San Francisco Sayonara

Back in 1990 I moved to San Francisco.  I loved the idea of the living in the hippy mecca, and although it ended up being more Kurt Cobain than Jerry Garcia, it still just felt like like home.  I spent the next year partying on the Haight, 16th street and SOMA, meeting like-minded crazy people, drinking whiskey, and snorting and popping whatever I could find. In other words it was exactly what this small town kid, who was looking to disappear into an urban "scene", wanted.
For the next 15 years, I spent time in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vermont and New York City, but always returned to the city that had just the right balance of radical politics and blue collar sensibility with a sprinkling of old school glamour. It was my home and I bragged about it to anyone who would listen.
But in my final stint by the bay I started to feel the changes that had been percolating for years.  Though I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and I fell into faulty reasoning like "it's a young person's city now", I knew something was different.  Sure people my age were busy gentrifying the East Bay,  pushing out the original tenants there like we had the latinos in the mission decades before, but the change seemed deeper than that.
Besides my own evolution, I realized that the real change was a change in priorities.  Back in the day we lived in small dwellings and spent our money on good food, drink and going out with friends.  And understand that when I say "we",  I mean people of all ages, races and socioeconomic brackets.  Did some of us wish for more space? Sure. But as city dwellers we had made the choice that the convenience of a good steak, a nice cocktail or 10 or a night at the theatre outweighed those desires.  If we wanted space and quiet, we could always move to the suburbs.  Now the priorities of these "should be surburbanites" have been pushed into cities like San Francisco, where people constantly complain about noise, congestion and late night drinking.  Some may call it the evolution of the city but it's not.  It's bullshit.  If you think it's too noisy living in SOMA then guess what? There are plenty of places in the south bay for you to sleep at night. Take your fucking kids there and leave the nighttime fun to the cities.
As I pull up the stakes again, and as I know now it will be my last time in San Francisco I say thank you to my adopted home town.  I hope you can survive for decades to come.  Thanks for allowing me my 20 year social experiment.  I hope you find a way to return to your former glorious self.