I Love SF
Why I’m not giving up on San Francisco
We have amazing food, bars and restaurants. We have colorful and unique neighborhoods, architecture, celebrations, life.
This article is part of I Love San Francisco, a feature series of essays that highlight what makes San Francisco iconic and irreplaceable.
By Thomas Hawk
I get asked by a lot of friends when I tweet about drugs and crime and our deteriorating quality of life in the San Francisco Bay Area why I don’t just move. Two friends this past week told me that I’m a frog being slowly boiled in a pot of water living here. Many of my friends and people I know actually have moved away.
For me there are many reasons that I don’t and won’t leave. My job and business are here for one. Moving is a huge pain in the ass, especially when you’ve lived in a home for over 20 years like I have, a home that I’ve grown to love, where I’ve raised my four kids who were all born born in San Francisco and still live here. There would be a large capital gain tax to consider were I to sell my home and fortunately I refinanced into a very low mortgage back when rates were lower. I hope I’m still living in this house when I die someday (a long time from now).
But mostly the reasons are not just financial, family, career, home.
I moved to San Francisco in 1990 after graduating from college. It was a wonderful independent time of life for me. There are so many good things about the Bay Area that I moved here for that are still here.
San Francisco has an incredible sense of culture and the arts. We have world-class museums here. We have amazing food, bars and restaurants. We have colorful and unique neighborhoods, architecture, celebrations, life.
As a photographer, I love living in a more urban setting. There are so many more interesting things to photograph out on the street here than in more rural places. The people here are engaging and diverse and very photogenic. The random conversations you often have with people being out and about are priceless. I’ve walked thousands of miles of San Francisco Bay area streets taking photos with my camera over the past 33 years.
Most of my friends are still actually here. Going out to lunch at Sam’s downtown with a good friend or taking a walk with them down to the Ferry Building and along the Embarcadero are things I’d very much miss. I love living near the ocean and the water.
I just uploaded 30 full high resolution photos to my Flickr account in about 45 seconds with my high speed fiber to curb internet from Sonic. Most of my friends that move to rural areas don’t have anywhere near this sort of internet speed and service.
We’re near world class airports than can get you anywhere you want to get in the world. I’m trying to photograph the 100 largest American cities and our airports make that much easier to do. We have redwoods and parks and wine country all a short drive away, all more wonderfully photogenic places.
And then there is the weather. Oh the delightful Bay Area weather. Weather has so much to do with it for me. I grew up down in Los Angeles and it was way too hot for me. Our weather is so perfect all year long here. I don’t see San Francisco as a take it or leave it sort of thing. I think we can fix it if we can just get the right people and the right policies in place. Common sense policies. There is so much to love about the Bay Area. My criticism of our current state of affairs is borne out of love, it’s borne out of trying to fix San Francisco and get us back to what we once were when I moved here — back when our streets weren’t littered with drug addicts and car break ins and shoplifters and thieves.
I’d rather keep trying to fix San Francisco than just give up and move, even if part of that is complaining about it on Twitter, er, I mean X.
Thomas Hawk is a Bay Area-based photographer. Follow him on Twitter/X and on Flickr.
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