It’s been 3 weeks since I left the warm confines of San Francisco for New York.  I’m quickly falling in to the duality of loving both places but Brooklyn felt much more quickly like home than SF once did.  Something about the pace of every day life here feels more normal.  San Francisco was surrounded with amazing people but there was also tons of weird randomness in the city that I never understood.  The huge homeless population, general public nudity or random encounters with strangers were such a jarring thing for a midwest boy to get use to – even with all the previous travel and relocations in my life.  It was exciting at first but you slowly begin to tune it out.  I knew within the first few days in New York that this was gone and I would be happy for it since you become slightly soul-less when you ignore massive amounts of the public population or problems where you live.  I do miss it in some stockholm-syndrome type way though.  I always had good stories about ass-less chaps, the next great trick to get some spare change out of you, or just the general crazy-happiness that San Francisco people seem to employ.  The result has been that I prefer living in New York but there is a piece of me left in San Francisco (and Minneapolis).  That mainly seems to be the food and the magical excitement/adventure that SF seems to have in the air.  It is bizarre to say but New York is magical too but in a more practical way (better).  If you could somehow fold SF in to Brooklyn (it would fit great next to Park Slope) then I would be in heaven.  You could just float back and forth at will.  And throw Minneapolis in (minus the winters) + old friends while you’re at it.