Essays Archives

A Letter to San Francisco’s Realities in the Rain

8Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Essays

A Letter to San Francisco’s Realities in the Rain

Every time it rains in San Francisco, there's a certain revealing nature to it that shows the city in its many facets. This past weekend and today, November 8th, proved to be a rather wet span of time for San Franciscans. Over the past 72 hours, the city (and much of the Bay Area) has been soaked with much-needed rain. Though by no means equivalent to the record-breaking rainfall totals we saw in October of 2021 — when over 4” of rain fell in downtown San Francisco. Nevertheless, the rain managed to wash the city of trash, election day flyers, and the general grunge that accumulates in a metropolis nearly as dense as New York City. And there’s forever something particularly captivating about San Francisco in the wet. Why? For one, there’s a sense of newness, of fresh commencements w...

On Celebration, Appreciation, and Gratitude for 30 Years of Drag in San Francisco

2Nov

By Juanita MORE!No Comments

Essays, Queerness

On Celebration, Appreciation, and Gratitude for 30 Years of Drag in San Francisco

For the past three decades, I've been the prettiest denizen of San Francisco's nightlife — and I feel eternally grateful for the continued success of Juanita MORE!. We are at the end of 2022 and seeing a massive influx of LGBTQIA+ people in America facing discrimination daily. And state legislatures are advancing bills that target transgender people, limit local protections, and allow the use of religion to discriminate are seriously out of control. The exhibit Juanita: 30 Years of MORE! that will be closing in a few weeks means so much to me on many different levels. During Pride Month, celebrations happen nationwide. In addition, the community and its allies remember historical events such as Stonewall and the Compton Cafeteria Riots. And, there is a long list of iconic queer figures...

On Driving Through the Robin Williams Tunnel

21Oct

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Essays

On Driving Through the Robin Williams Tunnel

‘To have felt loss, one must have experienced joy.’ In 2015, the rainbow-arched tunnel between San Francisco and Sausalito, which was previously simply called either the Waldo Tunnel or Rainbow Tunnel (for very obvious reasons), was officially renamed after the late actor Robin Williams. The California state legislature approved the change in the first week of June, the tunnel connecting Marin County and the Golden Gate Bridge now doubling as an homage to his life. Williams — who was a longtime resident of Tiburon, California, in Marin County — had taken his own life earlier in the year after a long battle with depression and suicidal ideations, leaving a void felt around the world. In an attempt to somewhat fill that empty space, Julie Wainwright from Marin County started a Change.org...

Autumn Leaves Falling in SF’s Golden Gate Park

21Oct

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Essays

Autumn Leaves Falling in SF’s Golden Gate Park

Fall has a certain soundtrack for the perpetually broken-hearted. I come here often, every time vanilla memories sweeten my images of you. When fall comes, maple trees in the park’s Japanese tea garden trade their animated greens for deep reds. These leaves will fall in time; they’ll surrender to gravity’s incessant pull, their chlorophyll having completely broken down. It’s a cycle of dimming and release I find comforting. Or, perhaps more accurately: relatable. Especially ever since you walked out the door with a simple “Ok.” I remember the creases in your skin and the folds of your denim jacket all too well. My 160-square-foot apartment — the one where you told me about your blue-collar upbringing; the home of mine where your books still litter my cabinets; the one where I ...

Midnights on Market Street in San Francisco

20Oct

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Essays

Midnights on Market Street in San Francisco

It's the most honest time of the day to go for a walk in San Francisco — and... like, just be with yourself. Turning the corner of Castro Street, I pass the Mollie Stone's Markets location on 18th Street where we make out underneath harsh overhead lighting. His lips are smacked with mango chapstick; it was his coy way of concealing the American Spirits he smoked outside The Edge. The lustful combination of organic tobacco and synthetic fruit sent electricity through my fingertips — the same ones that clutched his soft mullet before typing my contact information into his iPhone. The moon is now positioned high in the sky, opaque through yet another thick marine layer enveloping San Francisco. The city is cool, crisp, echoed with the humdrum of passersby with hands holstered inside coat ...

I Never Get Tired of Seeing San Francisco From an Airplane

13Oct

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Essays

I Never Get Tired of Seeing San Francisco From an Airplane

New perspectives of the seven-by-seven float thousands of feet above the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s something pristinely captivating about viewing San Francisco from an airplane window. The vastness of a 49-square-mile city — one populated with over 150 public parks and some 880,000 residents — condenses into the frame of a double-sided viewing hole. It also puts your own physicality into focus, a feeling akin to seeing pictures of the cosmos. You’re both everything and nothing, stardust and garden soil, all in the exact same moment. Humbling doesn’t even begin to describe such a feeling; maybe perspective-focusing is better. In the context of San Francisco living, I always come to understand my place in this maddening, wonderous metropolis looking, quite literally, down ...

7Oct

By Matt Charnock6 Comments

Essays, Nature + Climate Crisis

‘Fucking Blue Angels’

Much like Earthquake Twitter, few things band San Franciscans together like collectively bemoaning Fleet Week — especially its airshows. It’s a Thursday afternoon in early October. Car alarms are going off. Glass panes quiver. Trinkets on shelves rattle. Dishware shakes amid wooden floors vibrating. Our dogs and cats (and even reptiles) grow bothered, taking respite underneath furniture (or inside their respective hide boxes). No, a Thursday like this doesn't coincide with a seismic event; the USGS has no records of it. This day, October 7th, 2022, was the day the Blue Angels — a flight demonstration squadron of the United States Navy formed in 1946 — began flying over downtown San Francisco for Fleet Week. The collective consensus is that we all hated it. San Francisco ...

On Love, Queerness, and Transphobia While Vacationing in Rome

30Sep

By Sean AngNo Comments

Essays, Queerness

On Love, Queerness, and Transphobia While Vacationing in Rome

My partner Anthony is unapologetically trans. They're always quietly — yet firmly, hold space in a room, unwavering and generally unbothered by the risk that comes from existing as a trans individual. That risk is sometimes as simple as wearing a dress or skirt on a body people like to quickly gender a certain way. One of the worst fears you can have as a partner is when harm comes your loved one’s way — are you going to be able to protect them at that moment? As the weeks turned into days before our trip to Italy, I got very nervous. Anthony is not the kind of *diva* to go undercover or hide. The reactions and possibly actions of Romans as they come face to face with the beauty of Anthony were a worry of mine, especially considering the environment we live our lives in. San ...

The Radical Contentment of Flower Piano in San Francisco

21Sep

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Editors' Picks, Essays

The Radical Contentment of Flower Piano in San Francisco

To be alive is to search for content in all manner of ways and forms. I come here each September to gesture among the flora. Forgetting; remembering. Wishing; wanting. Dancing in front of the refrigerator light that glows in some corner of my mind. It’s a time and place where I continue viewing happiness with a sideways glance. As an individual whose manic depression has illustrated his adulthood, happiness is an emotion I hold in fickle reverence. It’s as fleeting as it is elusive — an endless chase for temporary fixation. Happiness exists in a cannon of touch and go. It never knows where to find you when it’s all said and done. It’s an enviable game of shadowboxing that never lands a tangible blow against whatever you’re fighting. It’s stop-and-go traffic behavior en route elsewhere....

SF’s Dreamforce Is Back. And I Still Hate ‘Techies’

21Sep

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Culture + Travel, Essays

SF’s Dreamforce Is Back. And I Still Hate ‘Techies’

They've returned to the summit of all summits. The very concept of Dreamforce isn’t inherently dystopian nor distasteful; there’s nothing off-putting about creating a community around a vocational cohort. It’s also become a (mostly) reliable calendar staple for local small businesses, particularly restaurants and bars, to financially benefit from. Startups, even if they haven’t entirely fledged the nest of profitably, will cheerfully throw $14,000 to reserve an entire 40-seat eatery for their employees, clients, and angel investors. I’ve seen this happen. On more than one occasion Again, the surface-level notions that decorate the mobile over Dreamforce aren’t offensive. It’s just that the realities of having 40,000 “techies” inundate a city so affected by their normalized six-figu...