Anniversary soon. Today? Y2K, when I apparently hated everything, especially San Francisco. OK, I still don’t care much for san Francisco.
Favorites and milestones from the textual diarrhea that was 2000:
The big twentieth anniversary is 13 January 2016. Today, it’s all about 1999, when I lost a roommate, pissed off a lot of people talking about gentrification, and started obsessively documenting old supermarkets. I think this was my favorite year of the website (so more links than the other “retrospectives” today) though in retrospect it comes across as a trifle whiny at times.
Looking back at twenty years on the web in prepration for my anniversary on 13 January. Today’s focus is 1998, the year I began doing web work professionally and realy began to question whether I wanted to spend the rest of my life in San Francisco.
The Idiot Factor: Pilot for a new series that never quite took off except as a running theme.
As a self-indulgent tribute to twenty years on the web, I’m looking back at one year a day leading to the actual anniversary on 13 January 2016. 1997 was all about free time, road trips, building a new website, and the occasional bit of debauchery. It was also the year I started questioning my relationship with San Francisco.
13 January 2016 will be the twentieth anniversary of the site that became Otherstream. In a rather egotistical observance of that anniverasry, I’m focusing on one year per day in the twenty days leading up to the anniversary, linking to some favorite and important (or just inane and disposable) posts from each year. Today, we start with 1996.
Otherstream did not start as a journal/blog site–or even one named “Otherstream.” Planet SOMA was more of a static site with information about San Francisco neighborhoods, some dirty pictures, rants about annoying aspects of faggotry, and some biographical info about me. It was the early days of the web and frankly, any presence at all was was still much more than 99% of people had in that pre-Wordpress, pre-Facebook era when most people didn’t even know what a website was. i didn’t start doing personal updates till several months in.
Aside from the birth of the website, 1996 was pretty pivotal in other ways as well. It marked the end of traditional full-time employment for the next six years, the end of the car I moved to San Francisco with, and several interesting road trips. It was really the beginning of a new era for me.
I decided to blow off the conference today. Everything was happening in Berkeley and there weren’t many sessions I cared that much about. So I went over and took care of everything I wanted to do in San Francisco instead.
Highlights:
I’m leaving the Bay Area tomorrow just in time to avoid Pride. I’m headed for Los Angeles on Saturday. Not 100% sure where I’ll spend tomorrow night yet. but I have arranged a meeting at the Safeway corporate offices tomorrow afternoon related to some material for that other site. I’m kind of excited about that.
Presentation day. Spent most of the day at the conference Things went quite well.
Other highlights:
I think tomorrow may involve a bit of shopping Berkeley and San Francisco. And maybe some Pancho Villa.
So I have ventured into the Bay Area for the first time in nearly five years.
Quick assessment:
So, about Days One and Two of David’s California Adventure 2015? Let’s go with another pair of bullet lists, starting with Monday:
Tuesday:
Today I will actually be paying attention to the conference I’m here for. My presentation is this afternoon at 4:30.
With all the family drama this week, I managed to miss the tenth anniversary of my milestone departure from San Francisco after thirteen years there. I had originally planned to get all philosophical about it, but the past few days have been really exhausting and frankly I’m just too fucking tired to bother tonight. Maybe later this week. Probably not.
For now, suffice to say that even though things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned ten years ago, I still think this move was one of my better decisions in life. San Francisco was over for me; it was well past time to leave. Despite the fact that a lot of really shitty things have happened to me (personal, health-related, and familial) in the past ten years, a lot of really good things have happened, too. I am pretty genuinely happy with where I am and who I am now. And that wasn’t really something I could say in San Francisco.
For what it’s worth, I’m not as fat now either, although I have managed to find some of that weight I lost over the past year or two.
If you’re in the mood, please feel free to relive the cross-country excursion, with all its neon signs, roadside food, and automotive drama.
(Adapted from a recent Facebook rant about this essay.)
San Francisco in 1992, when I moved there, was a deeply dysfunctional city. San Francisco in 2015, ten years after I departed, is still a deeply dysfunctional city, albeit in a very different way. I personally found the (early) 1990s dysfunction much more entertaining and inclusive than the current very expensive and corporate version. That’s probably because “pot truffles and hashish ginger snaps”, $4000/month studios, and hand-forged artisanal turnips from Bernal Heights are not really my thing.
While the author of seems only to remember the “sadness” that enveloped the Castro in the 1990s, the gay San Francisco I moved to in 1992 was actually a pretty happy place, one that was finally emerging from the darkness and paranoia of the 1980s and beginning to enjoy itself again.
I get that the author is trying to put a positive spin on change and question people’s assumptions about “the good old days” and how they were always “better” but the problem with this essay is that it mostly cites examples that say more about how much more sanitized and pretentious and wealthy the city has become in the past twenty years than about how much “better” it is. It may be a better place for many people, but not for me…not based on this essay, anyway.
I lived in San Francisco long enough that I’m allowed to have an opinion, but I’ve been gone long enough that no one has to pay any attention to it.
