By 2013, I was already making a habit of going up to the city during that break between Christmas and New Year’s. In fact, we generally went up earlier in December, to see the Christmas lights and see the Fairmont gingerbread house and stay in the St Francis like we did on our honeymoon. I could get a drink in the Clock Bar, or Irish coffee at the Buena Vista as we rode the cable car to the end of the line, and when I made my solo trip there would be a drink at Zeki or Fireplace Bar or the Mucky Duck on the way out to an inevitable end at the Riptide, where I could sit by a wood fire and read quietly two blocks from the beach.
It was different back then. There were half a dozen cocktail establishments I wanted to frequent – Bourbon and Branch, Local Edition, Rickhouse, Swig, you name it. There were places I aspired to shop – Wingtip, Unionmade, the little shoe shop in Noe Valley where I kept eyeing the steel-toed Blundstones I wouldn’t buy until 2017. The search for American-made wardrobe was still in its early days, and I hadn’t been gifted the Aldens or turned over my entire daily wear to American Giant above the waist and LC King below. Hell, I’d only just settled on an actual surplus peacoat to replace the ill-fitting Gap one.. A surprising amount of my outerwear – the Filson, the Rickson, the tweed, the M-65 and all the AG work shirts – were still in the future.
The city was different back then. The Valley was different. We hadn’t fallen into the bottomless dumb-money pit that made this place the new Wall Street. Maybe it was because I hadn’t quite turned 40, but I was not yet overrun by the sense that this place was no longer for the likes of me. Could have been wishful thinking on my part, or it could have been that the city was scratching an itch that was going unsatisfied after the Europe trip and not realizing we wouldn’t be abroad again until 2015.
Or maybe there was something there I just wanted to connect with by staying at our friend Doug’s place in China Basin and getting around entirely on MUNI before going home on Caltrain. Even in DC, my experience was more genuinely suburban than urban – living in Ballston was more like life in the Avenues, if we’re being honest, and my upbringing was far more vehicle-exurban than I ever realized at the time – and to live in San Francisco, however briefly and temporarily, felt like picking up on a bit of the road not taken.
I don’t know exactly when the wave broke and rolled back for good – maybe in 2015, when Santacon pursued me all the way up on the train and then all the way down the California line when I’d rather have been watching the Army-Navy game in front of a fireplace with a maple old fashioned. Or maybe in 2016, when we began the new tradition of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus matinee Christmas show in an attempt to push back against the encroaching dark. But the combination of layoffs (and an end to the winter break) and the ensuing pandemic put paid to it for good – there are no random galavants around the city after January 2019, because the opportunity isn’t there any more. It’s a pity, but that’s the size of things when the 4 rolls over to a 5.