Take Your Tech Company and Leave

Don’t feel comfortable in San Francisco? Then you don’t belong here.

Residents fleeing a major metro area (OK, so it’s Houston).

I am the product of a broken home. I grew up with my father in Atlanta. He provided a pretty good start for me, but I didn’t really belong in Atlanta. At the age of 11 I didn’t really know where I belonged yet. It was agreed that I’d live with my dad, and my sister would live with my mom. My mother moved on after the divorce and married a drummer from a punk rock band called The Mutants. I still have no idea why she did that — she made most of the GOP these days look like Jimmy Carter in her later years. After this, my mother announced she was leaving town for a residency at UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco, where Dave (my stepdad and now only surviving parent) lived.

This would be a big deal for most families, but my father worked for Delta. My sister and I flew free until our 21st birthday, and we were already used to lots of travel by this point in our lives. Plans were made for alternating Christmases and summers. I drew the long straw and got to go to San Francisco for the first time during the summer of my twelfth year. Or rather, I got to go to Piedmont, where my mom first rented a house across the Bay. Delta only flies into SFO though, so my first impression was driving back to the East Bay across the Bay Bridge after going through San Francisco. I knew it at once — I belonged here.