San Francisco

San Francisco when you live here is mostly the small stuff: the way the fog moves over Twin Peaks in the afternoon, the way Outer Sunset is its own beach town, the way 24th Street in the Mission still smells like Salvadoran bakeries on weekend mornings. The famous things (Alcatraz, Lombard Street, the cable cars) are real but they aren't what the city is. The city is the neighborhoods, the ridiculous food density, the bookstores, the fact that you can be in a redwood forest within 25 minutes of leaving downtown.