Honk honk!

A colleague of mine is leaving San Francisco and moving to Stockholm. Ironically, she needed to divest herself of some IKEA furniture before doing so. So I took some bookshelves and a desk off her hands tonight, which necessitated a drive into "the city."

I have never lived in a city, nor have I really ever wanted to. Even in Iceland, I could not see the point of living in Reykjavík.

So going into San Francisco for me is always an adventure. I wonder how people manage to live there, and what it is like really. Living in the Berkeley hills for the last 6 months is the most urban living I have ever experienced, and I finally did see some advantage to walking down to the corner shop, seeing lots of people along the way, chit chatting with this one and that. So I was wondering if that is what people in San Francisco do too: chit chat with one another.

I stopped at a grocery store near the corner of Castro and Market to check my hypothesis. It was an extremely cosy place, with brick walls and a salad bar and gourmet type food, called Harvest I think. Nice place. But no one in there talked to one another, and the clerk seemed shocked when I asked him about the parking policy. So I got back in my car guessing that maybe Berkeley was friendlier than San Francisco somehow.

Until we went through the Angel Island tunnel, and everyone started honking their horns. At first I thought they were honking at each other, and then I realized they were honking just to hear the echo, exactly like people do in Hvalfjarðargöng.

So there is the lovely truth in black and white.


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