A Beautiful Place To Be Ugly

"Here in San Francisco, the western terminus of Interstate 80, is the edge of the continental United States, and, as many believe, the fringe of its professed values. Voters are long accustomed to serving as the bat with which many Republicans use their city to beat up on the Democratic Party. In large part, they wear with pride their reputation for being collectively unreasonable and unshaven.

But often invisible among the Silicon Valley fund-raisers, the Code Pink demonstrations and the seminude pageants — did you catch last Sunday’s “leather/fetish” street fair complete with acts of public sex? — are voters who, while largely Democrats, represent the shades, ever so slightly, of political diversity.

A walk through the streets here, talking with people as they go about their daily routine, reveals an anxiety about the state of the economy that has gripped most of the nation. One axiom emerging from the first day of this exercise: Worrying about one’s bank account — and trashing elected officials — in tumultuous times has no partisan claim.

Ideological lines are not always finely drawn along the road to social policy, either. There is the banker who embraces same-sex marriage but sides with Republicans when it comes to the subject of a federal bailout of banks. Or the restaurant owner who would gladly pay more taxes to put up green municipal buildings, but has complex reactions to universal health care for employees he can barely afford to pay. Or Joel Muchmore, a lawyer, who embraces this city’s liberal social policies, but does not want them extended to national security.

'It’s frustrating to live in a city where everyone assumes that because you share airspace you also share political views,' Mr. Muchmore, 37, said. 'I believe that, socially, San Francisco is at the vanguard of where the country should be going. But it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation here that acknowledges the possibility that there are some good things that came out of the war with Iraq.'

Like those of their neighbors in some more conservative areas near this city, the political proclivities of San Franciscans stem as much from the city’s historical role as a landing place for pioneers and Gold Rush fortune-seekers as they do from a natural proclivity to simply be wacky."

-- Jennifer Steinhauer, capturing "Bagdad By The Bay" perfectly, for the New York Times.