Total Greyout: Escaping the Bay Area’s Loudest Summer

So many people insist that San Francisco is hard to love. Especially in the summer. This year, we’re experiencing the coldest summer in 25 years. Cue the Mark Twain quote.

I’ve spent close to a decade in San Francisco, and usually I’d plot an escape — to Mexico, the Aegean Sea, anywhere. But this time, I think I’m finally getting into the swing of things. SF summer shields you from the manic energy of summers elsewhere. If not Espresso, what’s the song of the summer? Is it Euro summer, or are we still doing the coastal grandma shtick? Is Dubai chocolate a recession indicator?

In the city, most of these conversations and headlines feel distant and unnecessary. I still find new quests for myself in San Francisco — things that keep me grounded, things that exist outside the news cycle and the rush of everyday life. Lately, Bay Area headlines have reached a fever pitch: it’s the summer of GPT-5, “permanent underclass,” “agentic workflows,” and a girl who toppled the reputation of a well-known chef with a single TikTok (the kind of story my own neighborhood, Hayes Valley, seems to generate). Yet there are ways to move through this city that make room for peace; and I’m not sure many other major U.S. cities offer the same capacity. I’ve written about some of them before, but I think it’s time to return to them.

• I feel very attached to AMC Kabuki: it reminds me of the movie theatre I grew up going to. I spent the early 2000s in a very similar space in Moscow, decorated like old Prague. Kabuki has the same aesthetic but tries to replicate traditional Japanese motifs through the 2000s lens. Lot of browns, chartreuse accents (not to be confused with 70s avocado green), and posters for Amélie, Willy Wonka, and probably Blow? It feels like a return to a much younger self and a much more innocent era of mass entertainment — available on any day, but especially good on a foggy one.

• Reading Jenny Odell, a local icon, SFAI alumna, and an incredible artist: her first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, is an amalgam of the history of leisure, vignettes about local ecology, lessons from Bay Area labor history, and anecdotes from the life of Epicurus. Through these stories and influences, Odell highlights strategies for resisting the pressure to be productive and perform both online and offline. She writes, quoting Epicurus: “The purest security is that which comes from a quiet life and withdrawal from the many.” Though written before the pandemic, the book feels even more relevant in 2025. In today’s terms, How to Do Nothing is a statement against “locking in,” offering surprisingly viable methods for navigating a landscape that gets more noisy every day.

• Exploring Cole Valley — my current route: Start on 929 Clayton Street (home of the novelist/poet/legendary punk it-girl) Kathy Acker, go up to 17th street, admire the quiet streets of Cole Valley, turn on Stanyan, then choose one of two adventures — Sutro Forest or Belgrave Avenue. Spot one of the prettiest cottages in SF at 100 Belgrave, then climb Tank Hill. Required reading: I'm Very into You, Kathy Acker and writer and researcher McKenzie Wark's email correspondence from 1993-1995 when they had a brief affair. At the time, Wark lived in Australia and Acker lived in Cole Valley. They both got online around 1993 and wrote passionate letters to each other while experimenting with the new format — emails — for the first time. A book at the intersection of love and technology.

• Thinking about some of my favorite SF mysteries: what exactly is the Institute of Advanced Uncertainty doing with its big sign on Ivy Street? A quick search only raised more questions — the organization has barely has any mentions in the press, there is no website, and its Instagram page is private… I can't believe such a good name is not attached to anything real or tangible. Another big question I keep coming back to: why are there so many scary-looking limousines around Potrero Hill and Hunter's Point, and why can you never see them driving anywhere else in the city? And what was happening at the haunted Odd Fellows temple on 7th street during this fraternal order's heyday?

• Searching for fashion inspiration: despite all the snarky comments, I don’t agree that SF is just a desert of people in Allbirds. But the people you notice the most aren’t participating in fashion trends. They’re doing fantasy dressing / elaborate uniforms. Just in my neighborhood: a sales associate at Metier jewelry with a perfect 1920s shingle bob and gold nails; two impeccably dressed Todd Snyder employees who wear vintage tailored suits and monk straps every single day… For a while, I’d often spot an older man on Gough Street with long white hair — always in wide-leg camo pants, a white cable-knit crewneck sweater, and a black beret, walking a wire-haired dog. I don’t see him anymore, and I hope he’s okay — his look was one of the most memorable uniforms I’ve ever encountered.

• Beach read idea — Pac Heights by Tony Perez-Gieze: recommended by my charming 70-something next-door neighbor who spent the last couple of decades working as a personal chef for wealthy families in Pacific Heights (before that, he lived in NYC and ALLEGEDLY dated Freddie Mercury in the 80s). The book was written by one of his coworkers and talks about the secret lives of SF’s elite during the dot-com boom. What a premise! My lovely neighbor reports that the chef character in the book was inspired by him.

• Catching the disappearing magic of Waymo taxis: for a while, Waymos felt like San Francisco’s sexiest gimmick. A carriage takes you to the future in a city that is always trying (and often failing) to will the future into existence. Now it’s expanding to other cities, and the magic is gone.