Newspaper columnist Herb Caen coined “Baghdad by the Bay” to describe San Francisco.
You can never really know a city until you live there. That’s how it is for me when I think about San Francisco. No matter how many times I’ve visited in the last thirty-eight years, I’m still a tourist. Even if I’ve been there twenty or more times since moving to California. The longest I’ve stayed in the city has been a week, and I am usually settled into one of the hotels where you’re bound to find the tourists. Union Square. Embarcadero. Financial District. SOMA (South of Market). One time during my first trip, I bravely checked into a motel on the edge of the Tenderloin District. That cost me my hotel choosing privileges. After that fiasco, only three-star or more hotels for us. How bougie of me.
“Legendary newspaper columnist Herb Caen loved San Francisco so much he gave it a new name. Two of his early books about San Francisco were Baghdad by the Bay (1949) and Baghdad: 1951 (1950). The moniker appeared often in his columns in the 1950s.”
https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2019/06/baghdad-by-the-bay/
Call me naive or blinded by rose-colored glasses, but I love the views of San Francisco Bay, the hills, riding BART and the Muni, the cable cars, the Ferry Building, and Lombard Street “On a 27-degree angle, this famously crooked street features eight hairpin turns & landscaped flowerbeds” (Described by Google Maps). North Beach and Sotto Mare with its great Crab Cioppino, Columbus Avenue and the famous City Lights Bookstore. Chinatown, Mission District (the famously painted Women’s Building), Haight, Richmond District and the Burma Superstar Restaurant, Hayes Valley and our favorite place, Zuni Café. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and north to wine country to the Bay Bridge to Oakland and Berkley, it all seems like a grand voyage through picture-perfect postcard scenes of cultures, class, race, and ethnic havens.
“The first edition of Caen’s post-World War II collection of stories about San Francisco. The collection describes the city as it was then, with its covenants against Chinese living outside of Chinatown, the former soldiers and sailors trying to hold down jobs and find a place to live, and the drinking culture that has been a constant in the city for over 150 years.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2969519-baghdad-by-the-bay
The tall buildings, both commercial and luxury, and the renovated old structures that gleam new cannot hide the other San Francisco where gentrification is more than a slogan for urban removal; it is a reality that affects every residential section of the city.
“Ongoing and advanced gentrification is most prevalent in San Francisco (18.5% of all tracts) and Alameda (11.1% of tracts) counties.”
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/sf-bay-area-gentrification-and-displacement/
According to a Realtor.com report, the median rent for the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area rose by 12.1% year-over-year.
“The overall median rent (which includes all sizes of residential rental properties) rose to $2,970 in February 2022.”
https://www.bpfund.com/rent-prices-still-rising-2022/
But good news if you want to buy a house. Sort of.
“Redfin said the San Francisco median price is $1.488 million, a decline of more than 5% from November to December.”
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/median-san-francisco-home-price-down-recently-but-up-compared-to-last-year/
However, according to real estate analyst firm Redfin, the median price is up this year compared to last year.
I’m not going to dampen my mood about Baghdad by the Bay more than it already is by throwing out numbers about crime rates. You can research it yourself HERE.
Or the income gap. You can also research that yourself HERE.
Yes, I know that San Francisco is more than tourist landmarks. I would love to spend more time in San Francisco to see and learn more about what’s below the city’s surface, which gives me a special feeling every time I visit. We ride public transit as much as possible. It’s a great way to get another perspective on the city and its people. We walk a very walkable city. We ask the folks who live and work there about places to visit and eat at restaurants where the non-tourists eat. We’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art and de Young Museum. The Museum of the African Diaspora is on our agenda for our upcoming September trip. I have a long list of other places I want to visit. Castro. Ocean Beach (I ran a half-marathon through there once). Sunset District. Spend more time in the Mission District.
No matter how often I go to San Francisco, I know that it will be impossible to know and feel what a resident, especially a long-time one, feels and thinks about their city. They can show you around. Discuss the daily challenges of living in the city. Share the reasons why they stay and, for some, why they want to leave. It’s never going to be the same as living there yourself for more than a week. When I moved to southern California, I thought I knew a lot about Los Angeles and the state from watching television shows all those years I lived on the east coast. Damn, I was reality smacked when I arrived and discovered a difference between the tourist and resident versions.
I have also learned that if you visit a city enough times, you can almost feel what it’s like to be more than a casual visitor. The city becomes familiar in a way that makes you understand, respect it more, and treat the city and its residents as more than just a tourist destination. Take the time to see and feel the city below the surface. Read a local newspaper or media site. Watch the local TV news. Talk to people. You might be surprised at how much they want to share with you the city where they live, work, and love.
On Second Thought 