San Francisco Voice

I had another post in mind for this morning, a post sprung from a thought that formed while I was reading a book this morning by a San Francisco author. But as a I write this, a highly agitated man is screaming obscenities at tourists right outside my window and I’m having trouble focusing on what I’d originally planned to say.

What I’m thinking about instead is what a good friend of mine said last year on his first visit to San Francisco. We were riding the bus, going to or coming from some event, and I’d casually asked him if he liked the city. He looked around the bus, his eyes lingering on the eclectic group that was gathered there, and he hesitated. Finally he said, “the crazies are just too close to you here”. I laughed and said, “I love the crazies” and we dismissed the conversation.

But the truth is that San Francisco’s geographically small area and high level of tolerance for outrageous behavior do sometimes combine to put a little too much craziness in one area. For the most part, I think that this generates an energy level that only feeds the terrific cosmopolitan creative spirit that hums throughout the city. But I’m willing to admit that there’s a spectrum of crazy and sometimes it gets a little bit out of hand. I’m thinking of the man frightening tourists outside of my window. I’m thinking of a scary walk home I took one night through a notoriously “less than good” neighborhood here. I’m thinking of last year’s Halloween in the Castro.

Now, let me discuss “crazy” for a minute. Crazy is a loaded word. And that’s part of the problem here. Some would say that the sidewalk saxophone player who sleeps on the street and wears the same clothes every day but keeps his instrument perfectly polished is “crazy”. Some would say that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who grace events with their elaborate outfits and undeniable air of expressive authority are “crazy”. There are some who would say that everyone who lives in San Francisco is a little bit “crazy”. Crazy is a spectrum. There’s no line that says, “okay, here you’re normal, there you’re not”. This is especially true in San Francisco, where what looks crazy elsewhere is just a normal day and where “crazy” ideas become innovations that help to shape the world.

But for me, there’s a line. On one side is creative, expressive, eccentric, off-the-wall, entertaining, edgy … On the other side is “crazy” and by crazy, I mean dangerous. That’s the determining factor for me. It is my personal belief that everyone should be able to live as freely as they want, unlimited by others in as much as is possible within a society. But it is also my personal belief that this freedom ends when you begin to infringe upon the same freedom in others. When your eccentricities pose a threat to the well-being of those around you, you’ve gone from creative to crazy in my book.

Obviously, this isn’t a clear cut line. There are endless arguments of debate possible about what exactly harms another person. But what I’m realizing at this moment is that San Francisco has a pretty good intuitive sense about these things. I don’t believe that we generally harass or outcast the creatively eccentric folks who live amongst us. But as I peek out my window to check on the status of the situation below, I see that a crowd has gathered and is ushering the tourists away from the belligerent man while working to calm him down. We tolerate one another here, more so than most places, but there is also a strong sense of community in San Francisco. In the Bay Area, in the city and in the individual neighborhoods … people here consider this their home … and we look out for each other here – both in our permissiveness of “crazy” and our protection from it.

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