thank you! I've missed writing here as well—things have been a bit chaotic in my personal life, but are settling in now, and I hope to write (maybe about Proust? poptimism? is it too late to write my ode to brodernism and how much I love Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid?) more soon
and thanks as always for reading—was so nice to see you comment here again!! hope 2025 has been treating you well
So great to see a new post from you! Very sad to read about all the cuts to the grants for the arts in the US, as someone who worked at a literature-grant institution in the Netherlands. Without this institution our (quality) literature could not exist, because it is such a tiny language. It is simply not profitable. And, would love to see something about Proust! But, take all the time you need.
thank you Michael! I really loved your latest newsletter btw…characteristically beautiful/funny/striking/insightful/sincere, and this part was great:
"Over the last two and a half months I have written sixteen drafts and 35,000 words on everything from money, Karl Ove Knausgård, autofiction, to the Titanic. None of them have worked, because even when I was writing about thousands of people being killed for no reason, I was still, somehow, writing about myself. What's worse is that I was not even writing an 'I' that was honest. Instead, it was a character, a beaming yellow-light of a person. That Michael was completely phony, treacly, saccharine, eager to please. I hated him, because he was hollow and dishonest. It feels like a small crime to publish something fundamentally dishonest, especially now in this age of garbage and slop.
So over the last two months I have been trying to isolate this sappy, fickle, sentimental character, with the goal of slowly weeding him out of my writing life. He is fortunately very easy to spot.
He is so sad, so endlessly yearnful, though he is never all that interested in making small decisions that could improve his life, nor in living in a way that is communal or 'leftist'. He is a party and ideology of one. He is pure ego. He is also a worthless doom-scroller. One bad piece of news emerges, and he instinctively replies, 'lol shit sucks, world is over’ and then makes sad pathetic jokes."
The orchestra musicians of San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and San Francisco Ballet are ALL currently in negotiations for new collective bargaining agreements. The Symphony and Opera have both been working on drawn-out extensions of post-COVID contracts with significant cuts to pay. In the last few years, the opera has gone from putting on 12 full opera productions, to 8, to 6.
Logan, thank you so much for this comment! The SF Symphony is great (separately: I also love their distinctive posters—designed by Collins a few years ago https://www.wearecollins.com/work/sf-symphony/)
I hadn't heard about these labor negotiations so really appreciate you sharing this context and the blog.
Love this newsletter as a transplant to SF who has been living here for years and don't plan to leave anytime soon! Three more things I'd add:
-lots of urban green space and beautiful nature. I'm an avid trail runner and it blows my mind all the time that I can jog along the ocean, up a mountain, or through a canyon right in the middle of the city
-vibrant Asian American culture. Easy to access to Asian food, groceries, festivals, martial arts and other activities. As an Asian American from the Midwest this was also mind-blowing to me when moving here
-it feels like a big city and a small town at the same time. SF has all the trappings of a city but at the same time it really feels like everyone seems to know everyone or knows someone who knows someone you know here!
I love this list and really, really agree! Especially your last point. I think there's something special about the scale of SF and how easy it is to run into new friends, friends of friends…and generally feel that there is an intimacy to the city!
Last year I launched a newsletter dedicated to rounding up compelling arts events and exhibits in the bay area and sacramento! NorCal has such a vibrant arts scene, and it has been so personally enriching and connective to participate in it. I want to share that with others and ensure artists make a living wage and these vital third spaces can keep their doors open.
I lived in SF in 2021-2022 and really fell in love with the art scene. It always felt so alive to me. But every art scene relied on so much coordination, community love, and yes, funding — this is an important read.
Eden, thank you for reading and commenting! I feel really lucky to have benefited from the work of artists, writers, event organizers, etc in SF—and I wanted to express my appreciation for them.
as a former board member of the Lab (and still a fan) and a longtime skeptic of SF arts scenes, this was delightful and kind of a revelation. and I* agree with the felt anecdotal sense of SF being as safe if not safer than many wealthy cities.
Thank you for reading!! And yes—while I don't want to dismiss anyone's concerns about safety, I have personally felt that there is…maybe a certain level of hysteria present when SF is described as unsafe. Some of those complaints seem to be more about the visibility of poverty/inequality than real danger.
I have never been to SF, and probably will never be, but this was a very good read
Also, I JUST watched a video where the creator talked about David Wojnarowicz's book (I've never heard of him before), closed that tab, opened this one just to see his name in the first paragraph lol
Thank you for reading! And Wojnarowicz is so incredible. He's someone I'd love to read more and learn more about (along with Peter Hujar—the two were lovers for some time, and Hujar was something of an artistic mentor to Wojnarowicz)
i was born & raised in sf and live here now as an adult. i'm wondering: who is this "everyone" who hates san francisco? apart from right-wing cable news and extractivist transplants who see cities as a matrix of consumer choices, both of whom by definition will always be dissatisfied? like, is this discourse even real? why defend, and to whom? people determined to hate a place they barely know?
i lived in new york for several years. one thing that always drove me insane in new york was the assumption that this was the only place on earth, that nowhere else was worth living. sure! of course nowhere else can be new york. but ironically, there's a provincialism inherent in this conceit that a place has to have the qualities of a london or a new york—that is, the qualities of an imperial capital, like a poppin art scene—to be legitimate.
so while i totally support the endeavor to see the value and preciousness in san francisco, instead of trying to distort what exists in sf such that it resembles more central places, i think it makes more sense to see it for what it is: a port city on the far edge of a declining empire. things suck here in ways that resemble and prefigure the way things suck elsewhere. but meanwhile, it is frightfully beautiful and always the right temperature.
This is so interesting because in some of the spaces I'm in (which include, tbf, a lot of 'extractivist transplants') it's really common for people to denigrate SF culture! So for me the discourse feels very real—I've had quite a few conversations with acquaintances who are convinced that SF is totally dead on weekdays (it's definitely quieter, but there are often readings and concerts and events happening…) and that there's nothing to do except work. This is really a reflection of their own lives, not what the city has to offer…
I think it comes from expecting culture to be something you simply consume, in the most frictionless way possible, instead of something you actively participate in.
I do agree that the value of SF (and many similar cities) is not in coercing it to feel like NYC, London, etc but to recognize what is distinctive and special about the city—due to its history, its size, the people who are there…thank you for the beautifully articulated and thought-provoking comment!
I'm Canadian, but was down in SF this past March for four days. It was my second visit to the city, but this time we had a rental car so I saw a lot more of it. Granted, I was just visiting, so what do I know? But I was blown away by the beauty and the architecture of the city, and of course being on the water certainly doesn't hurt. We ate at Mandalay Restaurant on California, and Beit Rima on Church Street. We had incredible ramen downtown somewhere. I saw Kara Walker's exhibit at SF Moma and wept. We went to the park. We ate at some Italian restaurant in Russian Hill. Anyhoo. We didn't want to leave. Next time I hope to be better prepared for where to find good art and music. I know I can refer to this post, if nothing else.
Thank you so much for reading! I really adore SF and think it's one of the most beautiful cities in America. So lovely to hear about your experiences (Beit Rima!! Kara Walker!!) and hope that if you do make it back to the city, you have a beautiful time.
I’m from Seattle, which has many of the same complaints as San Francisco and I find a lot of this commentary right on the nose. After living in Osaka, Japan (one of the biggest metro areas in the world!!) for over a year, I thought there was nothing for me in my home city. But I went to visit Seattle in March and I was like, wait I actually love this place! There’s so much to do if you are open to it!
Thank you for reading, and also sharing your experiences with Seattle! In every city there's a community of people doing interesting artistic and literary work—I firmly believe this—and I think it's really important to celebrate (and financially support!) what those people are doing.
you write my favorite newsletter. i always appreciate your analysis, your perspective and the way you share your curiosity with us! i always leave more inspired and i always learn something new.
looking forward to it! i still go back to your AI art article often. i work in mainstream animation and was involved in the union negotiations and AI was/is a Hot Topic and very emotionally fraught. so ur article really challenged my reactionary feelings and thoughts towards AI and art!
I remember when you first published “in defense of San Francisco” I believe it’s what made me a subscriber, it’s great to know many more have found your work 💖
It was so nice to revisit! I was really gratified by how many people commented on the original newsletter, and it's also indirectly how I met even more people in San Francisco. A good way to get the ardent SF residents to reveal themselves…
I also (obviously) think there is something a little unfair about how the Bay Area gets portrayed in a lot of popular narratives! The housing crisis is real, the distortions of the tech industry are real…but there are so many interesting people and arts/literary spaces still around.
Yes, it's so special to grow up in a culturally rich city as a kid! I grew up in the south bay but always feel fascinated by stories of growing up in SF or NYC or London. I'm so curious what it's like now in these cities, as it gets more and more expensive…and the kind of stress that parents experience trying to make things work
We’ve missed you.
thank you! I've missed writing here as well—things have been a bit chaotic in my personal life, but are settling in now, and I hope to write (maybe about Proust? poptimism? is it too late to write my ode to brodernism and how much I love Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid?) more soon
and thanks as always for reading—was so nice to see you comment here again!! hope 2025 has been treating you well
So great to see a new post from you! Very sad to read about all the cuts to the grants for the arts in the US, as someone who worked at a literature-grant institution in the Netherlands. Without this institution our (quality) literature could not exist, because it is such a tiny language. It is simply not profitable. And, would love to see something about Proust! But, take all the time you need.
If I get to choose I am eager to read that piece on Solenoid.
seconded! It's great seeing your writing again Celine
thank you Michael! I really loved your latest newsletter btw…characteristically beautiful/funny/striking/insightful/sincere, and this part was great:
"Over the last two and a half months I have written sixteen drafts and 35,000 words on everything from money, Karl Ove Knausgård, autofiction, to the Titanic. None of them have worked, because even when I was writing about thousands of people being killed for no reason, I was still, somehow, writing about myself. What's worse is that I was not even writing an 'I' that was honest. Instead, it was a character, a beaming yellow-light of a person. That Michael was completely phony, treacly, saccharine, eager to please. I hated him, because he was hollow and dishonest. It feels like a small crime to publish something fundamentally dishonest, especially now in this age of garbage and slop.
So over the last two months I have been trying to isolate this sappy, fickle, sentimental character, with the goal of slowly weeding him out of my writing life. He is fortunately very easy to spot.
He is so sad, so endlessly yearnful, though he is never all that interested in making small decisions that could improve his life, nor in living in a way that is communal or 'leftist'. He is a party and ideology of one. He is pure ego. He is also a worthless doom-scroller. One bad piece of news emerges, and he instinctively replies, 'lol shit sucks, world is over’ and then makes sad pathetic jokes."
oh thank you :') it always means a lot coming from you
The orchestra musicians of San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and San Francisco Ballet are ALL currently in negotiations for new collective bargaining agreements. The Symphony and Opera have both been working on drawn-out extensions of post-COVID contracts with significant cuts to pay. In the last few years, the opera has gone from putting on 12 full opera productions, to 8, to 6.
The situation at the symphony is looking particularly concerning, this blog is covering things exceptionally well: https://songofthelarkblog.com/2025/04/29/centering-patrons-at-the-san-francisco-symphony/
It’s pretty remarkable for a city with “no culture” to have a world class symphony, opera company, and ballet company.
Logan, thank you so much for this comment! The SF Symphony is great (separately: I also love their distinctive posters—designed by Collins a few years ago https://www.wearecollins.com/work/sf-symphony/)
I hadn't heard about these labor negotiations so really appreciate you sharing this context and the blog.
Love this newsletter as a transplant to SF who has been living here for years and don't plan to leave anytime soon! Three more things I'd add:
-lots of urban green space and beautiful nature. I'm an avid trail runner and it blows my mind all the time that I can jog along the ocean, up a mountain, or through a canyon right in the middle of the city
-vibrant Asian American culture. Easy to access to Asian food, groceries, festivals, martial arts and other activities. As an Asian American from the Midwest this was also mind-blowing to me when moving here
-it feels like a big city and a small town at the same time. SF has all the trappings of a city but at the same time it really feels like everyone seems to know everyone or knows someone who knows someone you know here!
I love this list and really, really agree! Especially your last point. I think there's something special about the scale of SF and how easy it is to run into new friends, friends of friends…and generally feel that there is an intimacy to the city!
Agreed. I unapoligetically love San Francisco!
THIS!
Last year I launched a newsletter dedicated to rounding up compelling arts events and exhibits in the bay area and sacramento! NorCal has such a vibrant arts scene, and it has been so personally enriching and connective to participate in it. I want to share that with others and ensure artists make a living wage and these vital third spaces can keep their doors open.
I lived in SF in 2021-2022 and really fell in love with the art scene. It always felt so alive to me. But every art scene relied on so much coordination, community love, and yes, funding — this is an important read.
Eden, thank you for reading and commenting! I feel really lucky to have benefited from the work of artists, writers, event organizers, etc in SF—and I wanted to express my appreciation for them.
as a former board member of the Lab (and still a fan) and a longtime skeptic of SF arts scenes, this was delightful and kind of a revelation. and I* agree with the felt anecdotal sense of SF being as safe if not safer than many wealthy cities.
* speaking as Ri, Ed’s female-bodied agent.
Thank you for reading!! And yes—while I don't want to dismiss anyone's concerns about safety, I have personally felt that there is…maybe a certain level of hysteria present when SF is described as unsafe. Some of those complaints seem to be more about the visibility of poverty/inequality than real danger.
I’m with you … somehow visible poverty is a threat to … what? I guess it completely punctures the illusion that things works well.
I have never been to SF, and probably will never be, but this was a very good read
Also, I JUST watched a video where the creator talked about David Wojnarowicz's book (I've never heard of him before), closed that tab, opened this one just to see his name in the first paragraph lol
Thank you for reading! And Wojnarowicz is so incredible. He's someone I'd love to read more and learn more about (along with Peter Hujar—the two were lovers for some time, and Hujar was something of an artistic mentor to Wojnarowicz)
i was born & raised in sf and live here now as an adult. i'm wondering: who is this "everyone" who hates san francisco? apart from right-wing cable news and extractivist transplants who see cities as a matrix of consumer choices, both of whom by definition will always be dissatisfied? like, is this discourse even real? why defend, and to whom? people determined to hate a place they barely know?
i lived in new york for several years. one thing that always drove me insane in new york was the assumption that this was the only place on earth, that nowhere else was worth living. sure! of course nowhere else can be new york. but ironically, there's a provincialism inherent in this conceit that a place has to have the qualities of a london or a new york—that is, the qualities of an imperial capital, like a poppin art scene—to be legitimate.
so while i totally support the endeavor to see the value and preciousness in san francisco, instead of trying to distort what exists in sf such that it resembles more central places, i think it makes more sense to see it for what it is: a port city on the far edge of a declining empire. things suck here in ways that resemble and prefigure the way things suck elsewhere. but meanwhile, it is frightfully beautiful and always the right temperature.
This is so interesting because in some of the spaces I'm in (which include, tbf, a lot of 'extractivist transplants') it's really common for people to denigrate SF culture! So for me the discourse feels very real—I've had quite a few conversations with acquaintances who are convinced that SF is totally dead on weekdays (it's definitely quieter, but there are often readings and concerts and events happening…) and that there's nothing to do except work. This is really a reflection of their own lives, not what the city has to offer…
I think it comes from expecting culture to be something you simply consume, in the most frictionless way possible, instead of something you actively participate in.
I do agree that the value of SF (and many similar cities) is not in coercing it to feel like NYC, London, etc but to recognize what is distinctive and special about the city—due to its history, its size, the people who are there…thank you for the beautifully articulated and thought-provoking comment!
Amazing - thanks for sharing all of these :) really excited to learn about a bunch of them!
thank you for reading and commenting! and hope you can visit some of these places soon 🕊️
I'm Canadian, but was down in SF this past March for four days. It was my second visit to the city, but this time we had a rental car so I saw a lot more of it. Granted, I was just visiting, so what do I know? But I was blown away by the beauty and the architecture of the city, and of course being on the water certainly doesn't hurt. We ate at Mandalay Restaurant on California, and Beit Rima on Church Street. We had incredible ramen downtown somewhere. I saw Kara Walker's exhibit at SF Moma and wept. We went to the park. We ate at some Italian restaurant in Russian Hill. Anyhoo. We didn't want to leave. Next time I hope to be better prepared for where to find good art and music. I know I can refer to this post, if nothing else.
Thank you so much for reading! I really adore SF and think it's one of the most beautiful cities in America. So lovely to hear about your experiences (Beit Rima!! Kara Walker!!) and hope that if you do make it back to the city, you have a beautiful time.
Thanks. I'll definitely be back when a certain orange person is gone 🥲
I’m from Seattle, which has many of the same complaints as San Francisco and I find a lot of this commentary right on the nose. After living in Osaka, Japan (one of the biggest metro areas in the world!!) for over a year, I thought there was nothing for me in my home city. But I went to visit Seattle in March and I was like, wait I actually love this place! There’s so much to do if you are open to it!
Thank you for reading, and also sharing your experiences with Seattle! In every city there's a community of people doing interesting artistic and literary work—I firmly believe this—and I think it's really important to celebrate (and financially support!) what those people are doing.
I love your writing and recommendations, so thanks for writing!
I read Madame Bovary and Health and Safety because of your recommendations and really enjoyed both!
you write my favorite newsletter. i always appreciate your analysis, your perspective and the way you share your curiosity with us! i always leave more inspired and i always learn something new.
thank you yuca! this is such a nice compliment—I'm so happy you enjoy reading, and I hope to send more interesting & inspiring emails this year!
looking forward to it! i still go back to your AI art article often. i work in mainstream animation and was involved in the union negotiations and AI was/is a Hot Topic and very emotionally fraught. so ur article really challenged my reactionary feelings and thoughts towards AI and art!
I remember when you first published “in defense of San Francisco” I believe it’s what made me a subscriber, it’s great to know many more have found your work 💖
It was so nice to revisit! I was really gratified by how many people commented on the original newsletter, and it's also indirectly how I met even more people in San Francisco. A good way to get the ardent SF residents to reveal themselves…
I also (obviously) think there is something a little unfair about how the Bay Area gets portrayed in a lot of popular narratives! The housing crisis is real, the distortions of the tech industry are real…but there are so many interesting people and arts/literary spaces still around.
my upbringing in San Francisco was filled with tremendous art of every kind and every profession and skill! it was such a gift
Yes, it's so special to grow up in a culturally rich city as a kid! I grew up in the south bay but always feel fascinated by stories of growing up in SF or NYC or London. I'm so curious what it's like now in these cities, as it gets more and more expensive…and the kind of stress that parents experience trying to make things work