Bern

On Market Street
Downtown
Saturday afternoon

***

I’ve always known that I belong in San Francisco.

There’s something so beautiful about the city.  Something so alluring.  Something that says, “You are home.”

Like I said, I’ve always known that I belong here.  I feel like San Francisco and I are like an arranged marriage in that it was predetermined.  When I was a kid, growing up in the Peninsula, I would take weekend trips to the city and savor each and every moment.  Everything was so new and so different.  It was like looking at the world through different eyes.  There was nothing fake about the city.  Nothing screamed “cookie cutter”, ordinary or plain. It was just what I wanted.  Life in all its unabashed glory.  It was then that I promised myself that one day, I would make this place, home.

And today, I’m proud to say, that I saw that dream to fruition.  I still see the city with the same eager eyes.  There’s always something new to see, learn, hear, smell, and experience here.  Nothing is ever the same… and I am proud to call this place, my home.

***

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

Bern’s blog is www.lifeonmyside.wordpress.com

Ian

At the front of the Pacific Telephone Building
New Montgomery Street, SOMA
Wednesday afternoon

***

I moved here in 2007, after slowly being drawn to it over ten years in other parts of California and the world. I’d lived in the East Bay and worked in the city, and subletted two summers’ worth of rooms. Many of my friends lived here, and I’ve slept on many a couch, but it wasn’t until July 1, 2007 that I had a lease.

It’s humbling to write about my experience here, to claim any authority as a San Franciscan. I love this place and do my best to do right by it, but there’s so much I’m either yet to or will never know.

My favorite time was the summer of 2003, an era known as Camp NoJob. Some were unemployed, some worked nights, I had just come back from living abroad and didn’t really have a plan. I hung out in Dolores Park and played games, temped to pay bills, and had plenty of free time to absorb this city.

To have so much flavor in such a small area is magic. There is awesomeness in probably most places, but in San Francisco everything is so accessible.

Living here compels me to be a better person, whether that means being sure to experience as much awesomeness as possible, living in harmony with both planet and people, or being creative and bold and stupendous to the fullest extent of my ability.

Sometimes you can’t get out and do those things, or just don’t, and that’s nice too, because the last thing this city will do much of is judge you for it.

I’d hoped and wanted to live in San Francisco since I moved to California, and sometimes it just seemed like a foregone conclusion I’d be here sooner or later. Still, if a cheap room in a great house with awesome people I knew hadn’t opened up, I may not have come here just yet. I had finished grad school and was looking for opportunity, whereever she may find me.

A room here was opportunity. In some ways it felt like scoring a ticket to the show or something – I was in, and that was all that mattered.

I’ve been a nomad of sorts since I’ve been in California; only once otherwise have I been in a city for this long, and that only two months more. Part of it’s me settling down in general, but this place feels more like home than any of the others have by a longshot. Living here scratches the itch of wanting to live everywhere pretty well.

I’ve mostly known the BART corridor – working downtown, living in the Mission or Bernal Heights. I like Lower Haight a lot, and the Divisadero corridor. I think I’d like Russian Hill, with a view of the water. Much as I love the Mission, I figure sooner or later it’s for the best to experience the city in some different ways.

I can understand people who don’t like it, sorta. Every day I live here I find it harder to imagine living anywhere else.

I arrived in California on July 29, 1999. I had limited ideas of where I would live and no idea what I would do. I was fortunate to be with a core group of amazing people and surrounded by many more, who made my moving all the way across country under such a scenario remarkably easy. I feel humbled and privileged and indebted to be a part of San Francisco, to me the most unique and comforting and amazing city and state I’ve ever been in. I can only hope to give back as much as it has given me already.

Eugenia

Embarcadero Station
Downtown
Friday morning

On any given day in San Francisco: I might be on a Muni bus, elbow to elbow with a little old lady carrying too many grocery bags, right behind a man in a suit checking his iPhone, trying not to bump into the punk rock kids who are late for school. When I get off the bus, I walk past a small alley where a couple of homeless men have set up camp, and I tip toe gingerly past them because it somehow feels like I’m trampling over their living room.

On any given night in San Francisco: I might be at a concert at the Palace of Fine Arts where fifty musicians have put together a hip hop symphonic orchestra. Hip hop kids wearing their hoodies and high top sneakers are throwing their hands up in the front, and an older couple next to me is clapping enthusiastically to the beat. The age range at the concert appears to be from 16 to 65, and that absolutely tickles me.

And this is why I love living in San Francisco. The city is so small and our neighborhoods are packed together so closely that you are constantly face to face with people who are very different from you. And no one blinks an eye at the amazing diversity we see every day.

I find this particularly refreshing because I grew up in Taiwan and moved to the deserts of Arizona when I was a teenager. I remember landing at the airport in Tucson and feeling the eyes of half of the terminal staring at me and my family. Eventually I got used to being the only person in my school who didn’t speak English (yet), the only Asian kid in my class, and just generally sticking out like a sore thumb. A few years later when I arrived in San Francisco to go to college, standing at the luggage terminal, I felt an odd comfort. For the first time in a long time, absolutely nobody was staring at me.

I’ve lived in many different parts of the city, from the foggy Sunset and Richmond to Lower Pac Heights, where church bells accompany my Sunday mornings. In my work as a writer, editor, and blogger, I am still constantly delighted by the interaction between people who could not be more different from one another. I’ve come to know the city as a place where anyone can feel comfortable, and there is no need to “fit in” because being different here is the raison d’etre.

***

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

Eugenia is the co-founder of the blog Muni Diaries, a place to share and read rider tales.

You can join fellow bus riders and hear their stories at Muni Diaries’ Riders with Drinks spoken word party at the Make-Out Room on Friday, June 12, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.