco. I refuse to grant this City credit for something we worked very hard at and which this City has only made more difficult.

Confronting this urban daemon which is San Francisco, I beg for it to give me one last breath of assurance that any of its promises will be kept. I ask it to stop pulling me in every direction but the one in which I desire to go. I ask it to show me beauty up close, and daily inspiration rather than mere drudgery...

The decision is made, though the logistics face an immense volume of adversity as yet. The final destination may not be immediately found, and there might me more false starts. But I can surely say, two years on, that San Francisco is not the home for me. My husband decided this years ago, and my move here has only delayed his own departure. It's time for me to be part of the solution, and not the problem.

I've made a good life for myself, and I think I deserve better than lies and broken promises. I've worked hard to achieve a life full of people and things I love, with very little help and very little compromise. I've found a man with whom this life will be better than I ever expected. And now, one more achievement awaits me: stepping off this road to nowhere and taking my husband and my life away from this City of broken promises.