What's the worst rent increase you've ever just quietly accepted because moving is worse?

I lived in SF for years and had never heard of Ingleside. Then I got tired of dragging myself up Telegraph Hill, started thinking about a kid, and found a flat neighborhood with its own BART stop and pho on every corner. Five years later, I'm not leaving.

Have you ever looked up at Coit Tower and thought about its, ahem, structural symbolism? Turns out we're not the only ones.

Only in San Francisco will someone describe their walk-up in Russian Hill as 'the gym,' and they're not entirely wrong.

The internet swore a $6 croissant didn't exist in San Francisco. It exists, and I have eaten two of them at Arsicault Bakery.

Happy Pride weekend. 🌈

The most famous color consultant in San Francisco doesn't actually paint. He got fired from his only real painting job after two weeks for not knowing what he was doing. Then made a million dollars by age 28, just from picking shades of color.

Getting coffee in San Francisco means a barista asking my opinion on the roast like I'm qualified to have one before 9am.

Maybe you don't know this about Pride, but you don't have to register for a contingent or even tell one you're coming. Show up at Beale and Steuart around 9:30, find the best music, and walk. Free calorie burn before you party in Civic Center.

What's the best cheap thrill in San Francisco that still feels free in a way almost nothing here does anymore?

I Peed Standing Up for a Week. The Results Were Messy

Ask any server and they will tell you the quality of service barely moves the tip. What moves it is stuff like hair color, breast size, and whether you wear a flower in your hair, which is a real documented thing.

What's the worst $19 cocktail you've ever ordered and finished anyway out of spite?

The Civic Center party is a clusterfuck of security lines and sizzling hot dogs that smell way too good. You'll get photographed, you'll run into a rando from childhood who's also gay now. Rainbows for everyone. Genuinely worth it.

The more I live in San Francisco, the more I wonder why I keep trusting the weather app when it has never once been right about Twin Peaks.

Your guide to walking Irving Street like a boba pilgrimage: the aggressively pink one, the chain with the real pineapple-plantation origin story, the loud institution with the syrup wall, and the OG candy store.

SF Civic Center cuddle puddle. 📸 by Curious Connie

After living in San Francisco for a long time you will finally understand that the seasons are Fog, Fleet Week, and Falling Rent Promises, and they arrive in no particular order.

In content monetization, our most profitable days this year were on topics that gaslit conservatives about LGBTQ+ issues.

What's the worst neighbor noise you've normalized like it's white noise at this point?

The $1 oyster used to be everywhere in this city. Now it's basically an endangered species. We tracked down the few SF spots still holding the line, before inflation finishes the job.

Remember the chinstrap, the official face of every ska band ever? It ranks shockingly high here, which the writer insists is an indictment of everything below it, not praise.

The more I live in San Francisco, the more I wonder why the sea lions at Pier 39 have more stable housing than half my friends.

I went in a card-carrying ballet snob. War Memorial chandeliers, the hush, the whole thing. Three days at ODC's Dance Downtown cracked me open a little. Turns out my idea of a night at the dance was a little narrow.

We celebrate straight love in nearly every song on the radio and at all 2,430 ballgames a year. After the Giants' Pride Night, the comments still wanted to know when heterosexuals get their parade.

"San Francisco" is not one climate. It's twelve. While the Sunset sits at 70 in the fog, Noe Valley can hit 95 at the exact same hour. Knowing your microclimate isn't trivia.

Long before the tech buses and the Ferry Building farmers market, the Barbary Coast waterfront ran on drugged sailors and boarding-house cons. The story behind one slang word is a portal into that San Francisco.

What I love about San Francisco is that the Ferry Building has a $14 jam and a $6 oyster and somehow both feel like a deal.

Three miles of sand, the Pacific running white noise, the fog swallowing you whole. Nobody's close enough to notice and nothing out there is sharp enough to hurt you. Bring a hoodie you don't mind smelling like a bonfire.

Driving in San Francisco is a lot like a video game. Every level is a hill, and the final boss is a double-parked delivery truck on Valencia.

That's the last time I trust a Sunset weather report that says "clear" while I'm physically standing inside a cloud at 19th and Taraval.

I'll be honest, I usually treat Pride weekend as an excuse to brunch and pretend the fog will burn off. These old photos reminded me what people risked just by showing up.

The last time San Francisco had a quiet Friday night in North Beach, I checked the calendar and realized it was the day everyone left for Burning Man.

I went to Mendocino expecting nature. I came back obsessed with a bar you can only reach by train. The Skunk Train winds through redwoods to Glen Blair Bar, and Tanya works the car bar.

What's the best late-night spot in the Inner Richmond?

SF Pride is the best Pride. Here's your annual photographic evidence, no argument necessary.

Walking in San Francisco means starting at a 30 degree incline and questioning every life choice that led you to live on a hill.

After living in San Francisco for a long time you will finally understand that 'I'm in the Excelsior' means you have a parking spot and you're never giving it up.

Someone went digging through the SF Public Library's photo collections and surfaced Pride prints from the '70s and '80s. Some of them shot by Harvey Milk himself.

What's the best bakery in North Beach you'd wake up early on a Saturday for?

What's the best slice in San Francisco that doesn't pretend to be New York?

Walking in San Francisco means clutching your coffee on a downhill like it's a fragile newborn.

Where else can you order a crab sandwich from a crew of female crab fishermen, then carry it across the street to eat over a vodka flight while they cheer you on? Noyo Harbor, Mendocino.

Forget Clement. Forget Taraval. The real boba corridor in this city is Irving Street, and it's not even close. Six dedicated shops between 5th and 23rd, plus everyone else who pours it on the side.

The best thing about San Francisco is that you can be hiking in Marin by 9am, hungover in the Mission by 2pm, and questioning your rent by midnight. (We don't know anyone who actually hikes in Marin, though.)

Coppola's name is on the copper-green Sentinel Building by the Transamerica Pyramid, but his Geyserville winery has the film memorabilia and a garden designed after the parks of Tivoli. Godfather props with your tasting flight.

Walking in San Francisco means dodging an e-scooter abandoned mid-sidewalk like a crime scene nobody investigated.

What would you tell a room full of strangers if you knew the host had your back the whole time? At Bawdy Storytelling, she literally sits onstage next to you while you do it.

What's it actually take to almost erase this city? Gold Rush fires, the '06 quake, a freeway scheme, and a plan to pave the Bay. Four times it nearly worked, and we're still here.

Bear weekend, girls' weekend, a Pride parade, a chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and resorts that still keep an ironic "straight friendly" tagline. Here's how a town an hour and change up the road became all of that.