The wags over at The Bold Italic have taken it upon themselves to create a summary of San Francisco’s neighborhoods intended for newcomers to Our Faire City who are trying to figure out where to live.
The write-ups about each ‘hood are kind of insightful, sometimes funny, and perhaps even useful for the intended audience of wannabe San Franciscans. But they’re also calibrated to provoke sneers from those who already live here, and the blurb for Bernal Heights is no exception.
Here is the complete Bernal Heights text:
Bernal Heights is right next door to The Mission and Noe Valley. It is one of the last possible places you can move before you don’t live in San Francisco anymore. And there are tons of lovely, kind lesbians. If you’re just moving here, this is sort of like taking a grad course before you’ve finished undergrad: not yet, grasshopper.
Main Attractions: Nice lesbians. Tons of free parking.
Hmmm. A bit trite, perhaps. Also inaccurate and misleading. Yeah yeah lesbians. Sure. But “tons of free parking?” Seriously?
IMAGE: The Bold Italic
Bernalwood 
Hmmm. I guess the nice, probably straight folks at Bold Italic haven’t looked at a map (how analog!) of our faire city. There’s Crocker Amazon, Hunter’s Point, Bayshore, Candlestick, the outer Mission, etc, etc, also “possible to move to.
But you must admit, and let’s keep this a secret, that Bernal is one of the very few places with lots of no alternate street parking– haven’t weighed it out but I think that translates to “tons.”
P.S. Love the blog!
Ha! I saw this yesterday. Clearly they haven’t been here for a while. They would have called it “Toddler-landia”.
Bernal DOES have tons of parking compared to most areas of San Francisco.
Less Lesbian-landia, and more Maternal-Heights or Maternalwood (but that last one is a bit of a ‘double entendre’)
I consider this funny.
I call our fair Bernal Heights a 3D neighborhood: dykes, dogs and diapers 🙂
That is awesome. So true.
not sure about the lesbian parts but i definitely agree with the undergrad/grad concept 🙂 this neighborhood is SF at its best
The author who wrote this on Bold Italic, Drew Hoolhorst, is a rookie who clearly doesn’t know much about most neighborhoods in San Francisco. He says: Bernal Heights “is the last possible place you can move to before you don’t live in San Francisco anymore.” As any Beralwood reader knows, there’s lots of other places to go south of SF: the gigantic Bayview area, Hunters Point, Portola, Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, Sunnyside, Ingleside, Crocker Amazon, Oceanview, Lake Merced, and many more. Drew is a n00b.
I mean, south of Bernal Heights…
I disagree. I’ve always thought that once you cross 280 you don’t feel as much of a part of the city any more. I can walk downtown from my place in Bernal. From the Excelsior? Not so much.
I was just going to email this to you!!
“It is one of the last possible places you can move before you don’t live in San Francisco anymore.”
Pretty much, yeah.
The lesbians are leaving or have already left Bernal due to the high cost of housing (except the older ones who bought before the housing bubble). If you want to know what the next “it” neighborhood will be, follow the dykes, we’re always there about 10 years before gentrification. Mission=90’s
Bernal=00’s
Next?? Excelsior?
Yes, Excelsior — they’re getting a whole foods, even.
Well, consider me an overachiever then. My husband and I (and the dog) are new to SF and we were lucky enough to find a great place to rent in Bernal. We love it here. I cringe at the thought of living in some of the other neighborhoods listed. I have no desire to revisit my college days.
“Tons of free parking,” I don’t think so. We have one car for this household and as most folks who live in this village have found out by now it takes an act of god to find a slot in the evenings and on weekends. This person clearly does not know a lot about Bernal because if he/she did, it would have been clearly acknowledged that anyone’s overstay on a “free” parking spot that does not live here is strictly enforced by the neighbors. What a bozo to come out and announce such a thing. The front of our homes is not a long term parking lot for outsiders or a dump site for contractors looking to cut their costs. Both are strictly policed and reported by those of us who live here. Again, what a bozo.
Bernal DOES have tons of free parking compared to most of the rest of the city.
Really folks it’s irony – click the link and read the blurbs on all the neighborhoods. The blogger is definitely trying to be a bozo.
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