Dear San Francisco 1/7/2026

“Dear SF, I came to you young, beautiful & idealistic. I gave you my love, my tears, my longing. You rewarded me with cold wet summers and deep carefully-crafted wounds. I miss you everyday.”

These were words written by a stranger, read aloud during the Dear San Francisco show.

The three of us went to watch it as part of our New Year staycation, at Club Fugazi in North Beach. We went expecting something like an intimate version of Cirque du Soleil. It was that, and so much more.

At the beginning of the performance, everyone in the audience was handed with a postcard and invited to write something — anything — to San Francisco. Some of those notes would be chosen, read aloud, and woven into the show itself.

Blending dance, music, poetry, and storytelling, Dear San Francisco becomes a creative yet vulnerable love letter to the city.

We didn’t write anything that night. But as the show unfolded, memories flashed back. And somewhere between the movements, the music and the stories, I felt myself falling back in love with San Francisco again.

———

Dave and I moved in a loft in SOMA, after returning from four months of living abroad. It was the kind of space that felt very San Francisco — open, industrial, full of light and energy. We loved our home, our neighbors, and the friends we made, many of whom, like us, had come from all over the world, drawn to this vibrant city.

I remembered foggy weekend mornings walking to the Embarcadero farmers market. Discovering specialty cafés in the Mission. Bar-hopping and window-shopping in Haight-Ashbury. Biking through neighborhoods to Golden Gate Park on Saturdays. Dancing to electronic music at End Up, the nightclub that only existed for those who weren’t ready for the night to end.

Life felt full. Light. Almost worry-free.

Until one afternoon.

I was walking back from the mall on Market Street, carrying too many things — my purse, shopping bags, my DSLR camera (my hobby then), and my newly formed baby boy growing quietly inside me. My mom called. I didn’t answer right away. She called again. The third time, I picked up.

That was when I felt a hard pull from behind.

I fell backwards, head hit the ground. Before I could understand what was happening, I heard myself repeatedly saying, “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.” People pointed, shouting that they ran that way. I couldn’t move. I was afraid to stand. I didn’t know if I was hurt, or if my baby was.

My phone was gone. My camera was gone. And for one terrifying moment, my body couldn’t tell the difference between stolen belongings and unimaginable loss.

The police came. Then the hospital.

I was okay.

My baby was okay.

But something else wasn’t.

My love for our neighborhood — for the city — fractured instantly.

Sad and disappointed. We moved out of San Francisco.

———

My new job brought me back to the city before RJ turned three.

We didn’t move back to San Francisco, but we decided to have RJ attend a kindergarten in SOMA, the neighborhood close to my office in the Financial District. The school was on the same street where our loft once was — a coincidence that felt both familiar and unsettling.

The neighborhood had changed.

Each morning, walking from the Civic Center BART station to the school, I passed more unhoused people scattered along the sidewalks. Some were asleep, some were talking to themselves, some just stared past me as if I wasn’t there. I held RJ’s hand a little tighter. I became more alert. My body remembered things my mind didn’t always want to revisit.

Then the pandemic hit, and the city changed again.

Office buildings emptied. Restaurants that once buzzed through lunch hours and late evenings closed one by one. Streets went quiet, almost too quiet and felt heavy in the chest.

San Francisco no longer felt like the city I once knew.

————

It’s been six years since RJ last came to downtown San Francisco. After preschool, he started attending a school closer to where we live on the Peninsula.

This winter, we decided to do a staycation in the city. I thought it would be relaxing — a chance to slow down, and maybe watch fireworks by the Embarcadero near our hotel.

We took Waymo, the self-driving car service. The experience felt futuristic yet real. It was as if we were traveling from the past to present and to future while passing through different districts of the city.

RJ had a conversation with the invisible driver. He asked how the driver liked working in the city and praised how well the car navigated those winding streets and steep angles.

Without the invisible driver’s response, RJ looked away and said,

“San Francisco is kind of strange.”

He paused, then added thoughtfully,

“San Francisco is interesting — v-ery interesting.”

He went on to explain how it felt different from New York, another city he also finds interesting. I quietly smiled and said,

“Yet, you were born into this interesting city.”

And with that, dear San Francisco, I want to say my love for you has never fractured as completely as I once thought. It only deepened — layered, complex, and unfinished, just like you.

Sitting at Club Fugazi, listening to postcards written by strangers and spoken aloud during Dear San Francisco, I realized this city has always asked the same thing of us: not to love it blindly, but honestly — with memory, with fear, with wonder, and with the courage to return.