San Francisco
City running in Beta Mode
Being in SF feels like a sneak peek into the future
You’ve got driverless cars gliding around like it’s normal, new products being developed to solve problems that may/may not? exist in the future (someone in Residency’s demo day showcased a robotic conductor for the orchestra- needed?) , and social plans happening at 2pm on a weekday because remote work turned time into a suggestion. The whole city has this constant beta-mode energy: less “what do you do?” and more “what are you testing, what’s your thesis?” It’s not always charming, but it’s fascinating, like watching tomorrow get assembled in real time
But what does building the future look like for those living in SF? Hot take from someone who only spent 2 weeks in the city, but here goes: SF feels monolithic
You’ll see a lot of people, mostly men, dressed in Microsoft/Meta t-shirts, carrying a Google branded duffle bag, and playing tennis at Dolores Park at 2pm or going for hikes in the Golden Gate Park in the am. Everyone is building B2B software, now AI-enabled, with a mission statement to change the world. Twitter is louder than TikTok and the most famous celebrity is still Karl the Fog (twitter account, books, conversations around the Fog). Many people (read men) want to move to NYC to experience “variety”, whether its in activity, conversations or more so in dating.
I asked a local for recommendations of things to do in SF, and they asked me what I like. “Art and fashion,” I said. “Then you might want to go back to NYC,” they replied. This was only partly true. SFMOMA is absolutely worth it (they had a KAWS exhibit when I went, which is very NY artist goes west, but I’ll allow it). And de Young is a real one, and there is Legion of Honor. There is no Broadway but an old Opera house offers some respite. Fashion, though? Yeah… this is where I became the “hot cookie” in SF (read Hot Cookie store in Castro district) in my knee-high boots, faux fur, gloves, dresses, the whole main-character wardrobe, while everyone else looked comfy-cute in hoodies and tees
Most events and social gatherings I saw seem to run on Luma more than Partiful. And within Luma, the one event I saw with truly wild waitlists was “AI AfterHours” at GitHub HQ
The NYC equivalent is probably something like Founders Common? or other founder clubs, where it’s more about people and vibes. In SF, it feels more about what’s being built. A lot of the other big social moments also seem to orbit programs like Residency or YC Demo Days, where people get together (again) to show what they’ve built and trade notes
But SF is also the Europe in America
Having studied, worked, and lived in Europe, I’m always hunting for little European pockets in America… until I found a few in California. The Presidio feels like the “Spanish corner” of the city (the word presidio literally refers to a fort, tied to early Spanish settlements). You can find genuinely good paella there. Sausalito is like a tiny Italian town across the Golden Gate Bridge, where you can get solid Roman-style food, then sit with a coffee by the water. And there’s also a random dash of French. I stumbled into a grocery store where there were QR codes to scan and fill out a survey on “what kind of butter you like.” A French student was literally out there researching butter preferences to make the best possible butter. That very European obsession with food quality and daily life feels like it’s seeped into California in the best way
Reddit telling me of Dylan’s Tours, and Airbnb experience of Clyde
It’s too easy to get lost in a jungle of ads and reviews on booking.com, Yelp. Trip Advisor and so I choose Reddit instead. And the best way to now find through reddit is ChatGPT.
ChatGPT helps me filter for the best tours and the most “real” personal experiences people have had on Redditt, and that’s how I found Dylan’s Tours. The bus ride through the city and out to Muir Woods, Sausalito, and North Beach came with a running monologue of fun facts, like how the city was named after Saint Francis of Assisi, and how the old Mission-era history still shows up in the city’s landmarks like the old cathedral in mission district. Through the drive up to the forest, the bus played music of ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ and other local classics. It was very well done
And then there was Clyde, the most dramatic storyteller I found through Airbnb Experience, who took me walking through the streets. He pointed out that'; In SF, street names are etched into the ground because, back in the day, wooden street signs could burn in fires. So carving the names into the street was the more practical solution. It’s such a distinctly SF detail, and one that you may miss easily
Delancey street restaurant
The restaurant in South Beach Marina Bay is run by the Delancey Street Foundation, which helps people rebuild their lives through vocational training, including learning how to run a real restaurant. It’s part of a residential program the Foundation has operated since 1971 for people coming out of incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and other rock-bottom chapters. The name has a New York backbone, too. The Foundation took its name from Delancey Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a place tied to waves of immigrants starting over and building new lives.
The service hit different: warm, attentive, and genuinely proud. It felt good to spend money somewhere where the nice night out also supports a cause
Muir Woods needs to be more famous… and maybe a little infamous.
Muir Woods is rightfully famous. It’s the perfect weekend morning stroll: tall trees, unreal greenery, that quiet reset your brain feeling, the whole thing. But Muir Woods also deserves a tiny bit of infamy. I spotted this giant redwood called the Globetree. It’s hollowed out from past fires, so you can literally stand inside it, and then it splits into two at the top. And almost instantly my brain served me the TLOSG “wood” line: “redwood tree it ain’t hard to see…”. I posted just that on TikTok, and within minutes it had 1k+ likes plus a bunch of saves and reposts. Not just me, okay. People get it.
How to see the Golden Gate bridge?
There are a bunch of ways to catch it. You can see it from the bridge itself (even better if you bike the path), from spots around the entrance to Golden Gate Park, and honestly from random corners of the city when the fog decides to cooperate.
But the best way to see it in its full glory, and feel like you’ve escaped the city for a minute, is Marshall’s Beach. It’s not one of those easy “step out of the car, take a photo” stops. You’ve got to do a little trail to get down there, and it can be cold and windy, but the views are completely worth it.
Also: if you want an actual beach-beach (shore + sand + water, even if the sun is not exactly doing the most), Marshall’s Beach and Ocean Beach are the real ones. A lot of the other “beach” spots in SF, like around South Marina, are basically piers and waterfront stretches. Don’t get fooled like I did and book a place thinking you’ll be living that beach life because it says “Marina”
Dandelion vs Ghiradeli?
While Ghirardelli is the more “popular” California chocolate you can’t really miss (it’s everywhere: CVS, Whole Foods, Fisherman’s Wharf, plus that giant Ghirardelli Square sign that somehow feels like the only thing glowing on the skyline at night), it’s also… loud. Loud marketing, loud packaging, loud presence
The quieter and, in my opinion, far better chocolate in California is Dandelion. It’s a local chocolatier that makes seriously good bars, and arguably the best hot chocolate I’ve had in the States. I’ve lived in Paris and had the OG chocolat chaud, and I’ll stand by this: Dandelion’s “European hot chocolate” is the closest I’ve found stateside. Second only to the Parisian (and some Italian) versions.
No Drivers cause traffic jam
No visit to SF feels complete without trying the self-driving cars (Waymo, robotaxis). Some people love the “no small talk” perk. You set your own music, temperature, vibe, and just glide. Others swear the human interaction with a driver is part of the whole point of taking a ride.
For me, it’s less about personal preference and more about the bigger promise: safety, security, and fewer human-error accidents. If that’s the goal, the R&D starts to make a lot more sense. Also, let’s be honest: watching lines of driverless cars create their own mini traffic jams, or reading headlines about a “Waymo stand-off,” is pure entertainment.
Living on the edge in tenderloin.
Everyone warned me to avoid walking in and around what people call the most dangerous part of SF, especially near the 16th St/Mission station and the Market Street area. And like any kid who’s told “don’t do that,” I immediately wanted to see it for myself. So I convinced a friend to come with me, and we did a slow Uber drive through the Tenderloin.
It reminded me a bit of The Wire (Baltimore vibes). The feeling isn’t so much “scary” as it is eerie and honestly sad. I’ve been in much scarier environments for work in places like South Sudan and Somalia, so it wasn’t fear exactly. It was more like disappointment. Like… something in the system clearly broke, and everyone’s just living with the consequences
‘No one has been, no one goes but night tickets sell out days in advance at Alcatraz’. I kept asking people if visiting Alcatraz was worth it, and most of them admitted they’d never actually been. It feels like one of those “I’ll do it someday” things locals keep on their mental list forever. Meanwhile, I managed to snag the last two tickets the day before. So yes, someone is going to Alcatraz. Actually, a lot of someones. And I get why.
It’s a long, cold boat ride, but the Alcatraz island is worth it. Walking through the cell blocks and seeing the solitary confinement chambers is a bit scary. The escape stories are even creepier. The audio guide, narrated with voices from former guards and inmates, is a great touch and makes the whole place feel weirdly alive
And if you can, do the night tour. The sunset over the city is unreal, like SF posing for a postcard while you’re standing on a rock that used to be a prison.
Microcosms across the Bay
I went up to Oakland and met an old friend who casually told me how he’ll pick leaves off trees and toss them into soup, like local sage, eucalyptus, and other herbs. Basically… foraging. It feels very Oakland, or maybe very my friend who also builds his own furniture
I also visited Berkely, which feels like SF’s conscience, but with a megaphone
Conversations that turn into mini-debates about AI ethics, surveillance, data privacy, and “opt out of the system” living. People actively do digital detox meetups: no phones at dinner, no phones at parties, “flip phone era” pride, and local newspapers talk of anti-big Tech and anarchist movements. It’s a different flavor of the Bay: a more militant, purity-test kind of California liberalism that you can’t really escape
The one suburb that’s probably borrowed the most from SF is Palo Alto. I happened to catch a tech competition at Stanford where Google Gemini was offering a headline prize of “up to $5M” for people building products in something like five hours. Basically: lots of ambition, lots of money in the air. Then there’s the Halloween lore, the kind Palo Alto runs on, like the rumor that Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’ widow) hands out iPhones to trick-or-treaters and people line up for it every year. Whether or not that’s true, the energy fits: Palo Alto has this “casual deal flow” feel where you walk into Equinox or a nearby coffee shop and the chatter drifts into funding rounds and investment talk like it’s normal small talk
Verdict.
SF doesn’t really try to charm you, it is naturally charming with the landscapes, the weather, the amenities… but it does try to prototype you.
Are you a builder/founder/what is your tech enabled and scaleable mission/purpose? is what you’ll hear the streets echoing. And honestly, that’s kind of great. It’s energizing, thought-provoking, and weirdly encouraging, like being surrounded by people who assume big bets are normal
But if you’re coming from anywhere else, like me, its a place where you’ll see up close how you’re different- and here embrace your contrast. Bring your taste, your contradictions, your art and fashion brain, your obsession with beauty for no reason other than it’s beautiful. Offer a perspective that may/may not be disruptive but has value anyway. SF has plenty of builders trying to disrupt. What it could use more of is people who remind it that the future and present should also be designed with taste, culture, and the kind of human detail that takes a different kind of work. Maybe that or we just need more consumer brands/VCs in the Bay (lol).
