Going through the email that accumulated over the holidays, I found an enticing subject line in all caps: THE GRINCH FROM SAN FRANCISCO.
Had a City Council politician done something nefarious? A landlord was evicting a family? Has another business owner treated a homeless person inhumanely? Not this time. I opened the email to find out that the Grinch was me.
“Bad days, Heather dear,” wrote one reader who didn’t respond when I replied, so we’ll stick with her first name, Sue. “Why are you determined to destroy San Francisco? Are you going to run for mayor? How about some positive headlines for a change?
To answer your questions, Sue: I try to highlight the city’s problems in the hope that our leaders will improve this struggling city that I, and many of you, still love. run for mayor? No way. More positive columns? Here you have!
Anyone who listens to my Total SF podcast with co-host Peter Hartlaub (new episodes every Friday!) knows that I think this city is fun, whimsical, and full of great people and places. Recent podcasting adventures have taken us to the very top of the tower of the Transamerica Pyramid, to choir practice at Glide Memorial Church, and inside the penguin compound at the California Academy of Sciences.
And anyone who follows me on Twitter or Instagram knows that I constantly post photos of the beauty of the city: its hilltop views, iconic buildings, drag performances, independent bookstores, parks, beaches, and historic cable cars and cable cars. More Sutro Tower. Lots of photos of the underrated and incredible Sutro Tower.
But, Sue, if you only read my columns, I can understand why you think they’re largely negative. In a city with a devastating drug overdose crisis that has killed 1,925 people in the past three years, an affordability crisis, a housing shortage, an epidemic of property crime, and ineffective leadership, a columnist who ignored it all would sound Pollyannaish, or just plain inaccurate.
But as Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness emphasized in a recent hilarious show at the Castro Theatre, life is all about duality. “We can be more than one thing at a time,” Van Ness has said.
And so, yes, San Francisco is flawed, depressing, and paralyzed in its pursuit of perfection over progress. But it’s also stunningly beautiful, full of creative and compassionate people and an exciting place to live. If you’re bored in this city, you’re not trying very hard.
I want to know what keeps you optimistic about San Francisco and why it’s still here – send me an email or PM me on Twitter, and your answers could be included in a future column.
Here are a few reasons why I’m still hooked on San Francisco 24 years after moving here. This one’s for you, Sue!
Community: San Franciscans, by and large, are a thoughtful bunch who want to improve their city. Vincent Yuen is the perfect example. Inner Richmond’s father in March 2021 founded Refuse Refuse, which stands for rejecting the trash, as a one-man cleanup operation determined to keep his block tidy.
Less than two years later, his organization became a citywide effort with a large number of volunteers who together performed 900 cleanups and filled 17,500 bags with 225,000 gallons of trash.
Marlis Ringseis picks up trash with Simone Yuen, 5, during a cleanup with the Refuse Refuse group started by San Francisco resident Vincent Yuen.
Brontë Wittpenn, Staff Photographer / The Chronicle
“We’re doing a Masonic cleanup right now,” he said when I called to check in on Wednesday. She called his progress so far “a good start,” but he has many plans, including developing a cleaning and community service curriculum for local schools this fall.
He said many San Franciscans become desensitized to the problems around them, including dirty streets, and it can be easy to focus on your next ski weekend or the hot new restaurant instead of helping out. So he’s trying to build his team of dedicated volunteers. (Sign up at RefuseRefusesf.org.)
“If you want next-level results, people have to be engaged and do something,” Yuen said.
I’m determined to do just that by volunteering more this year, and I’ve just signed up for an upcoming shift at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, which serves 50,000 hungry households every week. You can also help by signing up for a volunteer shift before Sunday (actual shift may be as late as March). If the food bank gets 2,500 registrations, it will receive a $25,000 donation from the Alice Lam Memorial Foundation. Let’s help them do it!
The food bank expanded its services significantly during the pandemic by opening pop-up pantries throughout the region, and 2,000 volunteers are needed to run the 27 sites each week. Cody Jang, associate director of community engagement for the food bank, said seven or eight sites each week are understaffed, and shifts bringing groceries to the homebound are also regularly empty.
“Shifts are only two to three hours,” he said. “Your relatively small investment of time can have a huge impact on someone else’s life.”
That sense of helping one another was on full display during torrential storms this month when San Franciscans adopted storm drains, vowing to keep them clear of debris and prevent flooding.
The Public Utility Commission program also allows you to name your drain. Chronicle staff members Trisha Thadani and Dan Kopf adopted a drain near our newsroom at Fifth and Mission streets and named it Herb Draen after the late legendary former columnist. One hopes Herb Caen is laughing about it in the great hall in the sky while he drinks a vitamin V (his favorite drink of his, Stoli with a twist).
The arts: From free public art to priceless museum exhibits to an abundance of live theater opportunities, San Francisco has endless opportunities for art lovers.
In the last month, I’ve seen—and loved—“Nutcracker” at the Opera House; “The Golden Girls Live” at the Victoria Theater (episodes of the show recreated by four of the city’s best drag queens); a Christmas concert at Grace Cathedral; “Baloney,” San Francisco’s gay men’s magazine at the Oasis; and a hilarious pantomime rendition of “Sleeping Beauty” at the Presidio Theater. The fairies were called Orinda, fairy of the forests, Pacifica, fairy of the sea, and Fremont, fairy of highway overpasses.
On the public art front, a number of wealthy San Franciscans have expressed an interest in saving the Bay Lights, the massive light sculpture on the Bay Bridge, which is failing and will go out in March. As I told you in a recent column, Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate, who is spearheading the project, hopes to find 10 wealthy people to donate $1 million each toward a bigger, stronger version for Labor Day.
The giant LED light display on the Bay Bridge has become decrepit and private funds are being raised to repair and improve it.
Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle
Davis told me this week that “the commitments are lining up” and he expects to have some solid news to report soon. I’ll keep you posted, and in the meantime, take a walk down the Embarcadero at dusk to admire the beautiful lights and fall in love with the city all over again.
Exploration: San Francisco is full of charming neighborhoods, each one worth exploring, even the one we locals dismiss as tourist-only. I was reminded of that over the weekend when we took refuge from the gloomy skies at Subpar Mini Golf in Ghirardelli Square.
Each hole is designed to resemble a famous stretch of San Francisco, including the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square, Coit Tower, and winding Lombard Street, where golf balls spin much slower than cars. There is even a hole with the Castro Theater near Cliff’s Variety. (In real life I got a great post-holiday deal there on a box of disco ball Christmas decorations. Next year’s tree will be fabulous.)
The mediocre miniature golf at Ghirardelli Square includes San Francisco-themed holes, including a Golden Gate Bridge and a detailed replica of the Castro Theater.
Peter Hartlaub / The Chronicle
After golf, we had beer and lunch at the San Francisco Brewing Co. (I’m not a huge football fan, but the Niners Nation IPA is delicious). Then it was browsing independently owned shops, chocolate at Ghirardelli and admiring Ruth Asawa’s. Andrea Fountain with mermaids suckling between water lilies.
That was an outing that took 10 minutes to plan, and the rest unfolded spontaneously and charmingly, just like many adventures in the city. Here’s to enjoying more of the city in 2023 and remembering why San Francisco is always worth fighting for, even when it seems hard at times.
Heather Knight is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hknightsf
Source: news.google.com