I’ve Never Received a Dick Pic

And a few other things about the last year

I’m gonna say it: California is weird. But not in the way that the Pacific Northwest was weird. No one here offers me Kombucha samples on the street or wears a kilt while they ride a unicycle and play the bagpipes (although that guy will always have a small place in my heart). And while I’ve spent a lot of time reading the fine print on housing listings in the East Bay, none of them have listed beekeeping or chicken knowledge as a rental prerequisite. But I guess it’s fitting that I turned 25 here because god damn 25 is the weirdest year so far.

Since my “Bay-iversary” is coming up in a few weeks, I thought I’d do my duty as a writer on the internet and make everyone a handy list of some of the weirdest and most wonderful things about being in your dead-middle twenties in the San Francisco Bay Area.

1.) I can’t smell pee anymore. Apparently I’ve logged enough hours on public transit and in downtown San Francisco to just be numb to the smell now. This is either a really good skill to have or something that’s going to screw me over later in life.

2.) I have been a California girl in daisy dukes with a bikini on top and it is absolutely as fun as Katy Perry makes it sound.

3.) Sometimes four piece bands will hop on BART and play acoustic covers for a few stops. I couldn’t get a good look last time but I’m pretty sure some dudes between Powell and MacArthur actually had some kind of drum and the ambition it takes to lug a drum onto BART is so inspiring to me.

4.) After re-watching four seasons of Sex and the City, I realized that I’m in the perfect place to recreate Carrie Bradshaw’s madness just on an opposite coast. But I’m a promised woman — engaged and fit to be married. There’s a small amount of wistful sighing that goes on when I say goodbye to my chance to “date to in the big city.” But it’s because of my own Mr. Big that I’ve managed to make it through this era of digital dating without ever receiving a dick pic and just like that my sighing ceases.

5.) Popup shops are real here. They aren’t something I tear out of magazines and tack to a cork board and promise myself someday. I have actually been inside of a Modcloth. Etsy comes to the city twice a year and the line stretches from Pier 39 to the Ferry Building. I’m not trying to brag — I’m trying to pinch myself.

6.) All my mom’s friends were artists when she was my age and she was poorer than a church mouse. She worked nights as a bartender, put herself through nursing school, and supported her painter husband while raising a toddler. I repeat this info to myself as a way to not hyperventilate every time my apartment manager changes and my rent gets hiked. The teenager in me is PISSED that I admire my mother this much at 25.

7.) The teenager in me also pissed that my 25 year old self is not living in New York with 15 roommates and a dazzling writing portfolio but sometimes you gotta admit to yourself that you’re either a West Coast kid or you’re not. At this point I’m pretty convinced I’m a West Coast kid.

8.) Grown ass adults who make more money than god go to work every day in Chucks and a hoody. I’ve worked places in the Bay where my coworkers were barefoot. What.

9.) Regionalism is not a new concept but I’ve never seen it so fierce as I have in the Bay. Everyone likes to shit on Fremont.

10.) You have to really fight to make it here, and it may have taken me a full year to get my footing, but wow, Bay Area, I might love you.