(I wrote this on a legal pad on the train into downtown San Francisco the day I did my A-Z walk last month.)
Maybe it all has to do with the water. We have the same ocean in Orange County, but it’s over THERE and we’re over HERE on the land and (apart for the occasional coastal morning fog) we get to choose when we’re going to have anything to do with it. We have concrete rivers and drained wetlands – Orange County is a place where we have asserted control, and power, and somehow a kind of subtle segregation just seems to follow. I’m not talking about racial neighborhoods, but about the way the classes just don’t trouble themselves to mingle or notice each other. We have more walls than some nations. Not because there’s anything BAD about the other – Jesus, no – it’s just that since we CAN control these things, isn’t it just CLEANER and more PEACEFUL all around if we do?
But there’s no mastery of the water in San Francisco. The Bay is a great gift for us, but we cannot rule it. Water envelopes this city, slaps at it from all sides, and even if you don’t go down to the shore it will ooze itself into the air to come find you, to grab you, and to sink into your bones.
This city lives with what cannot be controlled, and cannot be kept separate. It is a riot in a fortress rising from the sea, and the residents would not dare to make it any other way. It celebrates the rock upon which it has been blessed to live for this mad, messy span.