‘You’ve been here a while now. Do you prefer San Francisco or London?’
Fran, Britney, and I were having lunch in the canteen. I finished my bite and answered without hesitation. Souring my colleagues' excitement wasn't my intention, but I can't deny that seeing their faces sag gave me a smug zing. I'd been turning over the merits of the foggy city for months. In the first few weeks I'd struggled to find any meaningful ways San Francisco had a leg up on London, but I think that was down to user error. I was doing it wrong, trying to experience San Francisco like it was London with more sunshine.
Following this misguided strategy, I found accommodation in the town centre, a trendy studio that had been the ephemeral home of some flip-flop millionaire from the Bay Area who, with an unnerving level of vigour, kept reminding me that I’m welcome to any of the liquor in his bar, even the Japanese whiskey. With every sprightly message, my suspicions grew – what had he done to the whiskey?
I never found out. I needed to keep my wits. The alleyway beside the building served two purposes: it was where people came to inject drugs, and it was the only way in and out of the building. My morning routine adapted. I would brush my teeth, put my underpants on, and peek out the window to count how many opioided-zombies I needed to navigate around for my commute.
Then one morning I looked down and there were about a dozen women in the alleyway split into two factions. Tensions were running at a pitch. The alpha of each faction stood ahead of her respective pack, throwing abuse at their opponent, while the other women would rattle their heads, swing their arms, and cuss.
The champion of the group closest to me – the one I'd been silently rooting for – then took an open-handed wallop to the face. I was disappointed. It had been clearly telegraphed. She could have dodged. The two sides collapsed into each other. One pair locked into a grappling contest and threw themselves up against the door I used to leave the building. I pulled out my phone and sent a message to my manager. Sorry, going to be a little late today.
Fran and Britney looked at me expectantly over their lunches. I suppose I owed them an explanation. Both Fran and Britney were my junior and still carried the mirthful excitement that comes easy when you’re still on the nearside of twenty. At the time, I was on the far side but not quite the cliffside of that same decade. Practically, that meant saying no whenever they invited me to join one of their Barry's Bootcamp sessions.
We had come to work on the same project after they, wanting to escape the slideshow sweatshop of management consultancy, had seconded their way over to Airbnb’s Californian headquarters.
For a full picture of who Fran and Britney are, you need only know that Britney’s current obsession was figuring out how to regrow her hair while Fran’s was regrowing her toenails.
Britney had been blindsided by a breakup. John, this older man with a cold decisiveness she hadn't expected, had packed her belongings and left them in the entrance hall for her to collect on her way home.
That was New York. California was a healthy change: sun, new experiences, and no John. Though her heartache was still causing her hair to fall out. Between emails, meetings, and project planning, we would hear the latest remedy she was pinning her hopes on: coconut oil, acupuncture, and a brief but unsuccessful experiment with mackerel.
Fran’s toenail wasn’t a casualty of romance but marathon running. I have a theory that people who run for fun secretly hate themselves – or maybe they run to stop hating themselves. In any case, Fran’s feet hated running and, one by one, her toenails submitted their letters of resignation. Losing her little toenails wasn’t much bother, but when her big toenail fell off after the New York marathon she decided to re-evaluate her life choices. While she searched for a permanent solution, a few dabs of red nail polish created the smudgy illusion that everything was fine.
I told them about the alleyway addicts, gang fights, and the expensive groceries. The evening I tried to go out and found large groups of young men accosting people for their valuables. The shooting two blocks away at 5.36pm on a Wednesday. The walk to the office, which played out like a game of minesweeper, as any given street might have become, overnight, a settlement of tents belonging to people who had run out of options: money gone, luck gone, in some cases a war behind them, an addiction in front of them, or both.
‘Well where are you staying?’, Fran enquired.
‘The Tenderloin’.
They both looked at each other.
‘You need to move.’
So it turns out, unlike London, Paris, Berlin, Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney, and basically every other similar major city, you do not stay in the centre of town. That’s a ridiculous notion. A foolish, naive, and laughable thought.
‘Find a neighbourhood that’s on a hill. Have you not heard the saying? “Crackheads don’t climb”’.
Part two coming soon...
