"I love San Francisco!"

What has been rather remarkable to me in the short time that I've been in LA (now officially 24 days) is the degree to which Los Angelenos tell me how much they love San Francisco.  Perhaps I was just under the (mis-)impression from my ten years in the city by the bay that these two cities had a mutual dislike for each other because of the unkind things so many of my SF compatriots (myself included) had to say about our smoggier, larger neighbor 350 miles to the south.  However, in just a few weeks I've heard the words "I love San Francisco!" exclaimed to me by at least a half-dozen people when I've told them that I just moved from there.

This, to me, starkly contrasts with the reactions of San Franciscans to Los Angeles.  There is only one person (out of literally dozens) who I can recall outright told me that I would love Los Angeles, and I'd only met him minutes before.  A few other friends either neutrally or begrudgingly admitted they thought I would like it here, and otherwise the reactions ranged from negative to horrified.  Among the things I heard about LA from San Franciscans?

• It's so dirty!
• I get sick every time I go there.
• Enjoy the smog!
• Everyone is so fake.
• They don't call it LaLa Land for nothing!
• Hope you like driving!
• Better work on your tan.
• Are you sure? (as in, I obviously hadn't thought this one through enough)

I don't need to go on.  Y'all get the point.  I even remember a commercial run by a local Bay Area news outfit earlier this year that said something to the effect of "Thank god we're not in Los Angeles..."  My boyfriend saw it and asked me, "Why do people in San Francisco dislike LA so much?"

Honestly, I don't get it.  It reminds me of when I was at high school back in the metro Detroit area and everyone at my school pooh-poohed the University of Michigan as "elitist" and "snobby" and instead spoke of how fantastic Michigan State was.  I didn't buy it, and today I am a maize-and-blue-bleeding U-M alum.  I can also honestly say that I never heard the kind of trashing of Michigan State when I was at U-Michigan (other than the few times the high profile sports teams from each school played each other) that I heard from MSU fans when I was growing up.

What's that about?  Why the need to trash someone else?  I mean, did the 15 million people in the LA area do something to deserve being lumped into a smelly, waste-of-time morass in the collective consciousness of the upstanding and environmentally-friendly people of the Bay Area?

Not caveats:  I just had a meeting today with a legislative aide who is helping with the rapid, ongoing expansion of the Los Angeles Metro Rail, which is only 20 years old and already has 5 lines and will be adding 2 more and extending a 3rd in the next 10-15 years...  I attended a meeting this week where the elected leaders of the neighborhood-based organization were actually attempting to work in concert with a developer of an under-utilized property within a block of a metro station...  From my home, I'm able to walk to nearly everything I need, including the gym, grocery store, pharmacy, restaurants and shops, tons of clubs/hang-out spots, post office, and neighborhood city hall...  Oh, and I randomly discovered that my neighborhood has an LGBT senior housing facility (it's called "Triangle Square" - kinda cute!).

Why do I bring these things up?  Well, let's compare, shall we?

In SF, the Muni expansion down 3rd Street was its first major rail expansion in like 30 years, and it did little to shorten the time to get from Visitacion Valley to downtown (unlike my 15-minute ride downtown from Hollywood... where driving could be anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, depending)...  In SF, I've seen multiple well-intentioned projects get bogged down to the point of imploding because of community opposition that often results in developers walking away...  In SF, I could walk to everything I needed too (in other words, that hasn't changed very much for me in my new home)...  And in SF, there's been talk of LGBT senior housing for a long, long time, and while it will still likely happen, the effort to do it was stalled for years by a handful of neighbors whose ultimate argument ended up being that they preferred to declare as historic a blank wall and a couple long-since-abandoned buildings over allowing new residents into their community.

Now, I don't want to trash-talk San Francisco here.  Tit-for-tat isn't my style.  I merely raise these points to offer some more concrete ways in which I think the negativity directed by SF residents toward Los Angeles may be a bit misguided.  Every city has its pluses and minuses.  So, I merely turn the spotlight to show that it ain't all rose-petals and Krispy Kremes in San Francisco, even as the Muni buses will sometimes display the words "San Francisco: The City that Knows How."

As I start to settle into my new home, I can see a lot of the warts that make this city a challenging place to live.  I've even blogged about some of them.  :-)  I also think it's important to consider that there's no reason both of these cities aren't worth some amount of praise and some amount of criticism for what they offer.

Like the people who have exclaimed their joy for San Francisco to me, I too love San Francisco.  This week, when we hit an all-time record high of 113 degrees, I longed for the cooling breeze and foggy skies to put me at ease.  Sufice to say, they didn't come, but I've also started to accept that maybe it isn't so bad to be able to walk around in flip-flops and shorts on almost any given day and feel comfortable and warm.

Suffice to say, I am beginning to see how my new home works, and I am beginning to love Los Angeles.