Key To The City.

Last week, I wrote about what I saw at Bay to Breakers. It was an easy subject; I had the photos, and it was more visceral than your average day. But when you're walking beer in hand for nearly five hours, you tire of seeing the same silvering naked people, the same road-hogging contraptions, the same sullied costumes. Your mind wanders. You have a whole morning to think. And think I did. What happened in my mind, personally, was more momentous than the mobile Mardi Gras swirling around me. So now I'm going to write about that.

Before moving here, someone mentioned that I wouldn't understand this city. For nine months, I probably didn't, or at least had enough East Coast context still built in me to turn my blinders on. But things clicked during the race.

My first significant feeling was that, for the first time, I was really a resident of San Francisco. Outlandish things were happening that did not faze me in the slightest. I was willingly dressed up in a goofy silver tracksuit, double-fisting Bud Lights in clear view of the city's finest. I chalk some of that up to a tenuous hold on sobriety, but that's the essence of the city itself. That's what people do in the city, and I was doing it. I was an outsider from the East no longer.

Citizenship in what, though? What was this mass of people-- what made it different, what made it San Francisco-- what did I have at that moment that I didn't have before, which made me one of them?

I found my answer on the beach. Looking around, I saw a man in a tank top, shoulders positively pulsing with sunburn. "Wasted John" was finishing an epic keg stand. Will, John and Campbell dropped trou and bolted into the rolling Pacific. Tigger smoked up in costume on the sidewalk, with a 30-ish woman he had just met and would later sleep with. These things could only happen on a day when the police were turning the other cheek, where people had no pretentions, and where alcohol would cloud or erase most people's memories anyway. Bay to Breakers is a day with no consequences.

And people in this city want a life free of consequence.

It starts with the geography. The city both protects and divides its citizens. The hills neatly divide the city into strikingly diverse regions, which don't have to face each other. Those in the posh Marina never see the crime-ridden Western Addition, just 15 blocks down Fillmore. It's so dense, moving three blocks away means moving to a completely different social circle, with different stores and businesses. And for the most part, people stay where they live. If I offend half of Pacific Heights, I can quickly hide in the Haight and never hear from any of the upperclass mansion-dwellers again. A fresh start or change of pace is just a short move away. Or a long one-- there's enough people moving into and out of the place that you're saying hello or goodbye virtually every month.

Public policy reflects the city's disregard for lasting consequence. Rent control favors the tenant, who is free to move or not pay his/her rent on a whim, while the landlord cannot adjust rent prices in line with real estate prices (thank goodness). The city only recently moved to build more low-income housing and shelters, instead of just doling out a monthly stipend to the city's nearly 10,000 homeless. The populace gave the green light to "medicinal" marijuana, but refused to allow Mayor Newsom to increase business and sales taxes, which has resulted in major cutbacks in education, health and transportation funding.

And of course, one only needs to look at Craigslist to discern the social nature of the city. Flaky is one thing. This is another. (I've experienced flaky, not the latter.) In a place that revolves around bars and where happy hour starts on Thursday, things are of course bound to happen. But these things are often short-lived. No harm, no foul, everyone had fun, time to move along. Life's a party, and you're in the most liberated place in the country. Don't think.

After looking around and surveying the debauchery, I realized that my initial feeling of belonging was wrong. I was acting like a native, but I wasn't really one. I didn't put on a goofy tracksuit because I didn't care about the consequences; I did it because it (a) actually looks good on me and (b) I didn't want to be the guy to drag down the spirits of the group. And I didn't go the extra mile, bolting naked into the ocean, because there would be witnesses. I was more concerned at the end about how to dispatch our cooler than anything else. My West Coast costume was a thin veil for my Eastern sensibility.

So as long as I'm here, I will always be somewhat of an outsider. Don't get me wrong-- I love the place. It's beautiful, the people are cool, the food is great, the weather's agreeable, there's tons of stuff to do, and for now, I can afford it. But I give a shit. I like accountability and consequences-- it makes people try harder, act more civil, care more about others. I believe in cause and effect, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and in the Golden Rule. And that puts me out of step with the city.

But that's OK. I can live with that. In fact, I'm happy about the discovery-- it's something I now absolutely, positively know about myself, and those tenets are rare. You can take the guy out of New England, but you can't take the New England out of the guy.

So just, like, deal.