Chapter 1: Origami City

San Francisco, as far as cities go, is not large. It is a little over 46 square miles, or just under 49 square miles, which makes it a tidy 7x7 in the imagination of its residents. Of course, this counts only the land of San Francisco proper, not the water of the Bay or the land of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

It is not a large city in terms of its population either. This does not mean it is small — it ranks 14th in the list of United States cities by population — but the population has yet to cross the one million resident mark.

San Francisco is dense. San Francisco is nowhere near as dense as Manhattan. It can offer more apartments. It can build up. It can Manhattanize. But San Francisco is not Manhattan, and to Manhattanize might ruin what makes the City by the Bay so special.

These are arguments best left for another time. What is certain is that San Francisco is packed with people, a densely populated plot of land out at the edge of the world.

Of course, a city is more than the sum of its numbers. People move to San Francisco because it is a city but not a big one, and an urban area but not — they like to tell themselves — a sprawling one. They move here for a lifestyle, for a feeling, for a job, for a community, for love, for the beauty of the city, and for the lingering idea that in San Francisco, the endless horizon of the ocean beyond is all that limits you.

The mythology of a city bends and curves over time, sometimes along well-worn creases and sometimes by creating new ones. Beneath the bricks and steel girders is this other structure, made of more delicate stuff. An origami city, intricately folded, corners tucked into themselves, places where the material is so worked the paper itself threatens to lose its own structural integrity, and some edges sharp and free.

Every city has this hidden kingdom buried within it. Inside these paper houses and trembling towers live the tales of the city that have beckoned its residents and sent others searching for a new, better, different story. The myth of one city shares whispered history with the myth of another. You cannot move from one place to another without crumpling the the edges in one place and creating a new crease in another.

Some cities invest in their mythology more than others, and thrive on it. San Francisco is this sort of place, which is likely why someone will want to move here or leave. The weather and the size and the beauty are all important but they are woven in to the idea of San Francisco, to the mystery and beauty of a place where transformation and rebirth sweep in and out with the fog.

If you moved to San Francisco, or if you live here, you know the mythology. You know it because it is now yours too, and because you are a part of it. It is tempting to think the mythology is the one that envelops you and the one you tell, but as with any city, San Francisco is every story. It is your story but it also the story of those who came before, those you hate, those who will come after you are gone.

I lived in two small corners of San Francisco. If you were to look at the origami city, the places where I told my story would be barely visible, notable only by the small tears I made trying to adjust the folds so the city’s edge and mine would meet. You can see, if you look hard enough, where I tried to make the myth of San Francisco feel like home.