The Real Difference Between San Francisco and Oakland

I knew I’d become a city person the day I stepped around someone lying prostrate on the sidewalk and didn’t think twice about it. I knew that I’d become a Californian when, as I was in the stages of planning a small dinner party, I realized I’d given up mentally classifying friends by spiritual upbringing but instead by a sort of Dewey Decimal System of dietary preference. Whatever they were eating — or, more often, not eating — seemed both more immediate to their identities and far more likely to ruin dinner than any notion of God. Eight years in the state, and I’ve known macrobiotic gluten-free Paleo vegans yet still not a single Presbyterian.

I don’t think I’ll ever be a San Franciscan. But I know exactly when I had at last become accustomed to the city.

I had been standing in line for coffee at the Mill. The Mill is one of those trendy third-wave coffee shops on Divisadero that looks like Martha Stewart took the Apple Store between her mitts and squeezed it till it extruded hearth-like charm and woodgrain-finished tables. The space is clean, and the coffee is good. And I appreciate that their creamers are simple and unchallenging, and derived mainly from cows. Besides coffee, they sell locally made ceramics, whole-grain breads from flour milled in-house and sundry luxuries in tiny jars. And it was there, as I waited for my $3.50 cup of ethically sourced coffee, that my eyes noticed the display of organic almond butter, grown and produced just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, retailing at $14 a pop in 9 ounce jars. And rather than feeling indignation at the price or bemusement at the product, my first thought was, “My goodness, what a deal!”

A week later, I had a nearly identical experience at the Korean market on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, though over an entirely different product. I have a weakness for red bean paste and bulk bags of rice, though I usually head first to the seafood section whenever I stop in the Koreana Plaza Market to scope out the daily specials. And it was there that I saw them — fish heads for $1.50 a pound! — and my thoughts went precisely to the same place as they had the week before over almond butter. Such a deal. You don’t often see fish heads at that good of a price.

Of course, I didn’t buy either — the almond butter or the fish heads — but that, in a nutshell, is the difference between the two cities, even more than which side of the bay they happen to be on.

It’s what kind of bargain you get excited about. A dialogue between novelty and pragmatism. Nine-ounce jars of locally sourced organic almond butter or fish heads at $1.50 a pound.

I think about that almond butter sometimes. I like imagining it, just thinking of it there, like a kiss that didn’t quite happen — maybe something that I might one day aspire to, the after-purchase on the day when I can casually drop $10 on toasted bread.

The fish heads, though… I didn’t even make it out of the parking-lot gate before I turned back. Some bargains are just too good to pass up.

Last week, Cirrus Wood met God in Berkeley. Read his saga here.