The New Neo

I saw the headline of this article – “San Francisco falls into the abyss,” and it certainly struck home:

Some blame San Francisco’s high cost of living for the exodus. San Francisco housing costs have contributed to this loss, but many of those leaving the city are those with very high incomes who can afford to live in San Francisco. Instead, they are choosing to move to locations, many of which are also expensive, that have much more sensible city governance.

They are moving to destinations that do not have San Francisco’s drug and crime issues, its poorly performing public schools, its homelessness, its extremely high cost of doing business, and other issues that people have tolerated for so long, only because San Francisco was once one of the world’s great cities. As someone who loved San Francisco, it pains me to say it no longer is. And I suspect that those who departed San Francisco, whose exits left the city with 60,000 fewer taxpayers, feel the same way.

I’ve been coming to San Francisco very regularly for over 50 years. I’ve seen the decline firsthand, and it’s huge. I don’t spend much time anymore in a city I used to love, although I still visit several friends and relatives there. But the problems really were brought home to me – at least in a small way – on Tuesday when I flew from Boston to San Francisco.

The Jet Blue flight was great, smooth and on time. But oh, that San Francisco airport has the most bewildering (or absent) signage! The train that takes you to the car rental place is in a strange place with many twistings and turnings to find, and the airport authorities are very sparing with their signs.

Last time I was there, in the fall, car rental lines were so long that it took over an hour to actually get the car. This time? It turns out that reservations there no longer mean much, if anything. They had no cars available at any car rental company, and the room was filled with people sitting around dismally, waiting, after being told that in three hours maybe, maybe, a car would somehow arrive.

I guess if you were staying in San Francisco the situation was sort of okay; you could just Uber or Lyft to your hotel and get around that way until a car materialized (although I think you’d have to go back to the airport and wait again in order to actually receive it). For me it was no solution, since I had to go about 150 miles in that car the next day.

But in what seemed almost miraculous by then, after about two hours I managed to get a car. I don’t actually know how that happened. I’m just glad it did.

I was told this type of situation is a frequent occurrence at the San Francisco airport. The long-suffering clerk, who has to deal with all those frustrated and weary travelers, said that not only do people often keep their cars longer, but that vandals often break the auto windows and the cars have to be repaired. So the turnover is slow. And of course, the lockdowns have wreaked havoc with car rentals all over the country.

But my guess is that it’s worse in San Francisco.

I know that most of you have gotten the news that Gerard Vanderleun is in hospice care now. It is inexpressibly sad.

I’ve been wrestling with this for a while. And by “this” I mean: how to say what I’m about to say. Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a very private person and don’t go in for much disclosure, dramatic or otherwise. But I’m about to write something very personal because detachment doesn’t work right now.

And it’s something Gerard wanted me to write, too, and so I’m doing this at least in part for him as well.

Gerard and I met through our blogging nearly eighteen years ago, became a couple about a year later and have been extremely close ever since. We never lived together but would visit each other for lengthy periods, travel together, and have talked on the phone almost every day for most of the time we’ve been apart. He deferred to my need for privacy by not writing about our relationship, although I appear in some of his writings as the mysterious woman who was there for this or that occasion.

We’ve been in touch every day right through this illness, which came on so quickly and was diagnosed so recently – only this past Wednesday – that it took everyone by surprise. I am the “updater” at American Digest, too.

I’m very distraught, I’m on my way out west to see him, and this will be my only post for today. I’m not planning on giving a running account, but at some point I probably will write more about this.