Leaving San Francisco

A love story

So long San Francisco. You’ve been the best.

It’s true. We are leaving the city. We’re putting our place up for sale next month (I know, nice job of timing of the slumping real estate market right?) and by the end of September we will be living full time in wine country.

Just to be clear, we aren’t uppers. We’re not fed up. We’re not giving up. There’s no last straw.

We’re just at the point where we are retired and would like to live in a place that feels warmer, quieter and — OK — a little safer.

Admittedly, I shake my head when there’s new graffiti in the neighborhood. Or piles of poop. Or plywood over the windows at Safeway because some angry guy used a metal bar to spider web the plate glass.

It’s certainly nothing new. We’ve been dealing with it for the 12 years since we moved back to SF after a stint in the ‘burbs. That’s part of the tradeoff for living downtown in a real city.

But just to be clear, it isn’t as if we don’t love living here. There’s no more cornball cliche’ than to claim a city is “magical.” But I believe San Francisco is.

And I mean that very specifically. I truly think that some of what happened to me since I moved here 42 years ago could not — and would not — have happened if I’d been anywhere else. And if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

A few years after I arrived, I went to a little gathering at the home of Chronicle sports columnist Bruce Jenkins and struck up a conversation with the prettiest girl at the party. We’ve now been married 37 years. She put up with long road trips to faraway countries, job changes and dealing with a prima donna. She’s the love of my life.

I had a vague concept about starting a family, but — as parents have learned since the beginning of time — you have no clue what you’re getting into until it happens. We went through a scary, difficult childbirth in a San Francisco hospital, endless weekends of soccer games and swim meets and plenty of laughs and tears (from all of us).

Today our kids are successful adults, in committed relationships and living in San Francisco. The only struggle I have with them now is finding the words to say how proud of them I am. Being a dad has been the greatest experience of my life.

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Like a lot of people, I suspect, I have struggled with self-doubt my whole life. I have thought I wasn’t good enough. And worse, that others knew I wasn’t good enough and were saying that about me.

In my job in the SF Chronicle newsroom, I found a culture and a community that encouraged us to explore ideas and express opinions. And it gave us a forum to make those ideas and opinions public.

That encouragement meant the world. And I have tried to pay it forward. If I see some good writing I try to Tweet a link to it to let them know it is appreciated, even if I don’t know the person. (Sometimes, it is pretty clear they warily wonder what this creepy old guy is up to, but the intentions are pure.)

Moving to San Francisco changed my life. I always think of how incredible it was to be able to jog in Golden Gate Park, all the way to the ocean. For a newbie from Colorado, seeing the Pacific Ocean was an astonishment every single day.

I made life-long friends. Shout out to Dan McGrath, best man at our wedding. We went to ball games, concerts and dinner at the Washington Square Bar and Grill back when it was really the Washington Square Bar and Grill.

I have to admit we only went to the opera once. And didn’t make it to symphony at all. But we saw lots of live theater. I saw an early performance of “True West” at the little Magic Theater and playwright Sam Shepard was sitting in the back row.

San Francisco taught me what the deal was with good food. That a restaurant didn’t have to have five forks next to the plate to be really, really good. We went to — and still do — places where they take making meals seriously, but not themselves.

One of our favorite neighborhood places was a former storefront built in the 40s. We went there many times, but I don’t think we ever got the table to stop rocking. The ancient wooden floor dipped and swayed like the sea.

Most of all, I realized what it meant to live in a world class city. A place where encountering the famous and influential was a part of life. I chatted with Yoko Ono, told Nancy Pelosi how cordial her husband had been when he met my daughter and me and had my picture taken with Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo.

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Moving to the city was the pivot point for my entire life. I’d like to say, sincerely, thanks, San Francisco.

Now, I do have some gripes.

It continues to baffle me why we let individuals who are clearly, tragically mentally ill roam the streets. People who are barefoot and screaming to the skies. They are obviously desperately unhappy and unable to care for themselves.

And yet, despite new laws that would allow them to be placed in conservatorships, where they would get mandatory care, we rarely give them that help. When we try, critics rail against a loss of civil liberties and insist that they be allowed to stay on the sidewalk, unsheltered.

I know I’ve been a broken record about this, but talk to the families of those individuals. They aren’t advocating for them to stay on the street. They are begging for help, for a safe place and treatment for their loved ones. Ignoring them just seems cruel.

And it is exasperating to see the constant civic bickering over the same problems. Homelessness was a major topic when I arrived in 1980, and if anything it’s gotten worse.

I thought that the way it would work would be that the bright minds in the city —and there are plenty of them — would come up with an innovative plan to address the problem.

And, frankly, it probably wouldn’t work. Homelessness is a tough one.

But, I thought, there might be a part of the new plan that held some promise. Gavin Newsom’s Care Not Cash, was a good one, for instance.

And, those bright minds would take that part that worked and build on it. There’d be another plan which might not work, but it might have some helpful features that could be part of the next new plan.

And we’d move forward.

Instead it just seems like an endless cycle of arguing and complaining. It seems advocacy groups are against nearly every new idea. OK, so what is their plan? What are you for?

Which is way beyond my bandwidth. People have been working on this for decades and only spinning their wheels. At some point all you can say is, “Well, that’s San Francisco.”

But we’re the only ones who get to say that. When outsiders start cracking on the city, I’m ready to fight. Shut up. You don’t know what you are talking about.

This is one of the world’s great cities. I love you San Francisco. And I’ll miss you.

But just to be clear, I’m taking my heart with me.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter: @cwnevius