Neptune Landing

The Expectations Game “You can have a hot lover, a hot job, and a hot apartment, but you can’t have all three at the same time.” — Mona’s law, from Armistead Maupin’s “More Tales of the City” --------- San Francisco is not for everybody. Especially the following: ·                 People who like the seasons ·          People who hate the wind ·          Introverts ·          Those who value peace and quiet ·          Those who hate hipsters ·          Homophobes So many of my observations of this city is colored by my own experience and recent history. Take the working life for example. Customer service here is stellar. The only notable exceptions are every single Walgreens and the Safeway on Market and Church. And this is because the aforementioned are completely understaffed. Very seldom will you get a surly clerk who will not help you out. There are a slew of independent shops and restaurants everywhere so there is more

Since I've arrived on this blustery peninsula, I feel I have heard more about references to Boston than while living in Massachusetts. In fact this sister city commands a solid esteem in the minds of Bay Area residents. A lot has been written about the similarities. For instance... Both are the brainier, smaller siblings to their fiery coastal counterparts (i.e. NYC and LA), Both utilize light rail or trams (i.e. the four green lines in Boston and the six streetcar lines of SF) The Bay Area has Stanford, Berkeley and UCSF and the Bay State has Harvard, MIT, Amherst and  like 100 different colleges. Both have spearheaded various movements of a similar vein. Think about everything from the Transcendentalists/Fireside poets or what Poe disparaged as Frogpondia to the Beat Movement in San Francisco's North Beach and Chinatown. For psychedelia, you can thank Timothy Leary's research at Harvard and the early Grateful Dead parties. Sexual liberation is another huge area of c