When your friends move out of the City and tell you that they’ll come back soon and visit often, they are lying. What happens after people move out of the City and to say, San Jose, is that they will finally understand the seductive power of the sun. For some, it won’t matter that they are blocks and blocks deep within suburbs as long as parking somewhere doesn’t involve a 15 minute hunt around the neighborhood. I am one of these people.

When I first moved to San Francisco, I loved it. I loved the crazy homeless man that took me out to lunch so I could buy him a burrito. I loved that people lived in flats. I liked that everyone looked like they had been living in the same pair of clothes for 2 weeks straight. But then I moved out and my skin unfurled itself and became accustomed to warmer days.

Now, the only way to get me to the City is to have someone promise to make it worth my while. Like if you said a new candy store had opened with the biggest selection of gummy candies in the West. I would be there. Or if I could keep a few of my things in one of your spare bedrooms with an extra toothbrush in the bathroom. That would provide a whole new level of convenience. Or if I hadn’t seen you in a long, long time since I moved away from a place where the sun always shines, but where there is always traffic at every hour, that would do the trick too. Lisa knew this trick, and when she said she was visiting from L.A. last weekend, I drove up to the City to meet her.

After brunch at Bambino’s, the place where sad brunchers go when Zazie two doors down promises to be at least a 1-hour wait, Alan and I had a day chock full of fun planned. The fun included paying a visit to Blue Bottle for a cup of their infamous Joe and one of their double chocolate cookies. After that, we I planned to stop by Rare Device, one of my favorite little shops on Market and in between where Laguna ends and Guerrero begins. And then we’d end the day with a good, solid movie at the Embarcadero Cinema Center. Sounds like such a nice day doesn’t it? But after taking a post-brunch walk, we lasted about 30 minutes before deciding the overcast gray sky was too depressing and bone chilling to convince us to stay. So we drove back home and sat inside our house all warm and toasty.

[Side note: I didn’t really know my hair had gotten this long until I saw this picture. Hair of this length is typically reserved for a) Lindsay Lohan or b) for mermaids. And I don’t know how I feel about that.]

Exhibit A

Exhibit B