writing

Title and Art Credit

Lowen Baumgarten

26 Oct 2011 — 1 min read

I really didn't want to name this blog "365 Days of San Francisco." My style is far too prosaic as it is. Something about Fog City really appeals to me. SF has so many nicknames. "Frisco" is hated; "The City by the Bay" is overwrought; "The City" reeks of the parochialsm NorCal is hated for...

I came here from DC and we have two nicknames, one grossly derogatory (The Beltway) and one hopelessly grandiose (Our Nation's Capital). I like Fog City. Like "The Big Apple" or "The Windy City" or "Tinseltown," it speaks to the character of this place. What's it like to live here.

As for the picture, it's a sketch by Andrew Wyeth, whom I've admired for a long time for capturing the isolation of American exteriors as richly as Edward Hopper captured the isolation of American interiors. To me, Helga in this sketch is the fog: quiet and self-contained, sensual and just out of reach.

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