October 2023 - Hunter's Full Moon

Starting our wild adventure

For the October full moon, we're in Southern California. We've decided to use the full moon as a marker, a placeholder every month to reflect on where we've been and what we've seen. October has been quite a full moon. We got married in our backyard, we saw so many loved ones in the city that we adore. We found a storage unit and put everything we own into it. We picked out the camping gear we would need and stuffed it into our Mazda CX-5 (codename Mozzy). And we said goodbye - for now - to our beloved San Francisco.

We're not sure exactly what this year will hold. We have some of it planned and some of it will be spontaneous. And we'll use this blog as our journal to capture memories, share photos, and update all of you.

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Move in day 2019

Move out day 2023

A Love Letter To San Francisco - Written by Mark

You move to New York to be somebody. You move to L.A. to be somebody else. You move to SF to be yourself.

I decided that San Francisco was the place for me nearly eight years ago to the day. I was sitting on the north side of Dolores Park, the sun was starting to fade over Twin Peaks, the first hint that a jacket would have been helpful entered my mind. I can’t quite remember how I came to the conclusion that this must be the place, but I imagine it was prompted by the air that this city produces in October, a clear glossy chill that has tingled my nostrils every fall since that day back in 2015. I imagine the decision had something to do with the twilight sparkling against the glass of downtown, a downtown that still makes me chuckle with its smallness and solitude compared with the rest of this city. I recall that it wasn’t too busy in the park, wasn’t too loud, and that there was a joyfulness and lightness of being that I wondered whether the atmosphere emanated into the people or the people emanated into the atmosphere. Eight years later, on the precipice of departure, I still wonder. I decided to move here that day, but it took me years to fall in love with the city. I moved here at a drama-filled time. Tech was booming. There was an awful lot of people my age working in it, so much so that the refrain at parties was typically a semi-joking (or alarmingly serious) “What tech company do you work at.” Prices were skyrocketing and the word gentrification was on the tip of everybody’s tongue. I remember being in a Lyft Line (remember those?) and someone saying to the driver they had lived in SF for a decade. “Long time,” the driver said, himself a local. “Yeah, lot of change” the passenger responded. Both of their tones were more like what you would hear at a funeral than what you’d hear in a rideshare. Sometimes, it felt like San Francisco was always a place wishing for its past. It often still does.

I’m not exactly sure when I fell in love with San Francisco. It certainly wasn’t an all-at-once thing. Perhaps it began around the time I fell in love with Abigail in 2017. Or perhaps it was when we moved to the Lower Haight in 2019. There are moments that I know pushed me towards it. Reading Gary Kamiya’s chapter on Baker Beach - the image where he writes about looking east towards the Golden Gate Bridge still makes me cry - or going to Top of the Mark for the first time, or biking to Hellman Hollow in Golden Gate Park for Tour de Fat. In the disarray and thousand-and-one factions of this city, there are still moments of unbridled cohesion and unified joy. Bay To Breakers. Pride. Hardly Strictly. Moments and days where everyone is smiling - really, truly smiling - where the past unifies with the present and you see a man with a sock on his penis and a man in an Uber hoodie and 4 men cardboarded together as a BART train all walking past you within a delirious 3 seconds on Fell. Living in San Francisco is always feeling nostalgic for the past, but searching - and sometimes finding - the moments of timelessness that this city is capable of astounding you with.

And oh, the politics. And ugh, the endless complaining. And phew, those prices. And yeesh, the shit we receive daily from pretty much Every American Who Doesn’t Live In San Francisco (not so much Europeans, they seem to like it okay here). But then…. Then there’s the Ballpark by the Bay. And the vistas atop the hills - dear heavenly god, the vistas. And the hippies on Haight Street. And the dudes on dirtbikes who do wheelies around the city for no good reason other than that it looks cool. And grown people riding tiny plastic bigwheels down windy streets every April. And skateboarders mobbing hills. And happy brass bands or sad folk musicians playing music in parklets. And the sourdough. And the way the two bridges emerge at moments you’re least expecting them. And the trees in the Presidio leaning east from the wind. And an airport so close, with a terminal dedicated to Harvey Milk. And 280 just there, with that lake that always surprises you, and the 101 just up there, with its solitude and curvy mountain roads, and those burritos, and that omakase place, and the pork buns, and the best beer bar in the world, and the local places that you feel are just yours - La Palma, and R Image, and Wing Lee - and and don’t even get me started on the history, the only big Western American city with any history at all, give me your Denver and your Salt Lake and yes, even your LA and I’ll give you a shot from a bottle from the soldiers going to the Pacific in 1945 at Top of the Mark and I’ll point you to Angel Island where Chinese people had to quarantine in the 1800’s and I’ll show you the photos after the earthquake fires in 1906 and we’ll listen to the World Series broadcast during the earthquake of 1989 and we’ll marvel at City Hall but I’ll remind you of the 1978 assassination and we’ll watch James Stewart kiss Kim Novak in Vertigo and we’ll see a show at The Fillmore and I’ll tell you that Jim Jones used to preach nearby and I’ll give you Steinbeck at Stanford and Ginsburg at City Lights and we’ll see the bullet holes in the basement of the Armory and I’ll tell you about the devastation of AIDS in the Castro and we’ll walk through a park that is 153 years old that used to be sand dunes and is now home to the best roller skaters but no cars and we’ll learn that the first Critical Mass happened here in the year of my birth and, oh yeah, we’ll see that famous Island Jail too.

And now we have left. Like so many others, we have left.

I lived in San Francisco as long as I lived anywhere in my whole life. It is the only city I have ever lived in. It is also the only place - besides college - that I have ever chosen to live in.

As we set out on this year of adventure, we will be in new places - places with their own histories and cuisines and eccentricities. And we’ll soak that all up. 

But Tony Bennett’s words are as present as ever. 

The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay

The glory that was Rome is of another day

I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan

I'm going home to my city by the Bay

I left my heart in San Francisco

High on a hill, it calls to me

To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars

The morning fog may chill the air, I don't care

My love waits there in San Francisco

Above the blue and windy sea

When I come home to you, San Francisco

Your golden sun will shine for me

When I come home to you, San Francisco

Your golden sun will shine for me