Much to love in S.F., including the writing

Part of me loves the predictability of San Francisco, the sirens going off exactly at noon on Tuesday.

Part of me loves the unpredictability, visiting a friend in Twin Peaks and stumbling upon a flock of parrots. (Actually, the collective noun for parrots is pandemonium. Write that down. It will probably show up in the Christmas Quiz.)

Part of me loves the predictable unpredictability: naked bicyclists on April Fool’s Day.

Part of me loves the quirkiness, spontaneous beauty in the obscurity of Vermont’s crooked street, or the Moraga steps, or the big blue tower overlooking McLaren Park, otherwise called La Grande Tank, the closest thing that the outer, outer, outer Excelsior has to epic architecture.

Part of me loves the fact that history is just plain better here. Did you know that Maya Angelou was San Francisco’s first black female streetcar conductor?

Part of me loves the huggability of the city, that I can get my arms around it. I always tell people that I came from Ozone Park; I never say New York. New York is too big, too busy to get one’s arms around. And even though I was always obscure in Queens, here in the Fran Sancisco, I am part of history. I’ve been lucky enough to meet three mayors, and three governors, and that could only happen in this city of relentless hope.

Mark Twain once said that, “I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.” This last Wednesday, that held true for me as well. Leah Garchik and Jill Tucker took me out to Montesacro for lunch.

As we walked over, their phones pinged, avid inquirers asking them to comment on Pixar, the de Young or the Opera.

Questions to me were much more lowbrow. I ran into no fewer than three persons whom I knew from the jail, each of them eager to tell me what they were doing to stay out. A part of me is always a deputy, so I asked each about their job searches and their 12step meetings.

I’m just a part of his process. One of these guys is a bike messenger, and I might not be the reason that he’s working today, but the very fact that he stopped to talk told me that he took pride in the journey, willing to measure how far he has walked since his last steps in orange socks and shoes.

But then Jill, Leah and I arrived at the little door on Stevenson Street. This wasn’t pizza in the 21st century style. This was pinsa, a meal on flatbread dating back to Virgil’s Aeneid.

But the food was little in comparison to the company. I felt like the kid from the high school newspaper who finds himself breaking bread with Woodward and Bernstein. Whereas I dabble at writing a column, these two women change society and the law with their words.

Leah Garchik has written for The Chronicle since 1972. To give myself perspective, I was still avoiding learning how not to split an infinitive in English class at Elizabeth Blackwell Junior High when she first took up the pen. She’s on a first-name basis with people I dare not even mention in my column. And although we share the back page each Wednesday, it feels like my article is on the wrong side of the tracks.

In her 18 years, Jill Tucker has earned two Casey Medals for meritorious journalism. I realized that just as I was always a deputy, these two women were always journalists, always asking who and what and where and why. The work changes them, in a much more pleasant way than my job changes me.

But here is the great thing about these two ladies: They let me feel like I belonged, sitting down to eat with these two in the only town in the world where a boy like me could be lucky enough to write for a newspaper as great as this.

Part of me loves that this city keeps me humble. I will always return to the blue bungalow, where neither Zane nor Aidan will be particularly impressed that I had lunch in the literary tradition of Herb Caen at Moose’s or John’s Grill. They will only be impressed that sometime this weekend, we will show up at Bravo’s Pizza in the outer, outer, outer Excelsior. Lache won’t hand us menus, for we always order the same: half cheese/half pepperoni pizza and chicken Parmigianino.

But pinsa or pizza, even the crust is better in San Francisco.

I felt like the kid from the high school newspaper who finds himself breaking bread with Woodward and Bernstein.

Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com