One fine evening, 2 years ago, I sat listening to a guy playing guitar in a cozy little cafe somewhere in the Golden Gate park. I was drinking a rather large serving of coffee which was paid for by my company for the evening-a girl whom I had made a vague acquaintance with on the internet, our lives crisscrossing at the single intersection of a more than passing appreciation for Audrey Hepburn. She had come with her then boyfriend and under the dim lights of the cafe with a distinct aroma of freshly brewed coffee, we sat there talking about things that I unfortunately do not have anyone to talk with. I dropped them off at their place and finally made my way to the godforsaken precincts of that depressing collective that generally goes by the name of bay area. 2 years have slipped and I have since returned the favor by buying her a hot chocolate in Orange County but I look back at that 1 evening as an experience which changed something fundamental. The appreciation for that elusive variety in life in terms of people who have a different set of experiences than mine, the realization that experiences either come at the cost of stupidity or courage which are often the same things, and the understanding that there is so much to learn and do in life and so much that is fine and beautiful. And every small step towards that misty, sketchy goal-post reveals so much about oneself that it is a loss if one doesn't try.
San Francisco, you did that to me 2 years ago and you did it again this time around. While riding around your labyrinthian roads and psychedelic alleys on my noble steed, while breathing in the salty, cold breeze coming from the Frisco bay, while walking on the congested roads of Haighton Ashbery lined with decrepit smoke shops and bubbling cafes, in the sad eyed fixations of the homeless and the hippy, in the cocksure smoke rings of the eternal dude, in the controlled chaos that you are, you managed to impress upon me, yet again, the virtues of limited pandemonium and the creative possibilities it leads to. And I paid homage to the shining jewel in your crown. Once in a car, once on the motorcycle, and finally while running. Yes I ran across the Golden Gate as part of the half marathon on a misty Sunday morning. While midway across the bridge, I noticed how the two gigantic red cables on either side of the bridge deck rose up and vanished into the fog, holding us all in the phantasm of an embrace, the mighty mighty red bridge suspended in the air with a knot of nothingness. I rode up the marine headlands and looked down upon 'the city'. The great green bay and a vast sea of pastel colored houses as far as the eyes could see, the intricate architectural details on their facades, the gossamery web of emotions of their patrons, all hidden behind a veil of stately calm.
It was only with a heavy heart that I left you and started my journey down South, a feeling that only got exacerbated when I had lunch in the bay area, a symbol of efficient unimaginativity and shortest route boredom. People say that SD is the finest city in America. I'll beg to differ.