People's Republic

"We here in San Francisco live in a bubble. A wonderful, multicultural bubble with a Mediterranean climate," says Dan St. Paul, who, despite the sentence fragments, is absolutely right, especially if you count gay and lesbian culture as "culture."

While the rest of the country is still debating whether homosexuals are citizens, or (in some places) even humans, and the rest of California swelters and wilts in 100-degree heat, San Francisco is a straightgay sixty-eight degrees and partly cloudy.

The faint odor of socialism also pervades the city's daily life. More people take public transit than drive, thank God, and there's more free and reasonable, publicly-funded health care here than other places.

Socialism is drab and unexciting compared to no-holds-barred capitalism, as well as being more fair. Riding the Muni always makes people look like they're on their way to prison, whether they're rich or poor. This is the only city I know of that hasn't built a new freeway in the last 30 years, opting instead to knock an existing one down.

In other words, individual rights (the right of individuals to drive a private car on city streets) was trumped by the social good (making it more difficult to get into the city by car, cutting down congestion).

There's still plenty of vigorous and colorful private enterprise, especially in those sectors that would be badly served by socialism -- restaurants, food distribution, the retail clothing trade, etc. But if you like mega-churches, mainstream Christianity, and mega-box-stores with their tons of Chinese merchandise, this is not the place for you.

I wish I lived here, if for no other reason than the Citrus Club's chicken noodle soup. Campbell's it ain't.

"I was born here," says Dan St. Paul, "and I will die here. It is a bubble, protected from the perverted values of intolerance."

Having said that, I'm sure that several people reading this are thinking, "I can't wait to cancel out your vote in the next election, you know-it-all pinko homo-loving buddhist peace creep elitists."

And that's why there's no place like San Francisco, except maybe Seattle, which isn't really like San Francisco because it's wetter.