Meli

The Lyon Street Steps
Pacific Heights
Sunday morning

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I bike here.

My daily life without my bicycle and my coffee would be like a Martin Scorsese film without the music of the Rolling Stones.

Riding a bicycle has done a tremendous therapy to the soul and moved my eyes through a myriad of wonderful evolving events. Roaming around every single neighborhood in this beautiful city, this machine has been attached to my hip in the last many years and has built many bike lane memories and great respect for the steep street grades.

My bicycle is a French frame made by Motobecane. A local Italian family of four generations from Cow Hollow (yes, there are a ton of old school Italians in the Marina) purchased the bicycle here in San Francisco in the 70s. I am very lucky that this was passed on to me a few years ago to become the second owner. I came across the bicycle in pristine shape, considering that it had been stored in the garage of the grandpa’s house for about 15 years. I was honored and beyond excited to ride. I’m sure the Frenchie (my bike’s name) has seen plenty of time go by in the neighborhoods of this charming city and is excited to see a new generation out there, riding and challenging those damn hills.

One of my favorite streets to wake up and shake every single one of my five senses is Polk Street. There is always something happening between Market Street and North Point. It’s always nice to see when the City Hall dome changes colors — my favorite was last year when the rainbow colors across the street at the War Memorial, displayed support against Prop 8. The steam from BART underneath around McAllister could make your bicycle feel like the horse in Sleepy Hollow galloping the dark winter night away. Late nights and being hungry are good combined reasons to ride northbound on Polk street. A cheesy slice of pizza at midnight, early mornings at the bagelry and Bob’s Donuts are there when you want them, Thai food at every other corner, Indian food, garlic smells dancing around you, then the smell of drunk jocks approaching Green Street are always there to greet you anytime. Nevermind the evolving smells of the Tenderloin, fenders on my bicycle are appreciated everyday…

Speaking of senses, it wouldn’t make sense to ride my bicycle without making various fuel pit stops. This bicycle machine and its qualified 14-speed pilot function on caffeine. Planning outings with friends depending on the coffee shop near by happens by default. Tell me any intersection in the city, and I’ll let you know which coffee shop is near you and what beans. Yup, it’s like that.

Coffee has brought many good things to my life. I begin the day with coffee and often finalize my dinner with a shot of espresso. Often times I plan my routes according to coffee stops, then hills, then a second coffee stop before I eventually get to point B. I do drink plenty of coffee and I’m the first one to admit it, so it isn’t really a problem, right?

The city is very small and there are huge hills, but there is always a way around them. Go get lost outside your neighborhood, visit streets you have not been to in years, and do it often. Wanderluster by nature, I often times decide to intentionally take the longest route, if time permits it. One of my favorite random coffee outings was back in the summer. One afternoon, my friend and decided to meet up in Hayes Valley for coffee. I was in North Beach, she was in Glen Park. Linden Street was our midpoint. We then rode around and got sandwiches in my favorite sub place in the whole city at the corner of Union and Steiner. This guy, a one-man show, makes the avocado in the veggie sub look like perfectly cut sushi art. You can’t go there in a rush, and it’s worth it. Anyways, we then grabbed our food and rode to Crissy Field to eat our lunch. After we finished, we decided that it was time for more coffee and we continued our venture up to Pac Heights, rode through Laurel Heights and headed to ride through Golden Gate Park, leading to coffee stop number two, this time in the Inner Sunset. I had recently discovered a coffee shop near 17th and we sat for some more good doses of caffeine and some more chatter. Eventually we made it out to the Outer Sunset to pick up her kid from preschool and we rode back around to the Panhandle, we then split up and went opposite ways. By the time we each had reached our destinations, we had ridden about 25 miles without even thinking about it.

As I’ve said before: My bike is my shrink, best friend, conversation starter, mood enhancer, and gym. All in one, every day.

XOXO.meligrosa

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

Meli’s blog is ♥Bikes And The City: http://bikesandthecity.blogspot.com/

Margaret

When I twelve I made a plan. I was going to be a writer and I was going to live in San Francisco. As far as plans for twelve year old girls who love books go, it was not an especially original sort of plan. I didn’t really know much about San Francisco literary culture or history, but I had a sense and I made the plan and, in theory, this plan has sort of worked out. I live in San Francisco, now, and I study creative writing and when I go home and my best friend reminds me, hey, you’re doing what you always said you were doing! I go with it. It feels good to have that sense of accomplishment, that sense that twelve year old me was really onto something, despite her poofy hair and leggings.

Only, it turns out that living in San Francisco and trying to be a writer is not nearly as romantic as it sounds. First of all, the muse doesn’t automatically show up just because I settle myself into a chair at a coffee shop with my laptop, even though I’m pretty sure that before I came, I secretly believed this would happen. Also, it turns out that even when you are living the life your youthful self imagined, you still have bad hair days, you still miss your family and you don’t great a break on the crazy rent your youthful self conveniently never factored into the equation.

Which is all to say, sometimes I don’t feel as though I live in San Francisco. Even in quintessential San Francisco moments I can be caught off guard, wondering suddenly if it is really me there on Muni, if this really is San Francisco or if I will, at some point, wake up and walk out of my apartment and find the city I imagined I knew before I got here.

And the cool thing about all of this? I don’t think I’m alone in this experience, or that any two people really know the same San Francisco. In a city of transplants, almost everyone has this story. It becomes a ritual, a familiar moment in every introduction. We trade our San Francisco origin stories along with our names and neighborhoods. We draw out the paths that led us here. Even the ones who have been here all along, the ones born near the bay, can tell a story about leaving and returning, or the moment they knew they couldn’t go.

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

Margaret’s website is here.