Your Friday Awesome: Pride

Despite the wind and fog, I love June in San Francisco.

A (tiny) Room of One's Own

The New York Times recently did an article on women's residences - buildings reserved for single women that do not allow men beyond designated public areas and which sometimes function as a dorm with a common dining hall, all for under-market value.

While created for some of the wrong reasons, I can certainly see the appeal. They are clean and safe and provide a way to meet people in a giant, unforgiving city. And heck, not having to cook is fantastic.

They remind me a bit of my first apartment in San Francisco. It had been built as a dormitory for the women's teaching college across the street at the turn of the century. The rooms were so tiny I had a twin sized day bed. My kitchen barely qualified as a galley, with an apartment-sized oven and refrigerator. But, the closet was almost as big as the room since it had once housed a Murphy bed, the bathroom had a clawfoot tub, and it had all the period detailing of a perfectly-San Francisco apartment including a lovely sun-filled bay window. Oh, and I could clean the whole thing in 25 minutes flat.

Out of 23 units, twenty of them were inhabited by women from 18 - 25. In the remaining three units, that were somewhat larger as they had been intended to house the dorm "mothers," lived middle-aged to elderly gay men who had lived there forever thanks to rent control. One of them was in his sixties and he spent time in the lobby waiting for his ancient one-eyed Shih Tzu to catch her breath before they went up three flights of stairs.

We chatted often and he once showed me a picture of the building following the 1906 earthquake. It stood solitary on the small hill with a tent city surrounding it for blocks. The building had been built earlier that year and when it didn't collapse everyone realized that it sat on bedrock - and that is a good thing in an earthquake. It is why every apartment I have ever lived in either survived or is next door to a building that survived that earthquake. I explained this to the poor girl who knocked frantically on my door after a minor shake. She had moved from Minnesota about four hours before it started rumbling.

Shortly after the 1906 quake, they moved the San Francisco Mint (as in one of the places that prints money) from the collapsed and fire-ravaged downtown to the block on the other side of the college. While it was strange to look out my bay window and see semi-automatics through the palm trees, it also lent its name to a really fun karaoke bar around the block.

The second male resident was about the same age as the Shih Tzu's dad, and though friendly, drank a little too much. Whenever we heard the cops outside we knew he had been trying to get into the building across the street (the looked only somewhat alike). The third had been a professional ballet dancer. And when the building was broken into it was he that went running down the stairs to chase the offender into the street.

In other words, it was the perfect first San Francisco studio apartment. At the intersection of the edge of the Castro, the start of the Lower Haight, Hayes Valley (before Hayes Valley was Hayes Valley), and the outskirts of the Mission, I could get petty much anywhere in the city by public transit with one transfer at most, which meant I could absorb the city to my 22 year old heart's content.

So I get the appeal of women's residences. Who needs space when you are rarely home? As for the no-male visitors policy, well that does stem from the attempt to protect a lady's virtue and all that nonsense, and it assumes that all the ladies or are of a certain orientation, which if they are not blows the whole theory to pieces. But, you know, I can see why some women might choose it. That can really make things a bit less stressful - you don't have to worry about whether or not you've got dirty laundry and dishes out before asking them up. And besides, as a young single woman I instituted dating safety rules that pretty much created the same situation:

1. Date does not get to know what building I live in until the 3rd date.

2. Date does not get to know what apartment number I live in until the 5th date.

Only two ever made it up, and one of them became my husband, so I guess the nuns and chaperones wouldn't be too upset.

San Francisco Bay Window (not mine) via Apartment Therapy.

The Center of the Google Universe

Dear Google,

I know that you embody all that is technologically holy, and may or may not have created a monopoly of the internet (though the fact that I only have to log in once to check email, post photos and video, and write in my blog is very handy), but I have a complaint.

Google maps is pretty awesome. It's super cool to be able to figure out where I'm going, see what it looks like from space and from across the street. Sure, you're not always right - you're a street number or two off once in a while - and this really only works if you live in or around a major city that has one of those fancy picture-taking cars. And besides, if you really did have the whole world on there it would be pretty creepy. But, can you please stop making San Francisco the center of the world?

Sure, its nice that the city that I work in is always getting these neat gadgets first, and you often save me valuable keystrokes (17 to be exact) when I look up an address, but being so snobby is getting kind of annoying. Particularly when you insist that I drive through San Francisco when there is no logical reason to do so. Here's the thing. I don't live in San Francisco. I live across the bay in the city (yes, city) that most people are afraid to go to. Though you might know about it because most geeky folks think it is inhabited by At Ats. Sometimes, though, I like to visit other parts of the bay. Sometimes I even like to go to the land where your employees go to retire. But, the last two times I've looked for directions to get to the north bay from Oakland, you've insisted that I drive through San Francisco.


View Larger Map

Really? I mean, sure if I cross the Richmond bridge I have to avoid all the tourists and cyclists in latex on my way to the 101, but your way means I have to cross the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. Round trip that is $10 in bridge toll alone. Never mind that I have to drive through San Francisco. All it takes is one Muni bus to loose their connector and I'm sitting on Van Ness. Oh and its San Francisco, it never takes the half hour you say it does. Sure, the 80 might be packed, but what else is new? There is traffic the other way and I only have to pay four bucks in tolls.

And why is it that it is only if I search generic directions between cities that you seem to think it is okay to skip San Francisco? Where is the consistency? Are you trying to make a liar out of me, Google? When I went to make my map for this letter, I just put in the cities (because you already know to much about me, by the way) and there I was going over the Richmond bridge. Is it that you only believe cities other than San Francisco are good in theory, but that if we actually live there we need to learn what we are missing out on?

Yes, I know you aren't the only ones. MapQuest (really, people still use it, I mean you haven't taken over all of the internet, you still have to have a Yahoo account for Flickr, after all) is guilty, too. But I thought you were smarter than that, Google. And besides, your frontin' you poser. Oh sure, San Francisco is awesome, but that's not where you are from. Your headquarters are in Mountain View. Yeah, I would be embarrassed, too.

Still friends,
s.