*This morning I woke up, ate a breakfast that involved
copious amounts of bread and peanut butter, and walked half a block to catch
the 33 bus to the Panhandle. The bus was fairly empty, which wouldn’t have been
surprising on any other Sunday morning, but it was on this day, the only Sunday
of the year when the young denizens of San Francisco are awake before 10 am.
Then again, the Bay to Breakers festivities had started at 7 am, which meant I
was late to the party.
*You can tell a lot about the cultural pride of a place by
the events that they value. Until Linsanity, most people I knew at Harvard had
never attended a basketball game (and even then, he was probably held up more
as an athletic token than as a reason to be interested in basketball). At Duke,
students camp out to get tickets to March Madness (there are regularly
scheduled tent checks to prove tent occupancy). In other words, basketball at
Harvard? Very little pride. Basketball at Duke? A completely a different story.
Despite the grandiosity of events like Oktoberfest (Berlin) or the Royal
Coronation (UK), much can also be extracted about the everyday culture of those
places. These extractions aren’t necessarily profound truths, like the fact
that people in Berlin really enjoy beer and sausages, or that pomp and
circumstance and the dignity of the queen are very important to Brits, but all
of these things trickle down to the quotidian—the everyday conversations and
interactions you’ll have in a place.
*If festivals and sporting events are apt representations of
the cities they’re held in, then Bay to Breakers is fairly accurate. Today was
the 102nd annual Bay to Breakers, which is one of the largest footraces in the
world, running from the Embarcadero (the Bay) to Ocean Beach (the Breakers).
It’s known largely for its crazy costumes, nudity, and debauchery, which typify
San Francisco events (most events are riffs off of Halloween it seems;
nowadays, nudity is unremarkable and costumes less than impressionable). Is it
a race that is actually run? Perhaps, but mostly, it’s partied.
*As an inhabitant of San Francisco, I felt a twinge of
obligation to participate in Bay to Breakers, which is a factor of both peer
pressure and being twenty-two. And by participate, I don’t mean run. I mean,
make an appearance, an expectation I imposed on myself which is
the result of that silly thing called FOMO.
*Gentle prodding from a friend was all it took for me to
agree to go, which is how I ended up on the 33 bus this morning. I met her at
Haight and Stanyan, and we walked two blocks to the Panhandle, where throngs of
inebriated revelers, clad in brightly-colored spandex, obtrusive costumes made
from very cheap and surely uncomfortable fabric, and often nothing at all, were
parading down Fell street. Coordinated group costumes, like the flour-covered
bakers in chef hats and the secret service agents who were really nerdy dudes
wearing plastic wayfarer imitations and iPod headphones and the people wearing
cardboard boxes, were mildly entertaining, even endearing for a few minutes or
so. For me, the entertainment value is inversely proportional to
the number of septuagenarian penises I see hanging out, though arguably, those
free-falling appendages are this city’s charms.
*Though sixty-four year olds are allowed to say that they
don’t like large crowds, apparently at twenty-two, saying so makes me a
misanthrope. After thirty minutes of merely spectating the Bay to
Breakers parade, I felt over-stimulated, as I tend to be often these days. In my apartment,
I prefer silence. Despite my self-diagnosed addiction to it, the Internet is
too much noise for me. That I have such an extreme aversion to the environments
that I’m told I should be loving as a twenty-two year old living in San
Francisco (night clubs, bars, raucous parties) is either the consequence of or
catalyst to living inside my head, which is a constant and noisy stream of
mostly trivial thoughts. And because I’m mostly alcohol and drug-free, there
are very few aids to help with the desensitization. Besides, I like my five
senses.
*I left Bay to Breakers not too long after I arrived. For me,
the most dreaded part of going to any social event is telling my friends why I
want to leave. I don’t make excuses; the truth is that when I leave, I just
really don’t want to be there. For people who don’t share my constitution, I am
an enigma, and more likely, a killjoy. Though I often feel like a misfit for
leaving a nightclub before midnight so that I can go home and listen to a
podcast and thumb through magazines, I console myself for failing social
expectations by telling myself, “different strokes for different folks.” Don’t
get me wrong—I love living in a city and I love talking to people—I even enjoy
the occasional chat with a stranger—but I’ve resigned myself to not knowing and
not adhering to my idea of what a typical Saturday night for a twenty-two year
old is. I refuse to subscribe to the idea that this resignation means I'm wasting my twenties away. I'm just choosing how I want to live it, and it's a choice without regret.
*One of my best friends tells me, in a coy and slightly mocking tone,
“Do you.” “Do you what you do,” is what he means. Do the things you love to do
and do the things that make you who you are. Bay to Breakers is the San
Francisco thing to do—and I will always love the free, unthinking, and
fun-loving spirit of it all, but I’m here doing me: in my living room, typing
away, with tea and cookies in reach.
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