★ One Year in San Francisco: From My Eyes

I moved to SF from what seemed like a decent size town in Florida. We had about 50 thousand people in our city and 125 thousand people in our county. Of course, our city was about 24 square miles. In comparison, SF has nearly 1 million people in 7 square miles and I’ve heard during big tourist weekends, the number can spike to nearly 2 million people. That’s a huge difference. Yes, you read that right—SF is only 7 square miles, so biking across it, around it and through it is super easy if you avoid the hills. I’ve walked 12 miles all over SF in one day and it was a total breeze once my feet stopped hurting.

If you’re moving to SF to be yourself, expand on your ideas and be creative, step carefully. Like many cities, SF is home to many micro-cultures and small groups of people that each have their own agendas, so it’s difficult to maintain a balance. Imagine comparing the delicate balance of a rain forest to a dense city such as SF.

I’ve noticed the things I failed to learn in high school continue to be problems today. In high school, it’s either fit in or be a freak. Even the people you see in SF that you may call freaks, might be geniuses within their own culture or clique. There are guys who do something called “steampunk,” build “art cars” or have sex dressed up as furry animals. There’s exhibitionists, users of all kinds of drugs, photographers, videographers, pornographers and even men dressed as women. It’s okay to be yourself, creative and expressive as long as you do it as a member of a group. Local residents will call me out and say that I’ve over analyzed this but it’s true and maybe a few stories will help you understand this better.

I wanted to be a part of the club scene in SF as I’m very interested in house, trance, new age and jungle beat music. I consider myself an avid fan of dance music but I’m not such a fan that I’ve heard of obscure DJs or own thousands of dance albums on vinyl. I’ve noticed in SF, nothing’s “casual” and it’s all or nothing. I tried going to a few clubs and realized that everyone is dressed the same and I was just a normal guy wearing what I was comfortable in. I’ve heard it’s okay to be yourself but when everyone is dressed all in black, has piercings and some are doing drugs, I leave realizing that I’m just not into the crowd. I heard about this club that’s an all night place and when I went, the music was great and I decided to dance but instead, I was given dirty looks by people by the way I danced. I’m a horrible dancer but isn’t it about self expression?

Giving up on the house scene, I decided I wanted to be a part of the party crowd of cool kids. “The cool kids” is a made-up phrase that applies to a lot of people, but when I say cool kids, I’m referring to the web celebrities that party and spend their company’s VC funding on drinks and ski trips. I lasted about 3 months in this group. The issue was that I just couldn’t afford to live up to their lifestyles. It wasn’t a casual group and became an issue of having to be at too many events. The conversations always passed me by and I realized that I wasn’t a part of this group either. People would be nicely dressed, order high-end beer and cocktails, hang out at fancy places in SF like the W Hotel or The Redwood Room and conversations would center around their travels, getting funded or speaking at conferences. On over a dozen occasions, I found myself being asked, “Where have you been lately?” My response, “Um, I went to Los Angeles for work for a day back in January” while everyone else had been to China, London, Japan or Hawaii in the past 3 months.

I tried to be a part of the bicyclist crowd. There are actually two kinds of these groups. Members of one group ride bikes that cost no less than 5 grand, wear expensive clothing, can bike hundreds of miles, are non talkative and love biking. You can’t just show up and start hanging out if you’re still an amateur. My bike was only $800 and there’s no way, at my skill level, that I could keep up. So I tried to be a part of the bike messenger crowd. Most bike messengers ride fixed gear bikes, they wear very tight clothes and are super skinny. I weigh 260 pounds, while these guys are around 175-200 pounds. They all wear messenger bags and somehow fit their bike lock in their back pocket. I’ve tried and I can’t get it to fit because my butt is too big. They hang out at bars like Zeitgeist and ride in packs. There’s a level of arrogance to this crowd, so it was obvious my multi-speed bike and Levi jeans weren’t going to cut it. I was basically shunned with no feasible entry point for starting a conversation or a friendship.

I’m running out of social circles, but I have a couple of other options for groups I can “be a part of.” The first is photography. Even though I’m an amateur, I’m really good at it and I’ve been told I have a good eye and just need work on my skills. The photo groups in SF travel a lot, have very expensive camera equipment and mostly consist of students or experienced photographers, so they’re groups I can’t really mesh with.
I’m also trying to get in with the conference crowd. These are people that spend 20% of their work week at conferences, either as spectators or speakers, in order to soak up a ton of information and network with others. How is that a clique? It’s hard to explain, but by attending conferences, when I meet someone new I can say, “Yes I was at Web 2 last week. John Smith delivered an excellent speech.” It’s a conversation starter when the person I’m speaking with also attended or was familiar with the conference. The conference crowd is pretty small so it’s easier to get to know everyone.

My last chance at being a part of a clique is through the Burning Man Crowd. It’s an artistic group, and I hear several of the members are older, have money and are known for doing drugs out in the dessert. I’m only basing this off conversations I’ve had with others and photos I’ve seen, but no one’s confirmed that theory yet. When I say money, I don’t mean “wealth.” I mean they have 5 grand in the bank, and that’s it. To me, having 5 grand in the bank is “money” and these people have it. I always thought artists were totally broke but I’m realizing a ton of SF artists aren’t broke at all and that’s why they can spend all day building things.

To be honest, I’ve given up on fitting in. These cliques, crowds and circles are great when you are really interested in one thing or you want to meet new people and make friendships, but lately I’ve given up. I have spent the last year trying to fit in, met a ton of people and added about 600 friends on Facebook, but I don’t have one person that I would consider a real friend. By friend, I mean someone I can call at 5AM when my apartment is broken into, someone who will let me sleep on their couch for 2 days if I have to, or someone that will listen to me and offer advice when I have a problem. There are tons of people out there that would offer but I don’t consider anyone enough of a friend to ask for those kind of favors. Cliques are great and circles are nice but friendships are very important and I’m realizing that SF is a difficult city to settle down in when you’re really seeking friendship.

I told my Dad this last night and he agreed with me, saying that when he lived in a city at my age he realized that it’s all about business, networking, alliances and money. It’s very hard to build a lasting friendship in the city because everyone is looking out for themselves and trying to strike it rich. Individuals meet, find out they can’t professionally offer each other anything and you move on. That’s how it is. He said a lot of people spend their entire life this way and he recommended I get some real friends and seek to enjoy life more because my career doesn’t mean anything if I don’t have friends to share it with.

To be honest, I didn’t have any friends in high school because I was always the free spirit and never had enough qualities to be a part of one single group so I found myself bouncing around different groups. I was fine with it in high school, but now I need something more and it’s time to meet some real friends. This was possible in my small hometown, but in SF, business comes first and making friends when you’re not a part of their clique is very hard and has a high failure rate.