Self-delusion, SF style

The other night I got off Metro at Downtown Bethesda, alone. The combination of my solitude and the quality of the night's darkness allowed me to indulge in a little fantasy: I forced myself to believe that I was really in San Francisco, exiting BART at Montgomery Street. It wasn't that hard to do, really-- BART was modeled after Metro (or vice versa; I can't remember) so the stations and trains are eerily similar. As I emerged from underground the tall buildings of downtown Bethesda became downtown SF's skyscrapers. It's funny how a place can mean so much to you.

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My favorite time of day to be out in SF was at night. You could go out in anything; sure, there would be club hoppers dressed up, but I could hop on the cable car in my sweats, post-swim, and feel right at home. Everyone out on the streets was happy (except the drivers looking for parking spots, of course). The city was bite sized, compact, and highly digestible for a pedestrian like me. From my rooftop I could see across the bay to Berkeley and Richmond, and somewhere in between (El Cerrito?) there was a flashing green light. The night I saw it I felt like Jay Gatsby. That's the thing: there was always something new to discover, so that each day you could convince yourself that you had experienced something special.

I really want to go back and visit SF (can you tell?) but more than that, I want to fall in love with this place. All the stars are aligned: I'll be a pedestrian again in the fall, living in Downtown Bethesda, and I'll be able to Metro anywhere in DC. I'll go out at night and find little tea shops and fabric stores and spend my weekends in Dupont at Kramerbooks and Afterwords. Maybe then I can stop writing pathetic odes to a city I no longer inhabit.