surprising & useless san francisco observations

posted july 2023

I spent the Summer of 2023 in San Francisco for an internship. In the months leading up to it I read excessively about the city so I wouldn’t be surprised by anything.

Here are the mostly-useless things I did get surprised by, with an emoji representing my opinions on each observation.

• u-shaped toilet seats 👍
• people dress well everywhere they go 💅
• public transport within the city is… fine… 👍
• there are tons of cultural differences between even first-gen asian americans and singaporeans, despite singaporeans being english-educated + growing up in (somewhat) western democracies + consuming mostly-american media 🥺
• toilet doors have random gaps 🥴
• people do in fact turn right on red 😨
• they say “you’re good” instead of “no worries” / “no problem” 👎
• “how’s it going” should not be answered by an actual description of how X is going 🙈
• food is tasty and good quality (?) 👍
• shops / restaurants close at like 8pm 😯
• nobody is ever gonna even try to pronounce “kok rui” so just get a fake english name 😔
• patagonia vest archetype isn’t just a meme 💀
• techbro archetype isn’t just a meme 🤔
• tons of self-driving cars 😯
• even random tiny parks are amazing (at the expense of greenery lining the streets) 👍
• advertising boards are dominated by tech companies even if they’re B2B 🤔
• when Uber drivers get annoyed by another car instead of just swearing or tutting like in Singapore they like… talk??? to the other driver as if they can hear them, e.g. “dude what the hell are you doing” or “where are you going” or “yo there’s no way you’re 65 man I’m going 65 you’re speeding!”. In Singapore they just swear or tut. 🤔
• … this list will keep expanding until I leave on 13 August 2023 I’ve left SF! It was a blast. 🥲

obviously, this won’t generalise at all to most others’ experiences