Dear friends and family on the East Side,
It’s not you, it’s me. I live in a completely different city. Life is very different over here, and to tell you the truth, I prefer it. The actual distance may only be a few miles, but it may as well be light years.
Ah, San Francisco. You’re a city of such contrasts. Riding BART to work last week, I noticed a woman buttoning up her jeans as she stood next to me. As you do. She had make-shift grillz and asked me for money. I gave her my usual response. She pushed on to the next carriage and left a parting gift of urine that snaked its way down the carriage floor to pool at my feet. On Sunday, the Canadian and I were afforded one of the most ‘San Francisco’ days either of us have ever experienced. Dottie’s True Blue Cafe is renown as the best brekkie in town and lines are usually over an hour long. They recently moved from the Tenderloin, to SoMa. And SoMa is obviously short for ‘So Much Worse than the Tenderloin’. So there we were outside Dottie’s new location on Sixth, minding our business camouflaged in a line of about thirty hipsters. Residents in the SRO opposite kept chucking trash out the windows at us. Local types camped out on the …
Where the American and I live in San Francisco, it’s much easier to buy a Coach handbag than it is to buy groceries. And in most of the cities we have lived in, we’ve lived downtown. Buying groceries was never a problem, because there were plenty of supermarkets in the downtown area to supply the urban crowd. Even in provincial Ireland. But that’s not the case in San Francisco, and is the biggest drawback to living where we do. [Source: Trader Joe’s] Most of our shopping is done at the local Walgreen’s or independent markets/corner shops. We have a mini-Safeway about a mile down the hill, and had a ridiculously expensive independent supermarket about ten blocks away up the hill until recently. Cala Foods closed for good over the New Year period, and in June, Trader Joe’s will be opening up in its place. HURRAH! In the hierarchy of local supermarkets in the Bay Area, I’d rate Trader Joe’s well above average. Some say it’s very yuppie, but it’s no Whole Foods. Shopping at Whole …
San Francisco is unique, and so breathtakingly beautiful. Sometimes I forget to stop long enough to take notice. Thankfully, someone captured it for me, and edited it into an easily-watched 4m56s. [Source] I heart my city. One of my favourite part of the city has always been the fog. It seems to crawl in over the hills and down the valleys like fingers. It’s a living organism. At 33 seconds in, check out the exact view I get each morning as I step outside my front door.
…When I, by chance, met the love of my life on a couch in a hostel in the west of Ireland. It was November 2006. The month before, I had left my comfortable, old life as a Sports Copytaker at AAP in Sydney, Australia, and moved to Ireland. I’d overcome my existential crisis (“How do I fit my life in a suitcase?”), said my tearful goodbyes to friends and family, and flew halfway around the world. I spent three and a half weeks travelling around, drinking in Galway with other Aussies who were also there for the International Rules, hiking in Killarney, partying in Cork, madness in Dublin, and meeting new friends (Hello Gill! Hello Alice!) whom I knew were more than just passing acquaintances. And then I made one of the best decisions of my life: to return to Galway and base myself there. I returned to Sleepzone — the same place where I’d stayed with the other Fanatics for the first game of International Rules. I met the local cast of (mostly Aussie) …
Someone special has a birthday coming up, and I have already wrapped the present! Six days ahead of schedule!
The Rebecca Project 