Before our temporary move to a tiny apartment in San Francisco’s North Beach this spring, we experienced a very common reaction from friends: warnings to be careful, that the city was failing, that we would be confronted continually by drug overdose deaths and crime and vacant storefronts. 

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What we found instead was a friendly neighborhood where residents picked up trash from the sidewalks each evening, where the letter carriers knew us by name, where empty businesses were noisy with construction inside. The city has problems for sure — a record number of drug overdose deaths last year, a Financial District still reeling from the pandemic work from home era, retail establishments closing and leaving a void in once-vibrant areas. 

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But many locals are getting tired of the “failed city” narrative. 

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“It just makes me furious, because it's just not our experience,” said my longtime friend Dru, who moved to the city in 2021. “It’s so opposite of our experience.”

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Dru spent 30 years figuring out how to move to San Francisco after a visit when a stranger on a park bench overheard her wishing aloud, put down his newspaper and said, “Do it.” She’s been living there for two years, working downtown and commuting on public transportation where her fellow riders will cheer when she figures out Wordle. She and her husband have made a point to visit a new neighborhood every weekend. Her social media posts frequently show a stunning San Francisco cityscape. Almost every time, someone inevitably comments that the pretty picture doesn’t zoom in enough to see the filth and crime and danger of her adopted hometown.

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“I am really radical when it comes to sticking up for San Francisco online, and I do it over and over and over again,” she told me. “There are a few neighborhoods you want to avoid — just like in any big city.  But to me, the city is magical. I wake up every morning and think, I live in San Francisco! There’s something so wonderful about that.”

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Dru and her husband don’t own a car, so they take public transportation or walk everywhere. They spend weekends exploring new areas, letting themselves stumble upon historic Cottage Row or the smallest park in San Francisco, which offers amazing views of Alcatraz (and battles with another park for the “smallest park” title). Their favorite place to take visitors is the observation deck in the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, close to their apartment. 

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“We tell our friends they are in for a surprise, and you go up an elevator, and there’s this 360-degree view of all of San Francisco,” she said. “And hardly anyone knows about it. It’s just public space.”

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We had a similar approach during our two months in the city. We’d head out on foot with a loose idea of a destination. Once, we ended up walking from North Beach a mile or so, down past the Buena Vista, which is famous for introducing Irish coffees to the United States, and where my late uncle once bartended decades ago. We walked past Ghirardelli Square, through a park with Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Mason views, and ended up on the Marina Green. Another day, we walked from Telegraph Hill to Russian Hill, found ourselves by the cable car stop at the top of the crooked part of Lombard Street, then walked downhill past a different park we never had heard of before. It turned out to be Francisco Park, “built on the site of the city’s first reservoir,” and is only a couple years old. There were kids on the swings, visitors sprawled out on the grass and again, incredible Golden Gate Bridge views.

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