San Francisco Weekend

I'm going to take a break from writing about gender to tell you all about my weekend in San Francisco. I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time, and not just because California is a little more pleasant in February than North Dakota is. I haven't seen any of my cousins since last winter, and I haven't seen my parents since July, so it was good to be reunited with everyone. I've never been to San Francisco, and I was also excited to see everything. I met Becky in the airport on Friday afternoon, and we took the subway downtown where we saw some family and went out to lunch with our parents at the Ferry Building. My first impressions of SF were favorable, even though I was trying to temper them by continuously telling myself that California is in what is going to be a perpetual drought and no one should be living there -- and indeed, no one will be living there within 150 years. That kind of thinking got a lot less persuasive pretty quickly, especially after the best salad I've ever eaten and seeing a dog riding a skateboard, and only became less convincing during the rest of the trip. After lunch and a walk around the Ferry Building, we got dressed up, listened to a lot of Kanye, and then took a bus, along with a lot of my family, to an Argentinian restaurant for my cousin Caroline's rehearsal dinner. I sat with my cousins Chris and Jon, Jon's girlfriend Erin, and my aunt Ann. Jon told us about working as a forest firefighter, and we talked a lot about books, which never gets old for me. Chris and I did most of our talking several drinks in, and we wisely decided he shouldn't get a tattoo of my name with "cousin" written in parentheses (somehow not the only joke about incest made on the trip). Also, I may have prospectively hired him. We'll see what happens there.

The next morning, there was some disagreement with my parents and Becky about what we would do that day, but after breakfast we settled on taking one of those hop on-hop off double decker bus tours around the city. Anyone who tells you taking a double decker bus tour of a city, or a segue tour, or one of those duck boat tours, is a bad way to see a city, and makes you the ultimate inauthentic tourist is either lying or has never been on one of those tours before. This bus tour was just about the best thing I've ever done in my life. We started driving around downtown, the wind was in my hair (which was maybe not the smartest thing a few hours before a black tie optional wedding), I was seeing a new city for the first time, and I was having a great time. We got off near the 'Full House' houses, which was obviously a really important moment for me, but the rest of that neighborhood was awesome too. It felt a little bit like walking around Georgetown, like, "I could never afford to live here, but if I could live close to here and walk around this neighborhood once a week or so I'd be pretty happy." We also got off in Haight Ashbury, which was... less my speed, but still fun. Then we went through Golden Gate Park (all I could think about was The Room, which is now going to make me nostalgic whenever I watch it, which is one of the few emotions that movie has never evoked for me before), through the Botanical Gardens, and then over the Golden Gate Bridge, which was cold but amazing. We didn't get off the bus again until we were back near the hotel, and we went back to the Ferry Building for lunch. (I also learned at lunch that the app my friends and I use to log the beers we drink offers you promos in California, which is crazy to me, because we drink way more beer per capita out in ND and deserve that more than Californians do.)

After lunch my dad went back to the hotel to read and Becky and Mom went shopping in Union Square, which left me to do what I really wanted to do: just ride tour bus all the way through its route again. So that's what I did (I sat on the other side of the bus this time so I could see everything I'd missed the first time). By the time I got back my hair was so windblown it was unsalvageable, so I took a shower while Becky went out to get me bobbie pins, because she's the best sister. We got dressed and ready, and then another bus took us to the Asian Art Museum. I'm glad I took my mom's advice and didn't wear a dress from Old Navy, because the venue and the other guests were really fancy. The ceremony was beautiful -- I don't know Conner at all, apart from the 30 seconds he was able to spend talking to us at the rehearsal dinner, but it seems like he and my cousin Caroline are really happy together, and the ceremony really reflected that. Afterward we had some time to check out the galleries and have cocktails, and then we went back into the ceremony room for the reception. The food was awesome, the dancing was awesome, I only got drunkenly yelled at incoherently by one old man -- all around I'd say it was a successful evening.

The next morning my parents left, I got coffee back at the water, and then checked out and went back to the airport. I was feeling really emotional about leaving at the airport -- not so much because I loved San Francisco so much (even though it seems like a great city), but because I knew I was headed back to Fargo, and a weekend in such a cosmopolitan city put Fargo into perspective for me. Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of great things about Fargo, and I've met some of my favorite people in the world here, but for the first time it sunk in deeply that I've just committed to spending the rest of my 20s in North Dakota, and that was tough. I was just sad for the rest of the day, and it only got worse when we landed in Fargo, and the other passengers started complaining in a way that, let's say, reinforced some of those negative feelings.

So I was driving home from the airport, and thinking about how miserable not living in San Francisco is, but then I remembered something that happened a few weeks ago when I was driving to Minneapolis. It had started snowing, not heavily, but enough to make the roads slippery and the driving a bit slower and more dangerous. I passed at least one totaled car by the side of the road, and as worried I am while driving ordinarily, I was feeling particularly nervous that night. As well as my first thought any time I've convinced myself I'm going to die ("I hope whoever finds me tells my friends and family that I was listening to One Direction so they know I was happy"), one of the things I kept thinking was, if I really did die, would anyone build my research center? I was kind of surprised that that's what went through my mind, but it made me feel better about my decision to stay in Fargo. Sure, there would be nice things about living in San Francisco, like having conversations about politics that don't include blatant racism, and brunch; but doing work that's meaningful to me is more important. Plus my rent is super cheap.