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Patricia Calfee Picache: Never Bet Against San Francisco

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Patricia Calfee Picache says pronouncements of the death of San Francisco are premature.

I was a teenager when my family moved to San Francisco, a city that comes with mythical stories of boom and bust. Admittedly, I fell hard for the City, like a boyfriend my mother didn’t like. San Francisco quickly became my forever home, but these days the city feels like a punching bag.

Our art scene is pathetic. Our downtown is dead. Washed up and vainglorious, San Francisco is plainly over, the headlines shout.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there is even a particular brand of shoes that the Tech Bros won’t wear anymore, lest the rubber-padded soles remind them of our geographical presence.

As a near-native, I don’t take the disses personally, probably because I’ve watched our city ebb and flow, and now I have the gilded gift of age: Perspective. San Francisco has been through good times and bad because, as both scientists and spiritualists agree, there is a cycle to life.

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Cities aren’t perfect, and while I was still in high school, during the 1990s, I witnessed drug overdoses and young boys walking Polk Street at dusk. My brother was carjacked on Stanyon Street, and Mayor Willie Brown raged against panhandlers. But then came our second Gold Rush, and the good life ran for more than two decades. And here we are again.

Nowadays, with my own children in elementary school, I am politely quizzed by friends who have packed up and left San Francisco for nirvana in another time zone. They want to know when our family of five will join them.

“No,” I tell them. “We are not leaving San Francisco. And, yes, I do want my children to be raised here.”

This decision is based on more than just roots and nostalgia. Every day in San Francisco there is the opportunity to grow our lives: after-school visits to world-class museum exhibits or running with the dogs on rambling Ocean Beach. Heart-pounding violin concertos or baseball games to cheer the soul. All this plus a mixed up, pushed together, off-beat culture that refuses to be told what to do?! Yes, please.

San Francisco is bigger than this moment, bigger than the aftermath of Covid, and bigger than an economic downturn. Our city has real storms to weather but ask anybody who’s been here long enough to know and they’ll tell you: You never bet against San Francisco.

With a Perspective, I’m Patricia Calfee Picache.

Patricia Calfee Picache is a trustee of the Grace Cathedral and lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.

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