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One Beautiful Thing

Letting Go of San Francisco

After decades of clinging to the city, a San Francisco street rat moves to the suburbs.
Rae Alexandra

A gold, black and red mural that reads 'There is so much love in this city.'
The side of Frisco Tattoo, Osage Alley, 2017. (Rae Alexandra)

This week, as we near the end of 2024, the writers and editors of KQED Arts & Culture are reflecting on One Beautiful Thing from the year.

F

ifteen years ago, a series of Extremely Fortunate Events aligned that enabled me to buy an apartment.

First there was an inheritance from overseas. Then there was an exchange rate that doubled the money. Then there was a building that agreed to give me a fat discount if I bought the apartment before the construction was finished. Most importantly, this all happened before the tech buses arrived in the Mission District and drove property prices up to new and unattainable heights.

Me and this apartment, I always thought, were meant to be. I found her just in the nick of time. And for 15 years, she and I have had quite the love story.

The apartment bore witness to romantic relationships, wonderful friendships and far more alcohol-fueled debauchery than anyone should probably be entertaining. She hosted a rotating collection of local art that riddled her walls with holes and her doors with spray paint. She was playground to my menagerie of free-range rats: Foxy Moron (who shared my bed), Thelma and Louise (who ate my blankets), and Daisy, Poppy and Iris (who gnawed on, well, all of my doors).

My 650-square-foot friend even kept me safely in the neighborhood I had called home since 2002, as friends all around me were pushed out by rising rents and Ellis Act evictions.

My gratitude for all of this is deep and enduring.

But like many passionate affairs, this one finally came to an end. Earlier this year, after months of work repairing all of the damage I had done to her, I sold the longest-running constant in my life to a stranger named David.

I had my reasons for letting her go, of course. The desire for more space. Homeowners’ association fees that became unfeasibly high after the pandemic. A building manager who no longer cares about the building. (FIX THE HOLE IN THE STAIRWELL WALL, BRIAN.) Before I really comprehended what was happening, I had moved a 90-minute drive away to a big, affordable house and almost no nightlife whatsoever.

Just a few years ago, a move as drastic as this would have been absolutely unthinkable. I have been obsessively clinging to San Francisco for more than two decades. The Mission has been a huge part of my identity from the moment I moved into the neighborhood. As such, my sudden exit has shocked many of my friends — one of my dearest called me a “suburban hoe-bag” via text message the other day and I could not think of a single rebuttal. The drastic nature of the move has shocked me too — but mostly because of how natural it feels.

I didn’t move out of the city because of crime, or grime, or any of the other things people think people leave San Francisco over. I still think that San Francisco is the most beautiful place on Earth and that the Mission is the most vibrant corner of it. I moved simply because I realized I no longer needed the city the way that I used to. My days of being out, roaming the streets, dive bar-hopping and trouble-finding have recently, finally, dissipated. (I’m in my mid-40s, so frankly it’s about time.) In large part, this shift occurred because there is finally a human in my life who I can sit at home with night after night without getting in the least bit bored.

At the same time that my pace has been slowing down, I have been watching young creatives moving back into the Mission. I see their artistic communities flourishing in spaces like Adobe Books, Hit Gallery and House of Seiko. I see them in clusters outside bars, formulating plans inside coffee shops. They remind me of how San Francisco felt when I first moved here — all of the potential, all of the inspiration, the feeling in your gut that anything could happen. For the last year, my own gut has been telling me that now it’s their time. Stepping aside to make space for them is the natural order of things.

I experienced some pangs of guilt abandoning my faithful old apartment, but I recognize the beauty in leaving her too. In 2024, she finally got all of the care I failed to give her for so very long. I patched her holes and painted her walls and ceilings. I fixed floorboards, replaced doors and kitchen caulk, and bought her all new faucets. I cleaned her grout and cabinets, scrubbed her windows and gutters. I hired someone to fix the heating system that had been broken for eight years. And in the process of giving the apartment a new life, I’m giving myself the chance for one too. Perhaps one in which I will do myself (and my surroundings) less damage on a weekly basis.

In early November, I went back to my empty apartment one last time. I had keys to label and leave behind on the kitchen counters for David. But I couldn’t resist leaving a note too.

“I hope this apartment brings you as much joy as it has brought me over the years,” I wrote.

I dream that she and David and the Mission are all getting along famously.

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