I love San Francisco. Sure, it has its faults, but for a small town it has a great deal to offer. Not being from round here (and few it seems truly are), I feel as qualified as any to be objective about its good and bad points. SF-bashing seems to be fashionable these days, and I just can't seem to hold myself back any more either. Though I'm glad to be home at last, it doesn't take long before something happens so that I feel the need to vent:

San Francisco is small, but doesn't seem to realise it. It has a big ego, as people with above average but below outstanding skill often have - possibly due to sibling rivalry with LA. But the thing I hate most of all is its politics. Never have I seen so much political posturing and PC self-righteousness expressed across the board along with so much introspective navel-gazing. Naively, I expected a world-class newspaper here - but the main newspaper here seems to think a cat up a tree in Oakland is more important than war in Russia, and this is symptomatic of local thinking - it's always local. Joke political agendas have always been put forward in many places, but here they seem to get taken seriously. And now the Democratic party have chosen to shoot themselves in the foot by choosing a San Francisco Liberal as their leader. How is this meant to appeal to the rest of the country? At this time more than ever it's important to put a nationally credible alternative to the current administration ahead of preaching to the local choir, as noted in this enlighteningly realistic article in this week's Economist.