Trip to San Francisco

My 4 day trip to San Francisco full of getting coffees, walking around, and eating pastries. A city of dog parks, tech workers, ads for AI workers, old beatniks, and sidewalks full of life!

Crissy Field Beach

Last week I pretended to live in San Francisco for 4 days and I left with my love for the city just as strong as ever. I cat sat in North Beach near Washington Square Park, and from that home base I ate pizza, wandered with my dog, Danny, and explored dog parks. San Francisco has a great coffee scene and I may go out on a limb to say it may be the best dog city in America. Its pizza game is solid, but is overshadowed by the growing scenes in Los Angeles and Portland.

San Francisco has always been a favorite city of mine. I was born in the Bay Area and grew up a Giants fan. The dense, walkable city with views that stop me in my tracks is the perfect balance between the parts I love of both NYC and Portland. Even after moving to Portland I felt an affinity with San Francisco. It was the city in the fog, surrounded by sun blasted golden hills. Every trip to visit family in Southern California was a reminder that I felt out of place under the bright, blue skies, hot, burning sun, and sprawling, cookie cutter suburbs. San Francisco showed me that California had an alternative way of living in the mist that appealed to me.

North Beach neighborhood

A while ago I came up to San Francisco to stay with an ex and her boyfriend. She showed me around town. We got a drink at Vesuvio Cafe, the place all the beats I loved in my 20s hung out. I sat where Kerouac and Ginsberg sat, two writers that shaped my self-explorations I belatedly took after college. The bar was dark, full of photos and funky art. Next to me an old man with a scraggly beard in a trench coat and beat up fedora was falling asleep with his drink empty at his table. He looked as if he was there in the hey day of the San Francisco alternative scene. I chatted with my friends for a while, and when I looked back at the table the old man was replaced by 4 young men, clean shaven, short hair, wearing matching blue polos and khakis with lanyards around their necks. They must have been in town for a tech conference and were excited to get drinks at the sites the city had to offer. They weren’t doing anything wrong, but they were unknowingly a perfect metaphor for how the tech culture has shaped today’s fabric of San Francisco’s streets. Wannabe tech gurus go on runs, powering up steep hills with fierce looks on their faces, airpods in their ears presumably with Andrew Huberman playing. If you sit long enough in a cafe you will hear people talk about Venture Capital and getting their projects financed. Capitalism has taken hold. Old San Francisco is still here, but it’s being driven out by people who only use it to maximize their efficiency or as a trophy.

Staying in an apartment whose living room looked out onto the street in active North Beach, I felt comforted by hearing city life right outside as I worked. Walking Danny was a chance to be out and among all sorts of people. There are still old school San Franciscans who aren’t letting go of their co-ops amongst the tech workers.

On Sunday morning I took a long walk and was never alone. Every block had at least 1 other person walking it. Most blocks were full of people enjoying the day. The nearby basketball, tennis, and pickleball courts were packed with people playing the respective sports or doing their own exercises. The park was full of people setting up an art show, and people were eating brunch outside. Contrast this where I live in Los Angeles where many neighborhoods have no life on the sidewalks. (Yes, there are exceptions to this but as neighborhoods gentrify they tend to do away with the sidewalk life). My current neighborhood has a stretch of good sidewalk life, but once I’m away from the main strip it’s empty. I have gone on long 2-4 hour walks in Los Angeles where I hardly saw a soul on the sidewalks. Plenty of cars drove by me, very few people walked with me.

The Coffee Movement in Inner Richmond with the Colombian Thermal Shock coffee

I think San Francisco may be the best dog city I’ve been to. Everyone is excited to see your dog, and the dog parks are incredible. The off-leash areas of Crissy Field and Fort Funston are unrivaled. Los Angeles has a section of Runyon Canyon that is a sliver of the greatness of Fort Funston. Before we even got to the dog beach at Fort Funston, Danny was exhausted from running around the trails with the other dogs, ducking into bushes to follow his nose, and digging into the sandy dunes.

Before I left I met up with a friend who was in town to scout out an apartment. She was unsure about San Francisco, her main observation ran counter to my own - the city streets were dead with no one out and about. She was staying further south in a part of town I haven’t been to in decades. I took her to the parts that I loved, the parts where there were some people who weren’t thinking about how someone, somewhere was working harder than them. She said it was the first day she saw something in the city and was finally open to her move up. As she went on her way back to where she was staying I passed an ad on a bus stop empathizing with owners and managers whose workers complained about a work-life balance. They had a solution: replace them with AI employees you don’t have to worry about working to death. My wish? With Musk moving to Texas, maybe the rest will follow and leave this beautiful city to those who aren’t too busy to enjoy it. Everyday in a city should leave a person tired and satisfied, like Danny after Fort Funston.

Here’s the places I love to eat and drink at while in San Francisco!

San Francisco is known to have good pastries and coffee, and it didn’t disappoint!

The one coffee three ways from the Coffee Movement in Chinatown