S.F. WORKS ITS MAGIC ON A NEW YORKER
Maybe it was the piles of filthy snow, or the chapped faces of my winter-beaten friends, but my last visit to New York made me feel something I’d never felt before: Desperate to get home. Home to San Francisco.
I’m not sure exactly when I transferred my allegiance from New York to San Francisco, but I know when I felt like I’d finally let go of New York. When I left the keys to my Brooklyn apartment in the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
Until that moment in late February, I’d subleased the place for my entire first year in San Francisco, the equivalent of a newlywed keeping his little black book just in case. As much as I’d loved my first year in San Francisco, in the back of my mind there was a part of Brooklyn that literally had my name on it. When my subletter decided to move on, it was time for me to do the same.
Leaving the keys turned out to be the easy part. I also had to disperse my remaining possessions, spackle the chipped plaster and roust five years’ worth of dust bunnies that had gone feral from neglect.
I also had to pack up my books, choosing which ones to donate and which ones to send to San Francisco. I’d already shipped most of the volumes of the New Yorker’s Required Reading Library: J.D. Salinger’s sepia-colored New York novellas, Fran Lebowitz’s “Metropolitan Life,” Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” which contains “Goodbye to All That,” the most-cited essay about ditching New York for California, and the other titles certain New Yorkers clutch like security blankets.
While sifting through the piles, I found a strange little volume I’d all but forgotten, a book called “A City Destroying Itself: An Angry View of New York” by Richard J. Whalen. You’re forgiven for never having heard of it. The book is a rant about why Manhattan was going to hell, circa 1965. The book is beyond dated, with plaints about places like Pan Am Building (now known as the MetLife Building), an eyesore that “hulks brutally over Grand Central Terminal,” and Washington Square Park, which was once full of “derelicts, sex perverts, and hoodlums.”
Skimming the book on the plane ride home (yes, home) to San Francisco, I was less struck by its conservative, curmudgeonly tone, than by a feeling of occasional agreement. New York is kind of a mess, I thought as the city receded behind me. Living there is a bit of a sucker’s game. As Whalen put it, “The truth is that the New Yorker of humble talents and ambitions derives no benefit from living in the world’s greatest city, but instead pays more for less with each passing year.”
Damn right! And yet, I can’t help but worry that the same thing may be true of San Francisco, circa 2015. As the headlines, the think pieces, the protests and every conversation I have with long-, mid- and short-term residents attest, our city is growing less hospitable to the humble with every passing quarter. (Remember when we used to measure time in human terms like “years,” instead of in stock market terminology?)
We’re paying more for less, too. I remember this every time I’m obliged to shell out $4.20 for a croissant or give myself tachycardia by peeking at real estate listings. Yes, I’ve only been here for a year (please remember to note that in all caps in your angry letters and tweets), but I worry that by wresting some of New York’s mojo, San Francisco may have absorbed some of that city’s bad qualities as well. New York has always been a world-class city, the dream destination for generations of ambitious, hungry and talented people hustling to make it. For the last few years, San Francisco has filled, and arguably supplanted, that role. We’ve got the world’s attention, we’re moving markets and defining the future. San Francisco is not just some place; it’s now The Place. Which is exactly why we have to be careful not to turn ourselves into another city destroying itself.
The thing about reading a book from 1965 is that the contemporary reader knows that New York did not — could not — destroy itself. It merely changed. Ugly buildings hung around long enough to become fixtures; parks got cleaned up and people stopped referring to their neighbors as “sex perverts” and “derelicts.” And some folks who thought that the MetLife building, Washington Square Park and small 1BR apartments in Brooklyn with cracked plaster would be the backdrop for their entire lives decided to leave. Not everyone is cut out to be an angry New Yorker forever.
By the way, Whalen had some thoughts on our town, too. “Of America’s large cities, San Francisco is commonly considered to be the one most pleasing to the eye,” he wrote. “The majestic sweep of the bay engages the viewer; his pleasure grows as his eye examines streets and buildings near at hand. Steep as its hills are, it is a city for walking.”
Damn right again! I’m happy (yes, happy) to walk the streets of San Francisco for a bit longer. This is a helluva town, even if it’s changed multiple times in just my first year. It will not — cannot — destroy itself.
Whalen’s book sits on my shelf here as it did in New York, but I may donate it when I need space. For the first time in my life, I no longer think of myself as a New Yorker, angry or otherwise, and that’s just fine.
San Francisco is not just some place; it’s now The Place. Which is exactly why we have to be careful not to turn ourselves into another city destroying itself.