San Francisco Through Glass

12 years after my last visit, San Francisco had much of the same problems, also a few new ones, and yet it is still a city that bursts with future.

*"There was this reckoning moment when work from home became the norm — the city was completely empty. Locals realized that the relationship that people had with the city was purely transactional."* — a local friend

The traditional images of San Francisco, its architecture and history, are still here, and there is no shortage of tourism. In a way, however, there seems to be a detach from the Disneyfied version and the Tech version of the city — they know of each other, but avoid contact.

After so many years, I also had different goals for the trip — top of which was visiting friends, and after that doing some crate and boom digging. Beyond the extensive offer, this side of San Francisco is one of the few remaining examples of the Local version of the city: these places invite genuine conversations, centered around culture, and many times lead way beyond that.

These are the places where our relationship with a city overcomes the transactional, which is normally where it starts.

The more our relationship becomes more attached, the more we question why some of the issues of the city remain the same — drugs, homelessness, housing, and more. Money is certainly not a limitation, and the left-leaning ideology should make it a higher priority. So what's the catch?

Sadly, I'm afraid the trip was too short to have even a working hypothesis. Even a future trip will also probably be short, but would do wonders to my record collection.