San Francisco

San Francisco is an island. Oh, you didn’t know? That’s not what they taught you in school? Well, put down your map and follow along for a quick geography lesson:

To the West, San Francisco is hemmed in by the shark-infested stretch of Pacific Ocean that biologists and surfers refer to as the Red Triangle. At the Northern and Eastern boundary is San Francisco Bay, a silty, frigid, sea lion and sailboat sanctuary of dark and forbidding beauty. And finally, completing the moat, is that sprawling sea of pastel houses, diehard 49er fans and RBL Posse aficionados that is South San Francisco. As Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane once said, "San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality."

We inhabitants of the secluded Isle of San Francisco are a peculiar mix of meta-hipsters, thriving geeks, endangered hippies, power bottoms, professional dog walkers, Marina MILFs, cloud sourcers, ass-less chaplains, green startups and green upstarts, car sharers, obsessive burners, bay-to-breakers and even a few quivering republicans, all coexisting in our disparate yet overlapping universes as we manifest our strange destinies in concert.

There is one thing we all have in common: we love our little island. We relish our self-imposed exile, thriving in isolation like the lava lizards and blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos—albeit with much higher rent.

And you will love it here too—we promise. Put simply: San Francisco has it all. What are you in to? Yeah, we’ve got that—in spades.

So we welcome you to our island, our fog-tinged, acid-singed paradise. Just be careful you don’t fall in love with the place. The cost of living in San Francisco is astronomical. But let’s be honest: the cost of not living here is potentially soul-crushing!