‘Babe, wake up — DoTheBay just released an iconic collection of memes that echo San Francisco sentimentalities.’
Last week offered more cementing proof that Taylor Swift is, indeed, the most iconoclastic and recognizable biped on this oscillating space rock. Your queer friends, your straight friends, your high school friends (who you keep in touch with out of childhood obligation), your parents — be they still in your good graces or otherwise — all of whom saw the 33-year-old songstress as their top streamed artist.
Are any of us shocked? No. Horrified by Swift’s seemingly uncapped cultural prominence? Perhaps, yes.
Dystopian pop culture aside, everyone’s favorite cheeky, Bay Area-centric Instagram account, DoTheBay, recently shared its own Spotify wrap-inspired dissipation of 2023. And the results are incredible.
“Bay wake up, your Spotify Wrapped is here,” reads an Instagram caption for the post by DoTheBay. In the multi-image upload, the SF Bay Area’s “Top Genre” includes a familiar collection of topics — waxing about rent control, a shared disdain for the moniker “San Fran,” waiting for sports ball season, and more.
There, too, a nod to how many of us adamantly choose to drive somewhere in San Francisco… knowing damn well we’re going to spend perhaps more time looking for a place to park said car than minutes spent getting there in the first place. (“When will we learn”? It depends on the day and the direction of the wind.)
2023 was a year of San Francisco doom loop narratives becoming Fox News fodder; a fair amount of us spend far too much time explaining to our conservatoire relatives that the version of SF shows on the aforenoted news network is, in fact, not representative of the entire city — just like literally every other large metro in the country.
There’s a shared understanding that things “quintessentially” San Francisco are synonyms with pamphlet-fanning tourism; we’d rather be caught dead than enjoy a bowl of clam chowders somewhere atop a heavily used table in Fisherman’s Wharf.
We ate our body weight in burritos; “hella” is how we show enthusiasm for life’s small and large things.
The SF Bay Area is a runway for off-the-cuff, tongue-in-cheek billboards — and no one is doing it quite like Anh Phoong.
Collectively, DoTheBay’s wrap of the SF Bay Area for 2023 was spot on and offered a welcome fit of levity. We might, however, just add our disdain for Valencia Street’s center bikeway and continued adoration for San Francisco’s growing street art collection.
[…] rent control and not liking “San Fran”. Plus, everyone was excited for sports seasons22. These *music memes* bring laughs and sharing to the […]