Hating On San Francisco Is Trending

[title maintitle=”” subtitle=”Stop Hating on San Francisco”]

It’s seems like every week there is an article about why San Francisco sucks. From the high rents to the high levels of cougars, homeless and hipsters, people love to rant about my city. The latest of course is the open letter from the Yelp employee bashing her CEO and whining about how expensive it is to live in San Francisco.

Yes, it is crazy expensive to live San Francisco. I constantly question how I afford to live here, but then I think, “How can I afford NOT to live in San Francisco?”

Where can I live where its acceptable to be naked or where a costume year round? I am 15 minutes from a beach, 90 minutes from the wine country and 10 minutes from hiking trails. And oh yeah, I’m 5 minutes away from some of the top restaurants, bars, and music venues in San Francisco.

We all make choices/sacrifices for what we deem as quality of life. The Yelp chic opted to starve herself and publicly proclaim her struggles as a 25-year-old trying to make it in harsh streets of San Francisco. Hell, the way she describes it you’d think she was the modern-day version of Will Smith’s character in the “Pursuit of Happyness.” Yet Will didn’t give up in the movie. He sure didn’t write a letter shaming the checkbook that fed him. Again, it’s all about the choices we choose to make in the name of quality of life.

I choose not to have lots of material possessions, (unfortunately) live with roommates, and cut back on eating out every night because I hella love San Francisco and all that makes it one of the top destinations in the world.

I don’t want to live in Los Angeles and want to kill myself because I can’t stand another minute in traffic. There is nothing about shoveling or walking daily in the snow that screams quality of life to me. And I don’t want to live in (fill in the blank) where I can’t walk down the street to get my craving for Mexican, Japanese or BBQ all in the same block.

I want and need to be here in San Francisco because this is where my heart lies and I wouldn’t trade my crazy expensive city for the world (okay, maybe Paris, but for now I am happy).