I love the bay area

friendship is magic, once again

This is inspired by Sasha’s post; I am friends with Sasha and I love his Substack; you should subscribe to his Substack. We just disagree on this point, and that’s okay!

I first started living in San Francisco during the summer of 2015, age 18. It feels wild that it’s been a decade. During that summer, I lived with a guy named Iain in an apartment on 11th and Mission; our friend Lucy came over all of the time and we were a trio. I had a meager allowance but there were about six intern happy hours happening all over the city so I didn’t have to spend a lot of money on food.

I haven’t always been faithful to the Bay Area. After that summer, I went back to school, and soon after dropped out; had tons of visa issues and went back to Canada, hung out in Hong Kong and Tokyo and Seoul and Kiev and Budapest. During the pandemic, I moved to Utah for a year and New York for a year and Montana for a summer. But I always came back. Recently a friend pointed out that there was literally nothing stopping me from spending a couple of months in Paris, theoretically my favorite city in the world; I have an immensely flexible job, after all. I could, but I probably won’t. The reason I won’t is that I really love San Francisco, and I would miss my friends.

I met another writer recently and we talked about how for both of us friendship is our primary hobby. My first year in San Francisco I met maybe 100 people. About five or six of them were so supremely easy to spend time with that the most pleasurable thing I could conceive of was sitting on their couch for six hours at a time and talking until my voice was hoarse. Then I wanted to wake up and do it all over again. My whole conception of self-worth up to that point in my life was about jumping through hoops. Tests, APs, debate, piano, school, whatever. And then I went to Penn and the rules were different, I felt so uncool all over again, but I figured that I would suck it up and reinvent myself as a social being and jump through whatever more hoops I needed to do to get a semi-prestigious job because what else was I gonna do with my life. But then I met my friends and they made everything feel possible. In classic bildungsroman fashion, I headed west.

Friendship did not save me from the work of becoming a person. Neither did San Francisco. It took me a long time to realize that no one was going to do that except for me. Not J, my best friend who I moved out here to work on a startup with. Not S, who made everything possible with his love and support. Not the other J, who literally let me live in her one-bedroom apartment where we shared a bed. Not C or N or B who listened to me complain about boys and about work through the nights and weeks and months that turned into years. I was the one who had to try and fail and thrash until I figured out the work I wanted to do, and I was the one who had to sit with the uncertainty of not knowing if I would be any good, if I could support myself, if it was ever going to work out. Part of growing up has just been realizing that it was my own job to own my existential angst, and feeling the fear is part of feeling everything else. Fear, uncertainty, dread and change were the price I had to pay to risk joy.

But I met friends in San Francisco believed that I could do things on my own terms. They thought I could do it, whatever it was, they didn’t stress about the details. And my friends were brave. While I was trying and failing, they were trying and failing. And sometimes, wildly succeeding. I really do think there this thing where talent tends to flow to where money is and because tech has become so wildly influential and powerful in the past three decades many of the smartest young people come to San Francisco. That is not a straightforward endorsement of everything that tech makes—it’s just that there are a lot of great people here that would’ve worked in other industries in, say, the 80s or 90s. And while there are certainly bad things about Silicon Valley culture there is also a lot of good.

I truly believe that San Francisco is a very accepting place. There are lot of eccentrics who have found a home here who would not be happy in other cities, and they do not all work in tech (I am one such oddball!). At the end of day, I’m here because my favorite people are. And because I grew up somewhere so painfully naturally beautiful (British Columbia, Canada) I have been yearning for the echo of that ever since and found it in California. But I also find San Francisco to be a very lovely city and I find it deeply sad and confusing when people hate it.

What I did right (?)

I think my biggest learning is that you don’t need to find a cohesive group or scene that you like; in fact, it’s often easier to find specific people you have amazing chemistry with. So even if the party is a bust, if you connect with one person and keep hanging out with them, that’s a huge success. I would like to take the opportunity to define “amazing chemistry” specifically as, you could talk to them for eight hours, and talk to them for eight hours again the next day. I know that’s a high bar!! But if you have even one or two people who you feel this way about it can be enough to sustain you. My friend T and I always joke about how when she comes to visit or I do we end up hanging out every single day. We don’t have to, obviously, and we often don’t mean to. But we just end up having so much fun together!

I also have always just stayed away from groups or scenes I don’t feel entirely enthused by. Some people and parties might be really great, but I just don’t think they’re for me, and I don’t hang around to investigate. Being in a scene you’re not passionate about is a really good way to end up resenting the people you’re around and I think that is Deeply Bad for your soul.

“The vibes are off” is enough of a reason to leave. A lot of people think they need to be wronged, or have a logical reason to reject a person or scene. I truly, deeply believe that listening to your intuition is enough. Of course, you have to practice and develop your intuition; if you’re compulsively critical of everything, maybe you’re the problem. But often if you Really Like even one thing or person it’s proof that you are capable of liking another.

In general, I stand by the Favorite People model of the world: the people you spend the most time with should be the people you point blank like the most. Now, there are some elements of this you can’t control (some people have rocky relationships with their coworkers and families) but you must exercise free will when you can and be radically willing to prioritize the people you really like. What’s at stake? Nothing, only your own happiness.