San Francisco, CA

As mentioned last week in my introductory blog about what you can expect from About San Francisco, you’ll get a weekly update about the things that I saw in San Francisco from the week before. This week is just a brief one because it was actually mostly an indoor week for me; I was wrapping up a book deadline and didn’t get to do too much playing around town. But you’ll get the basic introduction to what you’re going to be reading here every Monday morning.

So, that’s the first point to be made. Weeks around here run from Sunday to Saturday. You’ll get the update on Monday about anything interesting that was noted in the San Francisco scene during the prior week. So, last week was July 15th – 21st. And of course, it’s now Monday the 23rd and you’re getting the update about it. So if something exciting happened to me on Sunday the 22nd, you probably aren’t going to know about it until next week (unless of course it’s worthy of a blog post of its own).

The other thing that you might be wondering is what exactly goes into the post since there are any number of things that I might have seen during the week. Well, that’s the point. Anything is fair game if I saw it out in the city. For that matter, it could even be something I saw online if it was really eye-catching. So, it could be a film or live music event that I went to but it might just be a conversation that I saw between a person and himself at the local bus stop one day. Anything is open.

What’s the point? I really do believe that the only way to get to know a city from the inside out is to learn all of the little details about it here and there, the things that you would see if you were able to walk the streets of a place every single day. And since you either don’t live here – or you do but obviously can’t walk in my exact shoes each day – I believe that seeing San Francisco through my eyes will help you learn more about an insider’s perspective on the city I love to share.

That said, what did I see this past week in San Francisco (besides my keyboard screen)? Well, let’s start with seeing since one of the things I did go out into the world today was have an appointment with my optometrist. So, I saw his office, which wouldn’t be notable except that it’s such a cute little office. It’s located on Powell Street, near Columbus Avenue which puts it right near Washington Square Park (where the ladies were out in full force doing their tai chi). The office has a dutch door – you know, the kind that just the top or bottom half can be open – and they keep the top half open during business hours so it’s a cozy, homey kind of place. And it has a dog which greets customers with a cuddly look.

For that matter, I also saw my chiropractor this week and the office there is also cozy. In fact, we were joking around while I was there that I was just going to start getting my mail there because it’s so easy to just linger and linger. In a city as big as San Francisco, it is surprisingly easy to find professional offices which are comfortable, welcoming and almost like home. That’s why I have “my optometrist” and “my chiropractor” instead of just “the doctor” of whatever of kind of medicine. San Francisco is good for making you feel like you’re home, no matter where you’re originally from.

And speaking of originally from … I’m originally from Tucson, Arizona so it’s shameful to admit that when the weather creeped up towards 70 degrees last week, I was whining that it was hot. I blame the humidity (yes, I think San Francisco is humid, and I don’t care what my East Coast friends have to say about it). But the truth of the matter is that I’ve just grown accustomed to the weather here. You can grow accustomed to almost anything I guess. Which is why another thing I saw this past week was the eyes of my neighbor at 4:30 in the morning. We both woke up when the 4.2 Richter earthquake shook our buildings, peeked outside to make sure all was okay and then went back to bed.

And that’s the story of my week in San Francisco!