I began writing A Bridge for the City as a break-up letter to San Francisco, the city I still love. During this century’s first two decades, I grew increasingly distressed that San Francisco was undergoing a generational change, for worse more than for better.
Many of the city’s characteristics that had drawn me there and kept me there were evaporating; or being absorbed into a new city being built around and within its 47 square miles. So, I put pen to paper, and then fingers to keyboard, to tell the story of San Francisco's metamorphosis ....
To be fair, I moved into an iteration of San Francisco (in the mid-90’s) celebrating its past self, not yet charting a future, and neglecting its present. The Beat Generation, the Summer of Love, Tales of the City, Burning Man (if that counts), and the rest? Gone. Or going.
No matter how much I loved dancing with those venerable ghosts, they were exiting the stage. If the “City that knows how” was well on its way to becoming the “City that knew how,” that didn’t stop me from falling in love with it as we danced.
I hope A Bridge for the City and its characters can bear testimony to the chapter of San Francisco’s story about the tech, corporate, and finance sectors conspiring to strip the city of its sparkle, pushing it to resemble too many other places. I also hope my novel offers a wish for a worthy reincarnation. We can’t read San Francisco's next chapter until it's written, nor can we discern what sort of new Phoenix we’ll meet then. But one is rising, as one always has.
