The San Francisco of my youth was eternally foggy, cold, and wet. It was chilly nights on Nob Hill dining at Vanessi’s and aweing at the enormous Christmas tree in the lobby of the Fairmont. It was fog lingering for days outside the eighth floor window of my Park Merced apartment. It was braving a stiff wind and squinting through incessant drizzle on the Marin headlands gazing back on the Golden Gate Bridge, while munching sandwiches on crusty sourdough from a Little Italy deli.
But that old San Francisco is gone. Now, it is 72 degrees and partly sunny in January. Now, it rains a handful of times each winter. Now, it is shades and sunscreen at Giants games instead of parkas and scarves. And it’s not just the weather that has disappeared. It’s the spirit of opportunity, the pride of an elegant metropolis, the ghosts of the North Beach literati, the last sparks of the hippie ethos on Haight, the quirkiness, the regality, the charm.
On my first visit in 2014, I realized Seattle was, in a way, the new San Francisco.
Seattle: damp, iron-hued sidewalks where food wrappers danced aloft in hardscape wind tunnels. Discounting the ubiquitous Starbucks locations, third-wave coffee spots proliferated as homing dots on my internet search map. Eritrean cab drivers, nouveau tech-money wizards, a prominent waterfront marketplace, the pirogi joint with the line snaking out the door, maritime vibes, $40 haircuts. Instead of browsing for marked down dress shirts at the Union Square Macy’s, hunting for Brooks Brothers deals at the Nordstrom flagship outpost. Instead of a ferry to Angel Island, a ferry to Vashon Island.
Both cities: self-important busy people with permanently attached mobile phones; hipster messenger bags; assemblages of folks who spend their days in sidewalk bivouacs; space age parking meters that have yet to arrive in your prosaic, pedestrian town; traffic to grumble-brag about.
But where San Francisco had seen its day and been riding a downward trajectory of appeal for at least a couple of years (or 20 or 30, depending on who you asked), Seattle circa 2014 was right in the thick of it. Sure, I could spy the decline just over the horizon with skyrocketing real estate, growing unbearable congestion, and a waxing shine buffering away just as it had set in. Yet at the time, it seemed the place to be, the peaking hub, the next discovery.
The basics were still a bit easier and a bit cleaner than in the City by the Bay. The trip from the airport to downtown via Seattle’s light rail was still fairly pleasant; mostly devoid of the comparable stained-seat, physical-threat-imbued BART sojourn out of SFO. Happy hour stools at the bar could still be had without stalking the counter for emptying beer glasses. Crack smokers huddled under repurposed moving blankets were still the exception rather than the norm.
My experience peers into Seattle’s future and sees San Francisco’s recent past—hardly a cheerful prophecy. Of course, no city is a static enterprise, an unchanging moment in time. And, naturally, some locales evolve more suddenly than others. Maybe I am projecting my mourning for the losses of San Francisco onto Seattle. Maybe this time it will be different. Maybe the Emerald City will retain its shine. Or maybe most places are fresh and lively on first take, when intimate knowledge is yet obtained and wondrous naivety holds fast.