Happy anniversary to me
20 recollections on 20 (!) years in San Francisco
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This was originally posted last year. It’s been updated to reflect yet another trip around my San Francisco sun ☀️
TWENTY years ago this week I traded the burbs for The City, chasing the call of some inner yearning I’d had for as long as I could remember and didn’t know what to do with but that I knew I’d never satisfy if I stayed in my hometown. I’d spent most of high school either stoned or wishing time would hurry up so I could be a proper grown-up, which to me meant a person with a wild and adventurous life and a rad job and friends who were for real artists, with a hip apartment like I saw on TV and the freedom to walk through the world without having to answer to anybody.
I’ve been here longer than I haven’t, and and maybe it’s appropriate that it’s taken me twenty years to feel like an adult, to look at that list and realize all of it is true. I have two degrees and over a dozen certifications in everything from ESL to CrossFit to yoga to health coaching to massage therapy, and, truly, my greatest education came from wandering these crooked hills and finding my way through the fog. San Francisco is my longest term relationship, and we’ve certainly had our apexes and nadirs, but somehow, despite how challenging it can be to stay here, it’s like a magnet’s got me stuck. I don’t mind one bit.
I’ve been reminiscing. Here are some of my brightest bright spots over the last two decades.
ONE | My first week in San Francisco. I’m riding the 28 bus up 19th Avenue away from where I live on campus at San Francisco State and toward Golden Gate Park. I hail from the suburbs, so bus taking is new to me. But I live in a city now. Around Ulloa Street the bus driver pulls down the intercom and starts speaking: Something must be wrong. Instead: “Today is my birthday!” she proclaims. “And y’all are going to sing me happy birthday.” San Francisco’s first surprise: I sing along.
TWO | In 2012, San Francisco became the first major US city to automate tollbooths. I read an interview in The Examiner, the free daily paper, of a veteran Golden Gate Bridge tollbooth worker with over three decades of experience. When asked what her fondest memory was of her time collecting tolls, she tells the story of how one holiday season, a car rolled up and paid the fare for the car behind them, which sparked a carrying forward, a setting off of a chain of giving that lasted 18 cars.
THREE | I am 18 and a virgin. I hear about the Folsom Street Fair. “My first SF street fair!” I am so excited. I have no idea.
FOUR | Another holiday season, pre-techie-Valencia-Street-makeover: Someone has strung mistletoe at every single intersection. I walk from 24th Street down to 16th and everyone is just kissing, kissing, kissing.
FIVE | Sophomore year of college, I take the 38 Geary bus five days a week from my apartment in the Outer Richmond to Fillmore Street, where I buy and sell clothes at Crossroad’s Training Company (highlight: I sell a leather jacket to Tom Waits!). One Sunday morning, up early for a 10am shift, I hop the bus. I’m so far out in the Avenues, the bus is mostly empty. A man sits alone on the back bench, dressed like a circus performer: He’s heading to Fisherman’s Wharf to make balloon animals for tourists. We make our way toward downtown and the bus begins to fill, and by the time I get to Fillmore Street three miles away, every passenger has been gifted with their own prize: Old Russian ladies wearing balloon hats with flower flourishes; young children with balloon swords, or dogs or cats; and me, a bouquet of balloon flowers.
SIX | A North Beach Scene: Cheese wheels and saltines at Specs, hot toddy’s at Vesuvio, buzzed book buying at City Lights, dancing at The Saloon, pizza at Golden Boy. Or! A Circus Automatic show at The Great Star Theater, followed by slimy burgers at the counter at Sam’s, and then “Hit Me Baby One More Time” karaoke at Bow Bow Club in Chinatown with Mama Candy (“you want peanuts??”). Of course, this was all in the before time. Now I’m a daylight girl, so I just sit in Washington Square Park and drink coffee and watch the tai-chi practitioners. That’s nice, too (I still dance and eat pizza, don’t get it twisted).
SEVEN | If you live in San Francisco for 20 years, everyone you know will leave. Those left behind—those of us who stay—are the truest, bluest, can’t-believe-my-luck, straight up most magical humans you have ever met, anytime, anywhere, ever.
EIGHT | Summer, 2006: My best friend (who I met at Crossroad’s Trading Co.) and I go see Ozomatli at Stern Grove. At the end of the show they announce an afterparty at the Boom Boom Room on Fillmore. We are the first ones waiting in line outside. It’s still daylight out; we wait for hours. We wonder if we misheard, if we are perhaps mistaken. More and more people arrive. We are let into the tiny club, it begins to fill. Soon, this band, who I’ve seen take up the entire stage at the Fillmore, is crammed onto the barely-there platform at the back. Everyone is dancing. It’s loud in that way that makes it feel like your bloodstream is full of sound. A sudden thrum rolls through the crowd, and I look over, and to my great delight, there’s George Clinton dancing two feet away from us. To dance in his joyful orbit is medicine, and we do, we dance until they kick us out.
NINE | On cold summer days, living in the Mission felt like I’d won the lottery. I called it the donut hole, to describe the way the fog, propped back by Twin Peaks, wrapped its arms wide around the neighborhood, keeping us at the center in near perpetual sun. When you live in San Francisco, the fog becomes like a familiar character actor in your daily life, a quirky, comforting, if occasionally frustrating or buzz-killing presence. Despite its pervasiveness, it can catch you off guard, and we all have stories of leaving the house under blue skies and bright sun and kicking ourselves for forgetting our sweaters when the fog shunts in out of nowhere around 4pm. I’ll never forget the first time I was up in Potrero Hill, gazing west, and really noticed the way the fog sits, or more accurately, languishes, over Twin Peaks, backlit by the setting sun, alive and reaching, a view that still catches me with it’s drama and strangeness. Yes, our fog has a name, Karl, though this feels like a misnomer to me: I assert that the fog should have a sexy name, something like Veronica, or Samantha, the way she lays herself over those hills…
TEN | For nine years, I lived above a seedy bar on 22nd Street at Capp (the bass lines of every song on the bar’s jukebox are embedded forever into my subconscious and I lost years of my life waking up at 2am to fights spilling out the front and side doors). I had no idea who my landlord was; we popped rent checks into an unmarked mailbox at the back of the building and were on our own when it came to dealing with leaks, clogs, roaches, mice, obnoxious neighbors, piss in the entryway, mold, and at least three ghosts. But rent was cheap and I was young, and we were known for our wild parties. This was back when bands of mariachis used to roam around the Mission, and one night during a roommate’s birthday celebration I heard them down in the bar. I ran downstairs and begged all seven of them—tuba, guitarrón, violin, todo—to come up to our kitchen and play, and they did. We tipped and fed them and sent them on their way, and I’m not sure I have a better story that exemplifies so specifically what I love about this city.
ELEVEN | Yes, it stays cold here most of the time, but have I told you about the heat? Our summer is short, those dog days barreling toward fall when the sky is vast and clear and the mosquitos bite you because every window in your apartment is thrown open because we’re not used to this and you get to bust out all the outfits in your closet that don’t make sense at any other time of year. San Franciscans don’t know how to behave around so much skin and sweat—sunburned shoulders, bare legs, flushed cheeks—and there is this energy of sex and danger and violence and possibility, and the views are stupid gorgeous, and the water is still ice-cold but maybe you’re hot enough that you jump in for the first and last time, and yeah, the heat will probably drive you to decisions you later regret, but blessedly, the fog is never far behind, perfect for hiding.
TWELVE | Speaking of hiding—San Francisco is full of secrets: Peephole cinemas, beehives nestled in trunks of eucalyptus trees, mosaics and murals in unlikely places, hundreds of stairways connecting quiet neighborhoods with hills so steep you kick yourself for trying to walk instead of drive up to Twin Peaks until you turn around and, ok, I know I’m mentioning the views a lot, but have you seen the views? She’ll keep your secrets, too—I speak from experience—until you’re ready. Or not. That’s OK too.
THIRTEEN | This one is maybe kind of weird: There are a count-on-one-hand amount of people who I have never spoken to, but who, over the years, I’ve seen so often it’s eerie. Have any of you experienced this? Seeing them is like running into a ghost, or maybe, an angel, and I stare at them, captivated, mind running, weaving together stories about these people whose lives seem to at least geographically mirror my own, and something about it feels sacred, and holy, and I don’t actually want to speak to them, because part of what makes it special is the mystery, so I ogle awkwardly and do my best to beam good tidings toward them from the center of my guts. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in my life; when I see one of these people I relax and remember I’m OK. We’re all OK.
FOURTEEN | On March 12, 2017, the day before my 33rd birthday, I was leisurely cruising home on my cute-as-hell mustard yellow Vespa after teaching a Sunday morning yoga class when I was struck head-on by a man driving a $350,000 vehicle. Beat-up but not broken, I began recuperating at home. Things got…dark, for a while. I couldn’t sleep. I fell into a depression. Certain behaviors I thought I’d wrangled reared back tenfold. And, forgive me my evangelizing, but I wouldn’t trade any of it, because all of this lead me to the choice that gave me the life I knew was waiting for me but was always just out of reach. You know what I’m going to say: San Francisco bore witness to the end of my drinking, and all the everything that’s come since (I do miss that damn scooter, though).
FIFTEEN | My side-hustle in grad school was leading urban hikes all over the city. One time, a group of four canceled so a 3-hour hike ended up being just me and one other woman. I was giving her my spiel out front of the historic Nobby Clark Mansion when one of the residents smoking a cigarette outside cupped his hand around his mouth and hollered, “Do you want to take a look inside?” I realize now writing this that perhaps it sounds creepy, so you’ll have to trust me that it wasn’t, it was another one of those San Francisco moments where you check your temperature, and the response is, all systems go, and he gave us a tour of the grand ballroom and the extensive gardens and all the period details, and then we were on our way, up under the secret avocado tree that I’ll take you to sometime, as long as you don’t complain about the hills.
SIXTEEN | The absolute best way to see San Francisco? You walk. You walk from downtown back to Cole Valley, late night through the N-Line tunnel after MUNI is asleep. You walk from the Financial District to North Beach and up to Coit Tower and back, snicky-snacking along the way. You walk from the Mission to the Haight and then up and over through Buena Vista Park and the Castro. You walk from Inner Sunset to the Beach: Iced coffee at Andytown, hell yes. You walk from the Excelsior all the way down to the out of place 4-Barrel Coffee near San Bruno Avenue and then you keep going to the end of the world at Heron’s Head Park in Hunter’s Point. You walk from the ballpark to the Ferry Building: More coffee. You can never catch a cab, and you don’t do Uber or Lyft, so you walk. You walk up hills and through eucalyptus forests and under red lanterns and clotheslines and you clomp through the dunes and up stairways and you realize you favor one side because you always wear out the right side of your shoes faster than the left. These walks are your best days, under the spell of anything could happen. Sometimes, anything does.
SEVENTEEN | You fall in love every day. You fall in love with your neighbors—the one who sweeps up the fallen plum tree leaves on your driveway; the one who runs up and down the street hollering on street cleaning mornings, so no one gets a ticket; the one who only charged you for parts when he replaced the brakes on your car. You love the way the light tilts sideways in the fall, and bright winter mornings with views of the Farallons to the west, Mount Diablo to the east, you love the riotous green of spring, and how summer always arrives just when you think you could handle a move back to SoCal; you love running into coyotes and raccoons and great-horned owls (and owlets!) and red-tail hawks, and that you can go visit the lumbering bison in Golden Gate Park, and that one time you saw a wild turkey in Glen Canyon. You love that after living here for 20 years, you can’t really go anywhere anymore without running into someone you love, or someone you used to love, or someone you regret loving, anytime you leave the house. You love stumbling upon a physically distanced dance party at the top of Bernal Hill, because we can’t help ourselves; you love catching San Francisco in a moment of being what she is, before she transformed into a playground for techies. You love every single person who works at Canyon Market, especially Javier, who chats with you about dumb boys as he stacks produce, and with whom you share a birthday. You love your friends so much you are crying right now, typing this. You are so in love with Sutro Tower you want to marry it, you love getting frostbite when you dunk your feet in at Ocean Beach, you love 24th Street more than any other street on the planet. You love tacos and coffee and Rainbow Grocery, and black sesame ice cream at Uji Time in Japantown. You love rediscovering your city as a person who doesn’t drink. You love how much softer you’ve become, how you are wilder and more free than ever but also you love how the ground feels under two feet, rooted.
EIGHTEEN | Stay here long enough, and these 7x7 square miles start to shrink. Just this week in the span of two days I ran into Krishna, an old roommate from my Mission District days who at 6’8” was a formidable bouncer at bars in North Beach and in any given week had a carousel of lady friends he might invite over. These days he’s married with a baby, and they’re moving to Massachusetts to live in the burbs. The very next day, talking to a new member of my gym, I asked him if he lived nearby and turns out he lives in my old apartment, the very one I shared with Krishna. These moments of coincidence and serendipity give me life, and remind me of how much still thrums all around; that when I pause to look up I might catch eyes with an old friend, or if I take time to be curious about someone I’ve never met before, a decade’s worth of memories might unfurl in moments.
NINETEEN | I go back to The Warfield to see LCD Soundsystem’s last show of an eight night Bay Area run. It is LOUD and epic and I am dancing in that weird shimmy way you have to dance when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd. I can’t help but reminisce about the first time I went to The Warfield, 19 years old, flashing a friend’s borrowed fake-i.d. to the bouncer, and having him take one look at it and peel it apart in front of my eyes. Then I remember the first time I saw LCD Soundsystem, back in 2007, but if I’m honest, I don’t actually remember it, only the idea of it, because that night is gone forever to drugs and booze. These memories churn and I’m standing there taking in the noise and lights and sound and all the life on stage and all around me and the last song is “All My Friends” and when James starts to sing “where are your friends toniiiiiiiight” I am dancing alongside my bestie and the tears are rolling down my dumb face and I am feeling everything, I am so inside the moment, I’m absorbing every single detail, I am determined to not forget even the smallest thing.
TWENTY | San Francisco can be edgy and hard and mean and dark and cruel (and, um, expensive). I don’t need to spell it out. And. She’s also stunningly gorgeous, and cozy and gentle, and if you can stick it out, she will love you back, I promise. She will love you back as long as it takes for you to love yourself.
20 years worth of links:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading The Changing Light.
Folsom Street Fair
Specs Bar
Vesuvio
City Lights Bookstore
The Saloon in North Beach
Golden Boy Pizza
Circus Automatic
The Great Star Theater in Chinatown
Sam’s! (“North Beach’s Late Night Burger Mecca”)
Bow Bow Cocktail Lounge and dearest Mama Candy
Boom Boom Room
The Fillmore (apples! posters!)
Karl the Fog
Peephole Cinema on Orange Alley
Urban Hiker SF
The Nobby Clark Mansion
Andytown Coffee
Heron’s Head Park
Farallon Islands
Canyon Market
BISON
Bernal Hill is the photo at the top!
24th Street mi corazon
Mount Diablo
Rainbow Grocery
Uji Time
Sutro Tower
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA.
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AWWW~ I finally just read this through to the end. LOVE YOU! (and love this weird city!!) <3
I loved this the first time I read it and love it now! This is saved in my "I love SF" email folder - you capture the essence of our amazing, beautiful and unique city so beautifully!