I cannot believe it’s only been one full day in San
Francisco. I left cold and snowy New Hampshire at 6:45 yesterday morning and
arrived at my hostel here nearly 20 hours later…jeesh what a big country!!
As some of you may already know, my reason for coming to
this city was primarily a job interview, and job searching in general. I was
originally supposed to be a ski instructor in Gstaad this winter, but recently
found out that the Swiss government denied me a work visa. Boo. So, somewhat
impulsively (but also because SF had been on my radar for a while and I desperately needed to work on a
plan B after having waited and waited and waited for a visa that never came), I
flew out here thanks to some of my dad’s frequent flyer miles (thank you!).
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| Sign outside a fancy Swiss watch store--apparently Gstaad hasn't left me! |
Soo day 1 here we go: It started at 7am (actually before
then because let’s be honest, even my sleep-loving self is itching to get out
of bed by 10am…which was the equivalent time on the east coast). Fortunately,
my hostel provides free breakfast—a nice way of feeling like this insanely
expensive city is hurting me a bit less. At breakfast, I furiously typed away
at my computer, catching up on emails, and of course…job hunting. I also met
some friendly fellows, including 3 guys from Germany (who admitted that they
cannot understand Swiss German).
Then off to visit Elle at Strava. I would love to work
there, but unfortunately they don’t have any openings right now (although Elle
has been a true sweetheart in trying to pull strings for me). The office was
just as my ski coach (whose son was one of two people to start Strava) had
described it—a big warehouse from the outside, beautiful hardwood floors with
high ceilings inside. Yep, made me want to work there even more.
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| Strava office |
Then off to my interview with the Fund for the Public
Interest, my primary reason for coming out here. On our early morning, snowy
car ride to the Dartmouth Coach, my dad and I practiced rehearsing some things
that we thought might come up in the interview…What would a typical day be
like? What is their primary source of funding?...Overall, the interview went
great, but I’m not so sure the job is for me. It’s mainly canvassing (i.e.
flagging down people on the street) and I don’t really like to bother people.
Also, the entire office consisted of a dirty carpet, one fold-up table, and
four fold-up chairs.
One part of the application that I had to fill out included
the question: “What is the biggest problem you see in our society today?”
I couldn’t help but compare the glamorous loft-like space in
the Strava office to the tiny, grungy one I was currently sitting in, and
search for a deeper meaning in this juxtaposition of work places. Why does
writing code for software that tracks bike rides from GPS data pay 2x—or 5x, or
10x?—more than preventing big oil companies from fracking private lands in
California?
So that’s what I wrote: “The biggest problem I see in our
society today is that the jobs that pay the most do not necessarily benefit our
society the most. And particularly for younger generations fresh out of
college, many of whom have hefty loans to pay off, choosing a job that they
find meaningful, even if it aligns with their morals, is that much less
appealing if it doesn’t pay well. Therefore, many young, talented recent
graduates (including myself—although I didn’t say this), are incentivized to go
for corporate jobs or start-ups (corporate jobs often being linked to big oil,
and start-ups…more on this later…).
So by now it’s lunchtime and I figure while I’m here I
should try to eat something one cannot find back east. So I head to Chinatown
and find a Chinese/Vietnamese place that looks reasonably priced from the
outside. Wrong. $15 and some odd cents for tofu, rice, and a few spring rolls.
Oh golly, why am I so good at finding myself in expensive cities…
After lunch, I wander back to the hostel to do more job
searching. As I pass homeless person after homeless person, I become
overwhelmed with guilt. $15 for lunch, so does that mean I don’t have any more
money to hand out? Or does it mean that I most certainly do? Who do I choose?
If I were to live here, would I be loyal to one person as a way of easing my
guilt? How would I choose that person? Can they tell how much my purse cost?
What are the stories behind all these
people?
Now I’m back in the hostel, doing a major google search for
San Francisco start-ups. Damn it, why couldn’t I have more of an engineering
brain? It would be so much easier to get hired around here…I scroll through
hundreds of listings, looking for jobs that require minimal knowledge in coding
or engineering, and try to comprehend the summary of each startup’s
description: “Interface connecting Facebook users to Twitter accounts,
minimizing the gaps in social media and promoting easier connectivity for
users,” “Advertising startup in its beginning stages with much promise from
investors for growth,” “Online food line that promotes freshness through
grocery e-commerce.”
WTF.
What is any of that supposed to mean, why do we need any of
it, why does it pay so well, why does it make any sense to invest in a company
that doesn’t actually produce anything tangible, and WHY DO WE NEED TO BUY
GROCERIES ONLINE? (I had actually joked with my mom about this the other day,
saying “you’ll know we’re doomed when we start buying our groceries online,”
and she responded, “actually, that’s already happening.”).
Okay I’m starting to be quite anxious and irritable and
jittery now, sitting at my computer while the man next to me furiously speaks
through a thick British accent with a supervisor at Amazon, because he ordered
batteries and not dietary supplements, dammit.
It’s time to go for a run.
I haven’t ever seen the Golden Gate Bridge, and Elle says
Golden Gate Park is a great place to run, so I make that my destination. Boy,
it’s quite far out though. I arrive in time to see the sunset and am tuckered
out, so decide to take a series of busses back downtown.
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| Sunset at Golden Gate |
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| pretty self-explanatory ;-) |
An old man, black with grey dreadlocks, asks me for the time
as we wait for the bus. He holds a cane in one hand and a black sack in the
other. I assume he’s homeless, or at least semi-homeless. We step on the bus
and he doesn't pay the fare. He chats me up and doesn’t stop. He asks me where
I’m from, why I’m here, what my job interview was for, what my name is, when my
birthday is, if I’m a Capricorn…He introduces himself as Happy. He tells me to
dress in layers because the nights are cool. He tells me to be careful with my
ziploc bag of money, not to expose it while on the bus. He tells me not to
settle for just any job because if we settle for anything, then we no longer
stand for something. He asks me if I can feel the love in the air—the air is
less thick than in most places, he says.
Back at the hostel. My head is spinning. I’m ravenous. I
shower, put on some warmer clothes (because the nights are cool after all) and
head out again to buy some fixings for dinner. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I
head for a Whole Foods.
At the salad bar, a man, in his late fifties I would guess, asks
me how it works—do you eat it here? Can you mix things? I say sure, I don’t
really know. It’s only my first day here. He replies that it’s his second. I
here an accent in his voice and ask where he’s from. “Originally, or where I
live?” he responds. “Oh- either.” “I live in Switzerland.”
I bubble up, telling him that I lived there this past
summer. “Where? What were you doing? Oh Bern, I’m from Lugano. The best.” And
before I know it, he asks me to dine with him. Oh gawd. I was hoping to bring
my salad back to the hostel and meet some people [my own age] there. But
instead, we pay for our dinners and share a table inside the Whole Foods. We
talk about all the consumerism we’ve witnessed throughout the day, my studies,
his travels, whether he should take advantage of the exchange rate that’s in
his favor (he wants to buy a new computer and asks me if I think he should—I
tell him about the rare earth metals that go into them), and our Jewish blood
(turns out he’s originally from Israel). I ask him what his profession is,
since we haven’t gotten to that yet. I’m still not sure if I heard him properly,
but I’m pretty sure he said that he organizes cults.
Okay. I’m just about ready to buy some things for breakfast
and be on my merry way now. Fortunately, he finishes his food before me and
signals that he’s ready to move on. “Sorry to rush you, my dear. It would be
lovely if we could keep this going over Facebook.” He gives my hand a hard
squeeze and takes off.
Okay, now I’m really ready to head back to the hostel and go
to bed. Wowzers, what a day. As I cross Mission St, I pass blocks towered high
with chain stores ornately lit up for Christmas, and low down at street level they’re
lined with homeless men and women, mostly men, setting up for the night. I
listen in to tidbits of conversations. Someone mentions the recent Progresso CEO
controversy. A gay couple passes me in the opposite direction, one of the men
wearing a rainbow flag across his shirt. One woman tells another why she likes
to buy local produce. I look up. It’s the iconic Apple logo lit up in bright
white, nearly blinding against the night sky. I think about what I told Mr.
Switzerland in Whole Foods, how progressive San Francisco claims to be, how the
city would have gone bazurk if Steve jobs had made an outright comment against
the LGBTQ community, but that the inhumane history of the rare earths that go
into Mac Computers is in the far-off distance so no one bats an eye. I look at
all the Christmas shoppers jumbled with all the homeless. I think about how
f***ed up we are and what a confusing city I’ve landed foot in.
I think it’s time for bed.
