Spring!
February is spring in Northern California. This is just one of the many reasons I love living here. We get some much needed rain for a few months in winter, but it’s never all that cold. Then the sun comes back and we return to our moderate “sweater weather” pattern of warm sunny afternoons and comfortably cool nights. This goes on until October when we get our hot summer for a month or so, then right back to the next short winter when it rains again. The pleasant climate helps offset the biblical fires, floods, and earthquakes.
My last post depicted a calm verdant San Francisco with all manner of open natural landscapes to explore within a comfortable walk in every direction. My point was to demonstrate that the city is quite livable even during Covid. We’re not all trapped in tiny apartments like tinned sardines afraid of the Big Cooties. Then I heard from a friend in Toronto who commented that it was sad to see a depopulated city - as if the place were devoid of humans. Not exactly.
This time I wandered around the neighborhood to show what the streets are like. Compared to most places in North America San Francisco has always been weird. Even the people who enjoy visiting cities like this prefer not to live here themselves. We’re a self selecting population and we’re sticking it out, warts and all.
Businesses have absolutely taken a massive hit. Downtown is dead with no signs the skyscrapers are coming back anytime soon. The hotels, convention centers, and infrastructure built for outsiders with cash money to dispose of are all quiet. The municipal authorities are in a panic about lost revenue and an impending budget crisis, but for most of the regular population downtown needn’t exist. The neighborhoods are full of people finding creative work-arounds. We gather in slightly different ways, but life goes on.
When the pandemic first arrived I commandeered the roof of a neighboring building. (It’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.) With some plants and second hand furniture it became everyone’s favorite Covid lounge this year.
The alley behind our place is always full of activity. Little kids run around playing. Dogs are walked. Pot luck dinners are organized and served on folding tables. Yoga classes are scheduled. Birthday parties are had. Someone even set up a projector and people gathered to watch the drama unfold on election night.
The city is going to be different when this is all over, and not all of those changes are going to be good. But in one form or another this place will reinvent itself. It always has. What outsiders may not realize is how much San Francisco needed this correction, as harsh as it’s been. We were choking on our own insane excess and Covid has brought an unwelcome, yet necessary calm.
