Welcome to Must Like Fog

Allow me to introduce myself. And my city.

There's been a lot of chatter about San Francisco by the media that may lead you to believe that the city by the Bay is an unfettered hellscape of drug use, homelessness and general malaise of people fleeing post-Covid. I won’t lie. This city has problems. But it also has so much going for it. I read an opinion piece recently with the writer, Soleil Ho asking pointedly, if this city is an “unlivable hellhole,” then why is it so hard to find an apartment?

I’ve lived in this town for the last 20-plus years. I’ve been a renter, a landlord, and a homeowner (who survived a full-building renovation—more on that another time). So I come to this topic with many…thoughts.

I’d like to use this space to explore my love of this place, its parks, its incredible…and sometimes incredibly awful architecture, as well homes that come on the market.

I may take field trips to look into places in the wider Bay Area, which also offer up plenty of fascinating places to ogle. There may be some more far-flung points of interest along the way, along with spots right across the street.

If this sounds good to you, won’t you join me?

More about me…

I escaped from the East Coast (Princeton, New Jersey and NYC) to put down roots out West. I’ve lived here since the 1990s, attended UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for my master’s degree, then joined a giant tech company to write for its news and entertainment sites, and more recently wrote for a slightly less giant website to write about all things real estate. 

But writing for a national audience meant I often couldn’t sink my teeth into my hometown. Must Like Fog is my hope in fixing that. 

Have you ever walked by a building and wondered about its history? Or were curious to get the scoop behind a grandiose mansion’s inhabitants? Have you asked yourself why the San Francisco landmarks are so oddly shaped? And, should we worry about the Big One? Friend, same.

These are the kinds of questions I want to explore here, in this space. If there’s a marvel you’d like to know more about, or have an anecdote or celebrity tip … Please send our way.

Here, we’ll explore San Francisco piles, old and new, cool parks, and maybe a few watering holes, retail shops, and other fave spots.

A look-out from the Presidio over Baker Beach.

I live in the Richmond District, so my bias is the Westside of the 7x7. But we’ll also have special mentions from beyond San Francisco: 

Looking to you, Silicon Valley, East Bay, and Marin, and maybe even across the country or —why not— across an ocean.

As we get going, we’ll be transparent about sourcing. We care about getting our facts right and not making mistakes. If we get something wrong, please tell us and we’ll happily fix it.

Living on the Westside means living near lots of parks (not hard, there are some 220 green spaces in San Francisco alone, phew!) Specifically, the Presidio (more on that in the future) and a beach or two that are a pleasant walk or a quick bike ride away. But get out of your mind images of SoCal surfers and The Beach Boys. The sandy spits of Northern California are for sturdier stock. As my husband explained to me when we first met, as I showed up for a trip to the ocean scantily clad in my East Coast Atlantic Ocean garb, “you don’t wear a bathing suit to the beach.” Bye-bye, bikini, banished to the far corners of my closet.

Alta Plaza Park, one of the 200-plus neighborhood green spaces, great for people and their pets.

Unlike pretty much anywhere else in the world, we layer up a lot, especially near the water, as there are bone-chilling days when the thick fog rolls on in. Known as the Marine Layer, this is especially true in the summer. Recently, during an Uber ride, my driver, a local who grew up in the Avenues, claimed he had been diagnosed with a vitamin D deficiency, after living with so few days of sun in his childhood. He takes D supplements, he says.

It's true that sometimes sunshine only comes in tablet form here (especially these days, deep into summer), but the silver (foggy) lining is that we’ve flown under the radar for a long time. Of course, that hasn’t kept the housing prices low, they’ve climbed just as much as any major city, and we can hold our now on the wealth front, too.

According to a recent report , many residents can well afford the pricey real estate: The San Francisco Bay Area ranks as the second wealthiest city in the world, with actually more billioniares (82!) than even New York (66). Don’t get too disgusted: We’re also the place that’s experienced a surge of personal bankruptcies, the most since Covid…with tech jobs petering out. 

San Francisco is at once an AI hub where elites meet up to work and play, while stepping over the unhoused, an intractable issue compounded by the Fentanyl crisis. The tension is real. The best of times and the worst of times.

Those social woes are largely centered in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, although the latest mayor has been working to clean the streets at the very least, in hopes of bringing more business back to the cratered downtown. 

Out in the Outerlands, a good 20-minute ride on the 38 Geary Rapid, life is somewhat distanced from those grim issues.

Once the foggy stepchild of cooler (make that hotter) neighborhoods, the Richmond and its cousin across the park, the Sunset, are now popular with the hordes of Gen Zers who have taken over the bars, noodle shops and sport courts. Even SF Standard declared that the Outer Richmond as “hot” and the Mission as “dead.” 

Again, we’ll have time to go into these points in greater detail going forward. But now you know my POV. 

I hope this is the start of a beautiful foggy friendship.

If you like the sound of this, please share with your friends! (If you don’t, perhaps foist upon your enemies. I’m looking for followers, I’m not proud.)

Huge thanks to Lawrence Schadt for the Must Like Fog log design.