San Francisco itself is art… every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth. ~ William Saroyan

So San Francisco has been on social media in large amounts recently, it’s become a real target of the right leaning media and now with Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee, it’s even more in their cross-hairs. This has led to a number of questions from friends around the country asking me, how bad is it in San Francisco?

I walk the city of San Francisco almost every weekend. So I’ve decided for this week’s post to talk a little bit about the city I spend so much time in. I love San Francisco, it’s an amazing city both to visit and to live in. Let’s start by talking about the issues that people love to talk about.

Crime: Property crime in the form of car break-ins is an issue, if you live here you know not to leave valuables in plain sight in your car. Not sure it’s worse than any other large city but it’s definitely a thing. In terms of violent crime you are basically living in the safest time in America, or very near so, in your entire life so it’s not anything to be overly concerned about.

BART is dangerous: It’s funny, people in NY incessantly bitch about the subway system, people in SF talk about how amazing it is and how dangerous BART is for them. BART is too expensive, particularly compared to the NY subway. The NY subway also has better city-wide coverage. But BART is fine, it moves you along through a specific part of the city but has a feature of being a regional service serving every from SFO to the East Bay. Yes, there are certain stations that are more dangerous than others, like on any mass transit system. But I have had very few problems on BART in San Francisco beyond some encounters with a couple of mentally ill folks and those were a little nerve-wracking, but nothing ever happened, nor have I ever seen any violence on BART, can’t say the same on the NY subway, especially in 80’s when I was growing up in NY.

Homeless People: Yes, San Francisco has a huge population of unhoused people living on the streets. It always has and for good reason, it’s a completely moderate climate. If you are unhoused, you want to be in a city that has a favorable climate both environmentally and politically. In California, living in places like Redding or Sacramento in the summer where it can be frequently over one-hundred degrees and stays hot at night is not a good place to live on the street. Likewise, in the winter places that get at or below freezing during winter nights is also unfavorable. San Francisco rarely breaks eighty degrees in the summer with nights in the 50’s and 60’s, it rarely goes below freezing in winter. Additionally, it’s a city that politically trends very liberal and so is a city that provides a large level of support to homeless, addicted and people with mental health issues. All of this makes it a place that attracts homeless people.

I know a lot of people get afraid when they see the homeless and their encampments and yes, you will encounter mentally ill people, might see an addict shooting drugs and might even see some human feces. But if you listen to social media that is the picture of the entire city, addicts and homeless shooting up and shitting on the streets everywhere. It’s just not reality. As with any city, there are areas that have more homeless, there are areas that are less safe, San Francisco has these as well, and I walk those areas with regularity. The simple fact is, the good far outweighs the bad in San Francisco. So let’s talk about the good.

First this city has amazing weather. It’s never incredibly cold in the winter, it doesn’t snow here. The spring and summers can go from cool to warm from the 50’s and 60’s up to at the hottest the 80’s. The fall is actually the warmest time of year when you are more likely to find warm days in the 80’s.

The sights are incredible! You have one of the world’s most iconic bridges, the Golden Gate, you have the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and the bay itself. Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid are in the picture above. The Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf are huge tourists area, Golden Gate Park is 200 acres larger than Central Park in New York City and absolutely incredible. History buffs are in heaven in San Francisco, the city’s history ranging from the gold rush and great quake through the hippy era in the 60’s is broadly on display.

The art and culture is fantastic, Chinatown, Japantown, the Mission District, the Castro, Haight/Ashbury and the Marina all are loaded with deep and fascinating locations and experiences. There are over 80 museums in San Francisco but those are the official sites. San Francisco is also a city full of incredible street art both murals and graffiti. There’s so much tiny hidden history all over the city from the painted ladies houses that showed up in the opening shot of full house, to the house where the Grateful Dead were formed to soooooo much more.

The food scene in San Francisco is out of this world. For me personally, San Francisco competes with both New Orleans and New York as the best food city in America. Whether it’s Michelin level fine dining, to incredibly authentic food from almost any culture, to spectacular burritos in the Mission and all kinds of fusion, pop-ups and mom and pop shops. For me of course, pizza is always an issue and I’ve reviewed a number of spots in San Francisco and have even found NY quality level pizza here, the reviews are on the pizza page.

High strangeness is what makes San Francisco so unique. This is one fabulously weird ass city. One of the reasons that I love walking this city so much is how weird this place can be. It’s not unusual to suddenly see a naked cyclist come riding by, street festivals can go from as tame as a standard block party to a BDSM street festival. Walking around you never quite know what you might stumble into.

So yes, San Francisco exists in the real world, it’s a huge city so it has it’s share of problems, but no more than any other large and old city. I highly recommend it as a place to visit and explore. To illustrate it all, below is a bit of a typical day detailing what I encountered on my walk last weekend.

My route for the day would start with taking BART to Civic Center Plaza so that I could pop over to the library to donate some books. I would walk from the library down to the Ferry Builder, down the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf up to Fort Mason, up over to Chestnut Street up to Filmore, over to Lombard Street and a stop for pizza. Back down from Lombard to Polk and back over to the library and the Civic Center BART station, almost eight miles in the city.

In the library I encountered an angry patron leaving who decided to slam some doors and make a bit of noise. The area around the library has a lot of homeless and mentally ill folks due to services in that area, so this wasn’t a huge shock.

Heading down Market Street I stopped my one of my hidden little favorite spots, a small holographic sculpture plaza.

Just past the holo plaza I went by a cafe with an amazing South American band playing live and just a half a block later encountered a throng of people outside a hotel waiting for some famous person and hoping for autographs. Couldn’t quite figure out who it might be, they were roped off and had signs and some had trading cards, so who knows. Another half a block down a street musician was playing Elton John’s, this is your song, on the guitar. If you know the song, you know all the individual notes that comprise the song for the piano and he was nailing them on the guitar. I then passed a dude in a mechanized wheelchair going past me cranking music and full-on rapping in Arabic.

I was then eyed by a deadly killer robot.

The city has a large fleet of autonomous taxi cabs run by Waymo. Every time I see them I think of the cab from the movie Total Recall.

Walking down the Embarcadero I hit this marker on the ground, I guess X marks the spot. It denotes the location of some of the buried ships in San Francisco.

It’s a pretty fascinating story about how a lot of sailing ships ended up being buried and became part of the literal foundation of the San Francisco shoreline.

I rolled through Fisherman’s Wharf and past of course one of the most tantalizing parts of the city, The Ghirardelli’s tasty world of chocolate plaza.

I then and headed up Bay and Chestnut streets and saw some amazing street art.

Then over Fillmore to Lombard and over to Amici’s for pizza.

From there, full and very happy I headed the three miles over Polk and down back past the Civic Center and to BART. Just another happy walk in San Francisco.