I Love San Francisco!

[Guest Jesse Dane]

So I've only lived here 4 days and already I'm so in love with this city! Better weather, nicer people, cheaper rent and the subway is even clean! Who could ask for more? Moving here was definitely one of the best choices I have ever made!

[Laurent]

Indeed, it is a magical city. Every time I visit I regret not having moved there immediately after college. I would add their restaurants and the natural scenery to the list of attractions.

[Guest empire]

You're very fortunate to have moved to such a remarkable city. The natural beauty serves as a majestic backdrop to a cultural explosion.

 

In size San Francisco is less than 50 square miles. Nicely packed into the relatively small space you'll find many landmarks, spectacular entertainment, championship professional sports, five star restaurants, chic neighborhoods and a unmatched culture of acceptance in the states.

 

There will be much for you to discover, enjoy your journey.

[bigguyinpasadena]

Jesse,I wish I could put you into my head for a trip into my memory bank.

You would see a San Francisco that has vanished.A wonderful,magical place where I lived for 10 years.

It was also a place I experienced the lowest moments of my life.

I visited San Francisco many times as a boy,I still have family that lives there.

As a boy of 15 I was able to escape my family on weekends and run away to "The City".I attende my first Pride Parade when I was 16 in the mid 70's.Magic was in the air-as well as a bunch of fags that were" mad as hell and not going to take it any more"!This was during the Anita Bryant hulabaloo(you are too young to remember that-but ask your "aunties"and they will tell you about it)so we had activist queers,political Gays,Radical Fairies,Clones,Drag Queens,a few lesbians,and lots of just regular gay men.It was incredible.It was pre-AIDS.

Well that started a lot more trips to The City,either by myself or with an assortment of kindly"uncles"happy to show a cute(and yes I was cute back then )teenager a good time.

I moved to SF a few years later.I was older,not quite as cute,and had developed some nasty habits(who?Me?)that did not endear me to the "a list"guys who had befriended my earlier.I went through what I had to go through.Had some very interesting,and some very tragic,times-but the city was still a great place and I came out of my low period with a lot of help from some"only in San Francisco"type friends.I had changed for the better just as the toll from AIDS was reaching its Zenith.The Castro was now deserted at night.Bars were closing left and right.The focus among G&L groups was on staying alive rather than striving for equal rights.Again interesting times,but The City was losing its best and brigtest-and it would never ever be the same.

It all became too much for me.I and my best pal(still)moved away.The Summer we moved was one if the coldest on record in SF-there were 30 day periods without sun.

Today San Francisco holds too many memories,both happy and sad.And I ,Like Miss Haversham,am happy to live with my memories.

"There once was a city on a hill....."

Enjoy The City.It has much to offer a young man.

[Guest zipperzone]

Hey Big Guy -

 

It must have been difficult for you to decide to move from SF and actually go through with it.

 

One of the hardest things I ever did in my life was leave Montreal and move to Vancouver (not that I mind Vancouver - it's teriffic) but the pain of tearing myself away from Montreal, where I had lived for a too short period of two years was excruciating.

[+ Charlie]

Since I came out the year that bigguy was born, my memories go back a little farther. My first visit to SF was during the "Summer of Love", 1967, when Haight-Ashbury seemed to be the center of a new world of flowers, long hair and psychedelic drugs--and when I got tired of that, there were the baths. Strangely enough, I didn't return for almost twenty years, and then it seemed grim: no more baths, all the familiar bars closed, and men in terminal stages of AIDS everywhere I looked. Again I didn't return for ten years, and then it began to appear more like a normal American city, neither exotic nor especially depressing. The one constant was the climate, which remains as invigorating as ever.