Portrait of a neighborhood

My neighborhood lies on the western side of San Francisco, just south of Golden Gate Park. We have the most beautiful sunsets in the whole city.




It's a residential neighborhood, though we have our busy streets to be sure. It's heavily Asian—I describe it to people as a mix of Chinatown and a sleepy old beach town. It gets insanely foggy, especially during the summer, which for us can be colder and bleaker than our winter.






Gray sky, gray sea, brilliant sunsets (when we can see the sun), green meeting pavement and plain little brightly-colored houses, the rumble and ringing bell of streetcars...






But most of all, the sea. Every wide east-west street opening onto it, filling up with breeze which may or may not smell of salt, depending on how imaginative you are, and the whole neighborhood a long lovely slope down to our beach. (As a bike ride, it's one of the best things I know in the whole world.)




Mind, our beach is not the kind of place people think of when you say "beach" and "California." It's cold and wild and melancholy-colored a lot of the time. You wouldn't go swimming there, except maybe on the one day a year that San Francisco is actually truly hot. But a visit home for me is never complete until I set foot on its sand and get my feet into the Pacific.