Mat

Julie’s note: Mat’s story was originally published on this site on November 9, 2009. I am reposting it again today as this week’s SF Weekly has reprinted Mat’s story with an alternate (and great photo), so please pick up a copy (his excerpted story appears on page 20 of the “Best Of: Your San Francisco” Issue).

To the new readers here on this site via the SF Weekly, welcome. Take a look around, click the sidebar to find other parts of the city to explore. There are over 100 people on this site now.

If you’d like to participate in the i live here:SF project, click here to find out more. I look forward to hearing from you.

ps.: Mark your calendar for November 5, when the i live here:SF project will have a retrospective at the SOMarts Cultural Center. More info here.

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William De Avila Elementary School
Haight Street
Wednesday morning

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I hate this place. It stinks and it’s dirty and there’s piss everywhere and needles and garbage and yesterday when I went for a run in the park I had to traverse a trail that had been completely covered in used toilet paper. I’ve been robbed at gunpoint here, just down the street from my apartment. San Francisco is expensive, and I’ll never be able to afford to buy a home. The city government is corrupt, there’s nowhere to park, the people are all fucking crazy, and don’t even get me started about MUNI.

I’m never leaving, motherfuckers.

I moved here about a dozen years ago. My plan was to stick around for a year and then head for the brighter lights of New York, and a glamorous career in publishing. Instead I’ve been here ever since. Because as much as I hate this place–and I do, I really, really do–I love it even more. I’m originally from Alabama. I spent my late teens and early 20s in Georgia. I’ve also lived in Colorado, Virginia, South Carolina, Iran and Kuwait. But if you ask, I’ll tell you I’m a San Franciscan.

I adore this never-ending freakshow of a city. It’s a place that taught me to be comfortable and confident with who I am. I love moving between its various scenes, from hipsters to hippies to house kids to old school punk rockers, political activists, futurists, artists, scientists, students, burners, bohemians, surfers, cyclists, and tech-addled transplants who dream of changing the world. (Or at least: making a lot of money.) I love its Victorian charm, the grit of its industrial zones, the beauty of its Bay and ocean. The hills and the way the fog comes tumbling across the sides of Sutro, gliding across the valleys into the heart of the city.

I love going to parties and striking up conversations with people who’ve come from other places–Arizona and Nebraska and Oklahoma and Mississippi and Massachusetts and Paris and Peru and Senegal and points beyond–to make a new life here next to the ocean, on the farthest edge of the American experiment. And I love that experimentation. I love the gay boys and the butch dykes and those with many myriad variations of self-defined gender roles that illustrate so well why it’s a plane, and not a polar construct. We’re not afraid of something new. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. We’ll take it, we’ll try it, we’ll embrace that which you fear and show you that it’s not so bad. That it’s good. That it’s better, even.

I love running through Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, and across coastal trails that look down on the crashing Pacific. Riding my bike across the brilliant red bridge into sunny Marin county, and looking back on the city hidden below fog, like cake beneath a layer of perfect white frosting. I love watching the sun crash into the Pacific to die another day, and the moon rise big and yellow over the hills of the East Bay, floating softly above our low slung skyline.

And I love that it’s the city where I fell in love. Where I met my beautiful, kind, and caring wife, whose heart is as big as California itself. Who took me in not despite but because of eccentricities. It was in this landscape where we first looked deeply into each others eyes and saw the future spread out fifty years before us. And it was always here. Right here.

I’m never leaving. I just want to make it better. My dear friend and sometimes mentor Patrick Hughes, the Baron of Haight Street, told me that this is a city that rewards those who give to it. “Give to San Francisco, and San Francisco will give back to you.” And I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t change it. I’ll live with that I hate, because it’s worth it all for that I love.

***

You can see a slideshow of Mat’s photo shoot here.

Mat’s website is http://honan.net

You can find him on twitter: http://twitter.com/mat

Amber

On Laussat Street
Lower Haight
Tuesday morning

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Someone once told me that I live a charmed life. Since this was in a job interview, I can only assume that my resume writing skills are truly formidable. She was right though, especially when it comes to address. I’ve lived in some good spots – Manhattan, London, and Florence (if you want to be generous with your definition of “lived in.”) But this eccentric grand dame of a city has always seemed brighter than other places. Even when socked in by fog. Anyone who gets me started on the subject of San Francisco better have some serious time on their hands or no compunction about telling a bright-eyed, ever-so-slightly obnoxious history geek to shut her flapping trap already. I tell people about how the Flood Building (where I worked for five years) was one of the few buildings left standing downtown after the earthquake and fires of 1906. Next comes a detailed dissertation on the Gold Rush-era ships buried under the Financial District. Soon I’m pulling out my iPhone for an enforced viewing of a streetcar making its way down 1905 Market Street, complete with witty commentary about how nimble early San Francisco pedestrians were.

Born and raised amid the suburban strip malls of San Jose, San Francisco was my first real city – it’s where I saw my first show, first recognized my brother’s tender heart as he sobbed at his first glimpse of a homeless man, ate seafood on the wharf. At eighteen, I fled to New York for college and developed grand plans to live abroad (and in Vermont, for some reason) before putting down roots in San Francisco. But after graduating, I moved right back to the Bay Area and was drawn up the Peninsula like a homing pigeon to its grain-filled roost. San Francisco sucked me in ten years ago and hasn’t let go since.

One of my favorite things to do is step out my front door and start walking – three blocks up the hill to Alamo Square Park to dodge tourists and nuzzle any unwary dogs who stray across my path, down the hill to Haight Street for sausage and beer, across Market to lie on the grass in Dolores Park, clutching a morning bun and listening to the buzz of conversation above me as the sun seeps into my bones. When my life feels like it’s careening wildly off course – as life tends to do – I’ll find myself roaming park trails, staring at my green sneakers and puzzling through some overly contemplative thought process. (Known euphemistically as Figuring My Shit Out.) Soon I’ll find myself staring out over the city – the glossy buildings of downtown, church spires wrapped in fog, the Golden Gate in the distance – and thinking, “Even if nothing else in my life is going right, at least I have this. At least I live here.”

I love that San Francisco is a city of adventurers, hearty spirits that can’t be put down by earthquakes or fire or the tragic closing of Roland’s bagels. San Francisco embraces people who know exactly who they are – and offers them stores full of shiny white platform go-go boots in a size eleven and apartments where purple stone lions peek out from Victorian facades. I love San Francisco’s vibrance – technology and history set off by Hunky Jesus competitions and massive pie fights, and all of it surrounded by unexpected flashes of blue water and red bridge. I love taking the cable cars and sitting next to Indian women in bejeweled glasses who squeal with glee as they spot the guy with three pets – the rat riding the cat riding the dog – ambling down Powell. I love walking down the Embarcadero at night and looping up to Chinatown where the red paper lanterns flutter in the breeze. I even love owning seventeen Old Navy sweatshirts because the schizophrenic weather patterns defeat me over and over again, even though I really should know better by now, and my options – yet again – are spend $12 or freeze.

I still cling to visions of a farmhouse in Tuscany or spending summers in Spain, but I can’t imagine leaving San Francisco for long. Because I love this city in a way I’ve loved nowhere else.

***

You can see a slideshow of Amber’s photo shoot here.

Amber’s website is www.mooseinthekitchen.com
twitter.com/mooselicious

Brent

Somewhere on Page Street
Lower Haight
Thursday afternoon

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I Live Here, S.F.

~Brent Jordan

As I close my eyes to breathe deep the cool morning air, I smile…I live here, S.F. Taking in oxygen which my body then transforms into inspiration that is pumped to every cell of my being leads me to take out the small tattered and taped notebook that is constantly with me and is filled with scribblings and ideas, and I write…every day. The crows curiously peer into my day to day life perched high upon the cables and wires that so artfully criss-cross our historic streets…Never before have i lived in a place so rich and full of color: The playful paint-schemes of the old Victorians that allow us to play, live and love in their bellies…the brightly colored personalities of neighbors, strangers, and friends who have led and are leading equally colorful lives. Sometimes I up and exclaim “I can’t believe we live here!” My wife will smile and say “I know, honey,” like a knowledgeable soul to a youthful one.

You see, I write songs and writing songs in this place is easy…they are to be found everywhere. In the rolling hills, which seen from night from the highest point in the city favors a ethereal blanket of stars God laid out on a billowy bed…In the motorcycle rides through Golden Gate Park towards the Great Highway which opens up like a dream to an endless sea and sky scene of the wide-eyed Pacific (sometimes i swear i can still hear the carnival ghost sounds left as a footprint in time from Playland at the Beach)…In the neighborhoods that differ so vastly in feel and personality, yet exist so close to one another like brothers and sisters of the same wonderful family…In the many different cultures represented here, delightful in the intricacies of their cuisines and music and dances…In the mystical fog that rolls in and enchants us all…

I live here, S.F… I love here, S.F…I am constantly inspired here, S.F. Now we are blessed to have a little precious girl here S.F… And when she grows old enough, she will be able to confidently say that she was born in the greatest city on earth…San Francisco!

***

You can see a slideshow of Brent’s photo shoot here.

Brent Jordan’s music is available and he plays live in San Francisco in several venues. You can hear his music and check his schedule on the following sites:
www.myspace.com/brentjordanmusic
www.cdbaby.com/Artist/BrentJordan

Brent Jordan’s two CDs are also available on iTunes.

Forrest

We met at the corner of Haight and Fillmore. I bought a Street Sheet from him. Around the corner on Fillmore, some young guys were painting a new mural on the wall, right next to where we stood. There were buckets of paint and tarps all around. “They’re painting my room,” he said. He pointed to the sidewalk. “That’s my living room.”

Wishing everyone a peaceful and compassionate holiday season. If you can give a little, give.

Mariana

Stuart

Tuesday afternoon
On Fillmore Street
Hayes Valley

A lot happened that summer. I saw scores of great shows and I read a lot of books. I explored thoroughfares and alleyways, learning the difference between avenues and streets. I made a few true friends and a hell of a lot of acquaintances. I fell in love for the first time and I saw a dead body up close and personal for the first time too. I thought I found a career path and later learned I was wrong. I also thought I’d forever stay the person I was then. I was wrong about that as well. But more than anything else, the most significant thing that happened to me that summer was that San Francisco chose me.

By the end of that summer I knew I’d end up living here again. It also helped that the girl who I’d fallen for was here, so I’d have ample reason to come up and visit my future home. Not that I really needed any reason.

Sometimes it feels like a lifetime has passed since I first felt San Francisco’s pull. Various women and friends have come in and out of my life and I’ve spent much of my time over the past few years living out of a bag, sometimes half way around the world. Plus I’ve fallen in love once again; San Francisco is a wonderful city in which to be in love. But of all the things that have within me and without me, one thing has remained constant; my affection and admiration for this city. No matter where I am in the world, I’m always proudest when I say San Francisco is my home and I see someone’s eyes light up. It’s then that I know The City has chosen that person too.

***

You can see a slideshow of Stuart’s photo shoot here.

Stuart is the author of Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living in San Francisco
He has also written a NYC version. If you “enjoy shit talking and cheap stuff,” make sure to visit him at www.brokeassstuart.com.

Megan

Noah

on Haight Street
Sunday morning