http://zhayitong.com/2023/06/17/sf1.html
Yitong Zhang
Writing
About
How to enjoy SF
San Francisco is a place that defies legibility. It's hard, yet very
fun to love - and definitely not for everyone. It's the postcard city
with the bridge, the piers, and the museums, but it's also the
shit-stained hell hole much decried on Twitter, and also the has-been
tech hub so often lamented in "Goodbye SF" medium posts from tech
guys who lived in SOMA for three years, yet somehow also the bastion
of radical social progressivism.
All of these faces of SF exist as someone's truth, but they're not
mine. They're not the reason I fell in love with the place many years
ago, and certainly not the cause for my continuously renewed passion.
To me - SF has always been about a kind of low key, unabashed passion
for niches, a place where people are deeply and weirdly interested in
things for no other motivation than the joy of being interested. It's
the quiet, intense, and sometimes awkward passion rolling off from
people sitting at a cafe on their laptop reading papers on days so
nice it should be illegal to be anywhere but outside.
And the more it deviates from that - which it can't help but do every
decade like clockwork - the worse it gets. In meme format, it goes
something like this:
Hard times select for nerds You can substitue "nerds" for "peope with
niche passions", but it just doesn't work well in a meme
So this is my attempt to show you the parts of SF that compell me.
This will be a two part guide where I'll walk through first what I
would recommend if you're trying to visit and want to enjoy the city,
then spend part two digging into the mentality required to truly
enjoy the city for the long run. This is by no means an easy guide to
follow. In fact, it would probably take several months. It's what
makes SF illegible. But if you're the kind of person I'm writing for,
and you make an effort to experience SF like this, I think you will
love it as much as I do.
Pt 1: Enjoying SF with your body
Though SF has a tendency to attract people who live like they're
brains in a vat, it is not without its charm! If you're here for the
first time, take your body outside!
Doing stuff
Seward St slides! Seward street slides! Photo from Chantal Lamers on
Instagram.
So let's start niche: there are some very pretty stairs and slides.
If this is your kind of thing, you can make a whole day out of
hunting for these steps. For most people though, I'd recommend
bookmarking these on your map and checking them out when you're
nearby
Then there are the parks: Land's end is my top pick if you don't have
a lot of time. You can also pair it with a trip to the Legion of
Honor - a smaller Fine Art mueseum that is just the right size to be
interesting, but not so big that it's a chore. Presidio is huge and a
little hard to experience as a tourist, but if you have to pick one
spot, Lover's Lane is gorgeous. Golden gate park is really nice and
pairs easily with a trip to De Young museum
If you're staying at a place with a kitchen, you should shop at a
local grocery like Rainbow / Birite /Berkeley Bowl / Gus's, and cook
yourself a meal. California produce is out of this world - especially
in the summer! Lower commitment version of this is picking something
up from Birite, and going for a picnic at Dolores Park.
In the evenings, it's fun to move your body a bit. Mission Fusion is
a great spot for some very SF kind of dancing - it's loosey goosey,
and each dancer will tend to bring a little of their own background
and experience into it - so every dance is a little bit of an
improvisation. The church in which the dances are usually held is
also really cool! If a little bit more structure is your thing, head
to the Church of 8 wheels. It's a roller skating rink... also in a
church! Something about SF makes people want to do silly things with
their bodies in churches.
Outdoorsy / sporty things
Mt Tam! Mt Tam. It's a pic from Unsplash, but it do be like this in
real life too.
There's a type of "SF guy" (gender neutral) you'll often hear about
who's into climbing and endurance sport. If you're here, try to be
that person for a bit - this city is made for runs, rides, swims, and
climbs!
Most accessible among all of these is likely Midnight Runners.
Available in many cities of course, but the SF one has a lot of
people, and they typically go hit up a bar afterwards to hang too,
providing a great chance to meet people. One step up (haha) from
running is climbing. Yosemite being the birthplace of climbing, SF is
naturally full of climbing gyms. If you're visiting the Presidio,
would recommend going to Movement for the views. Otherwise, a morning
climb + lunch in the mission is always a great way to start the day
too.
Though more effortful, my favorite way to see the sights around here
is through a bike ride in Marin: yes, it's streanuous and you'll
likely need to be here for longer than a week to justify this, but
the ride up Mt Tam, or the seven sisters, or down to Stinson Beach is
just ineffably beautiful!
Equally effortful and fun is open Water swimming in Aquatic Park /
Berkeley Pier. Swimming here is a great cultural contrast to SoCal.
The water is cold, the beaches suck, and it's often gloomy - but the
whole thing is surprisingly popular with NorCal people. It's intense,
but also very meditative. Forces you to be present and focused on
your body!
Pastries
Brioche feuilletee de la Maison Nico Brioche feuilletee de la Maison
Nico
As someone who grew up in Montreal, I feel like I have a reasonably
high bar for pastries. San Francisco probably has one of the highest
concentrations of excellent pastry shops per square mile outside of
Paris. Almost every neighbourhood has a world class patisserie, with
some like the mission boasting up to 4-5! Some favorites below:
Maison Nico: a recent favorite for me. Incredibly luxurious pastries
paired with some of the most delicately beautiful French aspic geles,
tartines, and other savoury goods. They're quite under-reported by
the local food media for how amazing they are, but I think that's
changing now.
Tartine: Perhaps a classic at this point, and well deserved! To me,
they have deeply American take to viennoserie in the best possible
way. Everything is big, bold, crispy, flavourful - yet somehow still
refined!
Arsicault: probably top croissant in the city for me, best enjoyed
with a coffee, after bike ride up Hawk Hill. To me, Arsicault is the
opposite of Tartine. Where the former is bold and rustique, Arsicault
is more refined and classic.
Arizmendi - more homey, but still fun because they're a coop, which
imo is a very SF thing.
Breadbelly and Jina Bakes are both incredible Asian flavoured
French-style bakeries. Breadbelly has a super good kaya bun (rare to
find kaya anything in SF!). Jina has a collab with Daeho for a
galbijim croissant.
Craftman & Wolves - a little pretentious, but they kinda deserve it.
Muffin thing with egg inside is incredibe. Particularly delightful to
me that it comes with a tiny bit of salt and pickles.
Coffee
I won't get into this too much, since the guides are quite good. My
only tip is to avoid blue bottle and Philz even though they started
here because they're ubiquitous now. For local chains, try Sightglass
and Equator instead. For small shops, go to: Saint Frank, Four
barrel, Wrecking Ball, Coffee Movement, Sextant, Ritual, Linea, etc.
Chinese food
Honestly, the chinese food in SF is not that good compared to NYC and
LA, which is sad. South and East bay have all the best spots.
Especially overrated spots that I would avoid: Mission Chinese, China
Live, literally all the dimsum spots in the city (except Dragon
Beaux, Palette Teahouse and Koi Palace), San Tung, and most of the
old school spots that usually pop up in guides. Don't trust reviews
when it comes to Chinese in the Bay Area, not on Yelp, not on Eater.
I feel like the reviewers feel some kind of cultural obligation to
put some of the old school joints in the list, despite them not being
that good.
If you must eat Chinese: Yuanbao jiaozi, Z&Y, and Mr. Jiu's are
great. In a pinch, I will cook you some good Chinese food if you're
craving it.
East Bay
Fried glutinous rice balls Fried glutinous rice balls, or savoury Tang
Yuan .
Some East Bay favorites: Wojia, Good to eat dumpling, East Ocean HK
seafood restaurant, Mam Hanoi, Bhan Mae Vane in Alameda, Soba Ichi,
Fournee, Flowerland, Tokyo fish market, Berkeley horticultural
nursery, Thai Temple on Sunday, Bake sum, Sunday bake shop, ordinarie
wine, La guerrera's kitchen. Berkeley bowl (my goodness!), Nyum bai,
Church of mushroom... some day I'll make a real list for the east bay.
It's just too big to fit in a single section!
Pt 2: The Spirit of the City
Ok so you read all of this and somewhere in the back of your mind
you're like - wait these sound fun, but I can get some version of
most of the above in [insert city] but cheaper or better. That's
true! At the end of the day, if you're living in SF in pursuit of the
highest quality of life per dollar, you've already lost. Every day
here is a reminder that you must want more out of life than to live
well.
SF wants you to be interesting, weird, ambitious - anything other
than to be simply content because the price of contentment in this
city makes no sense.
More than ever before, this city now selects for a certain crop of
people. There's no name to this scene, but you know it once you're in
it. As my friend Evan describes it, it's "the rats, the post-rats,
tpot, it's yimbys and progress studies, EAs and e/accs, startup
people and ai people, it's jhana seekers but not in a "grasping" way,
it's the commons, the neighborhood, solaris and the group houses,
it's everyone who shows up to a stripe press pop up and designs their
apartment layout in Figma. It's everyone who reads gwern or astral
star codex or lesswrong and has a manifold market account."
And with the advent of remote work, and the slow decline of public
services and physical infrastructure in the city, it seems that all
but the most committed adherants of this scene have moved to New
York, Seattle, or Austin. This reminds me of what PG once said about
Berkeley and Cambridge. You'd think Berkeley has the same
intellectual life as Cambridge but with nice weather, but it turns
out Cambridge with nice weather is just not Cambridge. Because of how
boring and unpleasant both Cambridge and SF are, there's a strong
selection effect for people who value its social fauna above
everything else.
Bring your own big wheel Bring Your Own Big Wheel, a classic example
of someone who took their weird idea unreasonably far
Ok, so what does this mean for someone who's trying to become an SF
enjoyoor? Be whole heartedly interested in niches, derive your
enjoyment from pursuing your whims, create your own experiences, have
way too many hobbies, go unreasonably far when pursuing them, bring a
friend or five along (maybe it's a startup, maybe it's an art car -
it doesn't matter), stay up far too late completely sober doing
projects with your friends, celebrate outrageous ideas whether they
work or not, when they inevitably do not work embrace the experience
as type 2 (or is it 3) fun.
None of these are easy things to do, but that's what makes SF fun!
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This post was written by Yitong on 17 Jun 2023 in New York, NY. Find
me elsewhere on Twitter, Github, and Linkedin. Email me at
zha.yitong@gmail.com, especially about HCI, design tooling, game
design, crypto, immigration, and finding hidden talent. This site was
redesigned in 2021. View my old site here.