I'll share photos of my apartment decor sometime soon. May or may not have *just* hauled the last of the moving boxes down to the recycling bin...um...today....
Two months in and SF is still taking my breath away on the daily. The charming buildings, the street art, the abruptly alternating fog and sun, that vibe on early weekend mornings when the city is quiet and the streets are kinda empty, the cable cars climbing up and down the insane hills, the calf muscles I hope I'm developing from walking up said hills, the tourists seeing it all for the first time that make me feel all blushy inside that my home is worth tourist-ing and that to these people I am a "city person" who "actually lives here." (I gave someone directions the other day on a street corner!) I used to drive through San Francisco and stare up at the apartment windows and feel very very curious about the seemingly glamorous and sitcom-worthy daily lives of people who lived in the middle of it, and now I'm somehow one of them.
And, you know, there's the random people yelling at all hours of the night and day, and the sirens wailing up and down my street because I live near a hospital (I actually don't mind the ambient noise -- I have a harder time sleeping in absolute silence). Also, learning the hard way that getting packages delivered to a city apartment is a jooooke (anyone seen the Broad City episode where she has to journey to recover a package and meets Garol?) So, I get packages delivered to my office now.
Unexpectedly, being amongst so many people at all times also has a strangely distinct perma-loneliness to it.
The people watching is fabulous, but I'll catch myself envying the groups of friends and lovers out in my same coffee shops and parks and corner markets. It's a unique kind of "we're here together but not together" feeling I never experienced when I always moved around tucked inside a car. I know I have friends and people I make plans with too, and yet that feeling is there and I'm curious if other city people know what I'm talking about.
I crush hard on this city.
Out of all the cities around the world that I've visited, it's still my favorite. I love the light pinks and sandy beiges of the buildings sprawled out over the hills like ornate legos. The colors and proximity to the ocean make me feel like the whole thing used to be under water and just rose up one day all ocean-bleached like a coral reef, and the people simply filtered into its little corally spaces.
I'm still slowly learning my way around city life after a lifetime of suburbs, but it's an admittedly picturesque place to do some learnin'.
Dear SF: Let's not break up soon. xoxo
