Last weekend I had the chance to visit my friend from Virginia, Kevin, in San Francisco. We had the pleasure of being joined by our other friend Sylvia who flew out from Virginia for a mini high school reunion.
The best part was obviously being able to see my old friends. I've met a ton of people an made a lot of new friends in my new home but it was nice to spend time with people who have known me for years. We all mostly hung out in the years after college and its interesting to see how much each of us has grown and changed. I also had a really fun time in the bay area exploring the other side of California for the first time since I was 7. The most obvious difference to me between San Francisco and LA was how much San Francisco felt like real city. Since I drive everywhere in LA it was weirdly relaxing to be able to take public transportation or be able to take a quick cab to get you to city center. The landscape of San Francisco seemed almost European. With the steep hills, older buildings and bay view I felt like I was back in Barcelona or another Mediterranean city. And when I say steep, I mean steep. I came back to LA with calves of steel as we had to scale the “hills” (more like Mt. Everest in every direction) of San Francisco streets.
The second most obvious difference: hippies. No joke, I'm not just saying this. I might have a biased view as we went to a large, free, music festival one day. But dirty granola hippies AND hipsters were abound.
The third: bohemoth fire hydrants. That's all I have to say about that.
The fourth: A different kind of crazy. I've become accustomed to the crazies of Venice beach and the sort, I almost forgot about inner city crazy people! We defintely encountered some as we were taking public transportation across San Francisco.
The fifth: A different type of creativity. Being in LA I feel like I'm certainly surrounded by a lot of creative people. Creative in various artistic facets. The Bay area, known for its start up culture, definitely seemed like it was full of people with a different type of creativity: idea people coming up with the latest app for smart phones or innovative business models (ie...we took a zip car out to Sonoma one day. Apparently this started in SF).
Similarities: palm trees(still not as good as the ones in LA), transplants, cyclists and white teenagers wearing drug rugs and openly talking about drug use in public. Hey kids, might want to keep that to yourself.
All in all we had a good time! And of course we have some documentation of our fun:
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| One of the bohemoth fire hydrants |
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| Karaoke |
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| View of the Mission from Kevin's House |
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| Waterfall at Golden Gate Park |
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| Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival |
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| One of our stops at a vineyard in Sonoma |
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| Royalty |
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| Golden Gate Bridge |
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| Cats! and Wolves! |
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