As the BART train exited the east side of the Transbay Tube, I looked back at the skyline of San Francisco. I couldn’t help but smile.
Although it’s been almost five years since I moved to the Bay — after living 40 years in Arizona — there’s not a time that I don’t feel at one with it. But not everyone understands my affinity for the “City by the Bay” and all that surrounds it.
People who’ve never lived here often ask the same question — “What’s so great about the San Francisco Bay Area?”
It’s true, there are lots of things that would make some people shy away. And at times, I even ask myself, Why the hell am I still here?
In San Francisco, you have a mayor who seems to enjoy ruffling feathers, vacationing and breaking the Tenth Commandment more than he does running a city. And his 11 rebellious disciples aren’t much better — consistently slashing funding from vital resources in their attempt to balance an out-of-control budget.
Walk anywhere downtown and you’re sure to be stopped, assaulted and/or entertained by some homeless and/or mentally unstable individual wanting your change and/or, God forbid, your time.
And don’t get me started with Oakland. Its mayor is a should-be-retired politician who has done little for the city the last four years, but wants to — we think — hold on to his title for four more years. City officials aren’t much better with a track record of amateurish decision making and hiring practices and its police department will soon look like a Keystone Kops film with the planned slashing of its workforce.
On both sides of the Bay you have transit systems that try to lure you into using them to save our planet, while at the same time making it less and less affordable to get where you want, much less need, to go.
The cost of living here is too high, uncontrolled violence plagues many communities and everyone who lives here feels she has the right to say, feel and do what she wants.
That’s right, people living in the Bay do have the right and the freedom to be whoever, do whatever, believe in anything and everything that makes them feel like a whole person. And although there is the minority who disagree, and the occasional latter-day saint to put roadblocks in some people’s way, for the most part you are left to be who you want to be, to do what you want to do, to believe in what you want to believe.
San Francisco and Bay Area residents not only fight for what they want, but fight for what is right.
And although I live in Oakland and enjoy experiencing all parts of the Bay, I found my heart in San Francisco.
A version of this article was published in the summer 2010 pilot edition of the San Francisco Public Press newspaper. Read select stories online, or buy a copy.
