On November 8, 2016, Lola and I drove up from Los Angeles to San Francisco. My aim in coming to this city early was to observe why my friends loved living here. I wanted to document my exploration of this city – not because it’s a new place to me – but because I had feared that the tech revolution of Silicon Valley had turned one of my favorite cities into one filled with pretentious, low-EQ, tech startup punks. I came here to see that the core of the city was still alive and well, albeit marred by the inevitable pockets of the tyranny of tech. I wanted to document my experience so far before my girlfriend arrives this evening.

I will illustrate my experience through a non sequitur free-flowing list of short vignettes:

• First of all, I was impressed at SF’s handling of the failure of Hillary Clinton’s nomination to the presidency. I was in a bar called Harper & Rye when the numbers started looking bad, and everyone handled the news with maturity, although the next day I saw a demonstration happen near the Fisherman’s Wharf. I had been seeing in the news that throughout the country, there was quite a bit of violence and protest, even back in LA. Apparently someone set a car ablaze across the bay in Oakland, near where my sister lives. (I still don’t understand why she lives there)
• Walking around the city in the middle of the work week, I got a chance to see what felt like a very efficiently humming engine of a city, quietly chugging along about business. I felt very much like a local, doing local things. I found that Pacific Heights is a fantastic place to live, close to a bunch of cool restaurants, bars, and amenities. Lafayette Park is an excellent dog-friendly habitat.
• My friend Jerome and I went to a very excellent Japanese kaiseki-style spot called Kusakabe. This spot is truly awesome! Below is a A5 Miyazaki wagyu sushi to finish our 25-course flight of heaven.

• Food quality in SF definitely seems to be better on average than LA for the kinds of food that are available here. There are some excellent restaurants here – but LA’s got SF beat on the sheer diversity of culinary choices.
• If I lived here, I would not have a car. Rideshare services like Uber/Lyft are plentiful and abundant. People come from afar just to drive people around, then go back. One of my drivers was from Davis, and did this daily to support his family. Another was a retired Russian psychologist who was an expert in a meditative practice called raja yoga.
• There is a hilarious term guys use here called “49er.” I had heard this term before from another SF transplant in LA, but when I met some SF local bros, he explained this concept to me. Basically, the tech boom in SF has impacted the dating pool in such a way that has injected much artificiality, pretentiousness, and attitude. As such, an interesting phenomenon has happened where guys who meet girls who in their minds are a physically attractive score of a “4” would exhibit the stereotypically entitled, arrogant attitude of a typical “9.” So in short, an a below-average-looking girl would think she has some kind of license to have an attitude. So as a result of this, many guys from SF have been migrating to other cities. The person I had met last night who described this phenomenon to me told me he was looking for work in LA after 10 years of SF, and meeting far too many 49ers. So in short, guys in SF are getting tired of pretentious women who aren’t that attractive, and migrating to LA in the name of finding greener grass. (I would hate to inform them that in LA, they can be just as pretentious as well be they a 4 or a 9 also…) Even one of my Uber drivers said he loved driving people around because he would meet women from out of town- and that if a female passenger was a SF local, he didn’t bother starting conversation. I’m sure that the women of SF have their own unique views of the guys here. On a somewhat related note, it’s funny that Tim Feriss calls the city he lives in “Man Francisco” due to the dearth of available women.
• It seems that individual greed is alive and strong in this city. My AirBnB in Pac Heights, while in a great location, and is apparently a really nice one, was surprising for me as to how basic it was. No central air, so the still hair had an eerie coldness to it. Now, this place was advertised a few weeks ago as being pet-friendly, and with a garage. After I had made a purchase decision based on this information about the AirBnB spot, when I checked again a few days before the reservation, suddenly there was no parking available. After showing them that I thought it was advertised as such, it suddenly became a $25/day parking cost. When my girlfriend reserved a DogVacay for Saturday night, suddenly it was a $5 addition because Lola was a puppy.  It’s one thing to be enterprising – it’s another to be duplicitous. Oh well.
• I unfortunately ran into the essence of what I had feared about San Francisco in a neat little restaurant called Omakase. A drunken couple basically let loose in the establishment, and was completely disrespecting the chef, and the other patrons of the restaurant – namely my party. Their mannerisms, their sloppy makeout sessions, and their body language said it all. THIS was the San Francisco I had feared was still around. This douchebag and his date (recently acquired on Tinder) had zero regard for their surroundings- the pic below says it all.

Fortunately, I was reassured that these shitbags are not the norm. Rather, it’s a rare occurrence these days, thankfully. Ok, I believe it – but we’ll see. . .

• My sister works in a cool startup called Xero. It’s your cookie-cutter startup, in a nice location near the Embarcadero. When I walked through this neighborhood with Lola, I could feel the brilliant minds hard at work in their cubes, conference rooms, rooftop ping pong tables, and fully-stocked break rooms. If I was fresh out of college, I’d enjoy it.
• I met a tech bro at the Jones rooftop bar – super cool joint, and caught up. He and his friend were both of the opinion that it had long become hackneyed to be another cog in the machine of the tech world that SF had become. For instance, one was always involved in some capacity with a tech startup, no matter what they did. This would be the social currency that would carry them in conversations at parties or bars. What someone did for whom was the important qualifier – the who that would comprise the substance of a person would only be explored after passing these gates. My friends were tired of this nonsense, and were both on their way out of SF. By the time I would be writing this, one would have relocated to LA, another to Santa Clara. So this told me that if long-time locals are jumping ship, hell, there must be good reason.
• I generally feel comfortable in San Francisco. I could see myself living here for a short period of time. But I in all likelihood never will since I love it so much back home in Santa Monica.

I enjoyed my stay in SF! I’ll be back someday.