From New to the Bay, a chronicle of one recent Mission transplant’s efforts to adjust to life (and cycling) SF:
I’m a New York girl. I’m a little high-strung. The other day, flying down Mission, someone started to open their car door and I screamed a string of obscenities that would hardly be out of the ordinary in New York. This is not quite part of the San Francisco culture. I’m trying to adapt. I’m hoping that I become less high-strung as the days go on.
Link. Is that right? Screamed strings of obscenities are out of the ordinary on Mission Street?
 SF: I’m a New York girl. I’m a little high-strung. The other day, flying down Mission, someone started to open their car door and I screamed a string of obscenities that would hardly be out of […]</p>
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Personally, I think more people out there deserve to have strings of obscenities directed at them. Then again, the first time I visited NYC, I was wishing all the slow-ass locals would get out of my fucking way.
It’s different here. When I moved from Boston 4 years ago, I was alarmed at how seriously people in the Bay Area take the middle finger. I had a guy chase me down the street in their car, leaning on the horn, after I gave him the bird. In Massachusetts, you flip off everyone. You flip off your dog, your mother, the guy who makes the doughnuts.
We do not act this way in San Francisco or California. How vulgar. The polite thing to do was to talk shit about the driver behind their back, or snap an image of the car and license number, and post it on one of our many fine internet sites.
It’s how things are done around here.
Brock: Funny. True. Sad.
@ ct – I have yet to launch a finger at anyone, but that’s because I’ve been lucky enough to not get honked at. (Thanks, bike lane on Valencia!) In the city I’m from, it’s a near-daily occurrence to get honked at, or my favorite, “get on the sidewalk”. I’m a champ at launching a finger behind me – but hope to not exercise that option so regularly here.
It is indeed as Brock so beautifully describes. But I think many San Franciscans would benefit from this sort of occasional directness. Also, this reminds me of a story in which a NY friend actually got pulled over for shouting obscenities at traffic from a moving car during her first visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The friendly officer said something like, “Getting a little upset at the traffic there, eh? Maybe you need to stop and calm down a bit.”
I find what *really* gets a San Franciscan to react is telling them they are going to have bad karma for a car-related offence. My wife totally guilted a guy who stole her parking spot that way. She called him out on karma, and when she came back around the block and he had vanished.
On the other hand, be careful of its power — my wife nearly had to pull me out of a fight when I called out this girl who tried to steal a cab we had flagged down. I told cab-stealing-girl, “Oooh, you’re going to have baaaad karma for that.” She flew into a *rage*, saying “I’m a BUDDHIST!! I can’t have bad karma!!!”
Everyone else waiting for cabs starts laughing at her and I reply, “You’re the most hypocritical buddhist I’ve ever seen — go ahead and take the cab, you need it more than we do. You’re coming back as a bug.”
She *loses* it and starts cursing me out, at which point my wife jumps in saying “You DO NOT talk to my husband that way.” But before things come to blows, crazy-cab-girl notices that the karma cab has done a u-turn to escape and starts chasing it. While she is distracted we grab a cab that had come around the other corner.
Go karma!
@Jen: welcome to SF (I just skimmed your blog). I find Boston/NYC people tend to lose it for a little while after a couple months in the Bay. It happened a little to me and a bit more to some friends. One of them (a Long Island boy — he’s since moved back) told me, “These people have given up on life.” He was referring to the way they form orderly lines to get on BART at Embarcadero, and the way they don’t jaywalk.
For me, it was probably 2-3 years before I stopped missing the attitude. People would ask me what I missed about Boston, and I would say — quite honestly — that I missed how angry everyone acted all the time.
But that’s all behind me now. My blood has run thin, and I can’t take temperatures below 50 or above 80. Standing at the corner and waiting for the light seems prudent. I don’t shout at people as much. It’s not so bad.
If you’re looking for a bar with pool and darts that’s a little more like an east coast neighborhood bar, try Glen Park Station (Diamond St, near Glen Park BART). It’s my favorite, though maybe just because I live down that way. The crowd is significantly more local and less transient 20-something. Also: free Cheez-Its.
Lastly, Brock wins.
maybe because all the bad attitudes come from points east.
i love this thing about carpetbaggers wishin frisco was more like the crappy places they come from.
we californians try to take it slow & easy but there’s always some new-be not gettin w/ the program.
we have become LA.
sorry for the rant but were on edge down here in the flats.
real mission