When Trevor and I moved to the Bay Area almost 10 years ago, a family member who shall remain nameless chastised us for moving to "the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah." Still another warned us about not succumbing to Communist ideology. I've gotten some serious mileage out of those two quite serious but ultimately dated admonishments! But we chose the Bay for a reason, and to put it simply it is because we're social progressives (and we love great food!) -- which I suppose could be seen as in line with the things our well-intentioned relatives warned us about.

Even so, it goes without saying that all at once I absolutely love, and can totally hate on, the permissive, "accepting" culture here. Love because I am all about people loving who they want and being who they want; hate because when taken to extremes this can make people become ironically strict in how they feel you should interact with them, e.g naked people covered in mineral oil trying to force you to hug them lest they accuse you of being "clothing-centric" (for real, yo -- courtesy How Berkeley Can You Be?, and reason 5,709,432 why I live in Oakland)

But even so, I must be pretty jaded, because this is the first time I've ever really thought to myself, "only in San Francisco" (even though that's not really true).