Posting about the weather

[gordonzola]

I'm not a native Californian. My parents moved to the Bay Area in 1970 from the Midwest, though Michigan was only a stopover for them on the way west from New Jersey.

When we moved to California, they stopped going to church. How can you spend a weekend day in church when all the natural beauty of the Bay Area is there to be explored for the first time? We probably hit every beach in Marin and Sonoma counties those first few years. Still, this wasn't exactly the California my parents expected. Bay Area beaches are almost always windy and cold. Perfectly planned picnics were abandoned due to wind-cause earaches and too much sand in sandwiches. To this day when I think of eating on the beach, I think gritty frustration and hurting teeth.

We lived on the other side of a mountain from the coast. While that placement caused our neighborhood to have the most rain in our county, the fog generally burned off early. At 6 AM it may be thick enough that you couldn't see the next house, but by leaving-for-school time it would usually be sunny and getting hot.

The first time I realized I was different from other kids was that I always cheered against the sun. Every summer morning fog made me think that, maybe today, it would be overcast, cloudy, not so hot. I got my hopes up every day and then got disappointed.

I'm the only real Californian in the family. My parents were still East Coasters at heart and my brother and sister had their formative years in a Detroit suburb. I was the only one who knew I could take the sun for granted. My parents operated on the scarcity values of their youths though so when it was sunny, you couldn't waste the day. I was an active kid. I played sports in every season. But I've also always been a reader. Many a summer day was spent trying to find a place to hide from my parents so I could finish a book.

Some folks think it's odd that San Franciscans complain about the heat fairly easily, but to me this town is a refuge. SF is at least ten degrees cooler every day than my hometown 15 miles away. I love the fog. Today, after two hot days, it's back. San Francisco is cold again. Just the way I like it.

Comments

[michelchagall.livejournal.com]

Growing up in San Jose I spent summers doing my impression of a naked skydiver when I tried to sleep during summer nights. 70% of why I always longed to live here in SF had to do with the climate. Now that I have a butch job that has me swinging in scaffolding like a lemur half the time I am especially grateful for milder summer weather with afternoon breezes.

[lastwater.livejournal.com]

Ha! Ha! Yes! Growing in Western Colorado I waited and waited for the cloudy rainy days to come and ease my aching, sunbleached head. I moved to Portland to fulfill that fantasy of watching clouds hover all day long. If I'd really understood the weather system of the bay area, I may have wound up there instead. I appreciate the sun now (got this great big hat), but still prefer the safety of clouds.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

agree totally. sf isn't made for 80-degree weather. i do enjoy the hot weather when it comes, but i'm also glad to see it go away.

[magpiesf.livejournal.com]

much as i loved the foggy days in sf, growing up in socal instilled in me a firm belief that weather in july ought to be sunny - and i dont mean fog-burning-off-at-11-and-moving-back-in-at-3 "sunny". people may talk smack about the practically year-round threat of rain here in portland, but i have to say the lack of the 3-month-long foggy transition period between spring and summer is definitely a big appeal for me. i love foggy weather, and i love overcast weather, but ill take a "partly cloudy" (ie "hey look theres a cloud or two in the sky!") summery day over a "sunny" day thats really a 4-hour window of sun on a foggy day... :)

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

Oh oh! Your post makes me really jealous I don't live in SF. (My own damn fault, too. Sigh.)

[nina-preciosa.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the tropics when "leaving-for-school-time weather" meant you had your hair pasted to your forehead by humidity and your all-cotton uniform was already starting to get wet with perspiration. I hated it - every step of the way. Ever since I can remember, I felt uneasy in the heat.We used to spend our weekends at the beach where I'd camp in the water right upon awakening - my parents had to practically drag me out of the water for a meal; the ocean water under the hot sun was the only real refuge from the blasted weather, still too hot at the beach, even in the shade.

San Francisco weather sure is a refuge. Nothing like this week's heat wave to remind me yet again to not take our natural air conditioning for granted.

Three cheers to the Fog! Hip! Hip!...(you know the rest)

[jwz.livejournal.com]

I always say, San Francisco doesn't have a beach it has a shore. A beach has swimmers and bikinis and vinegar fries; a shore is a cold, rocky place where the rocks bump into the water. "Hey!" the San Franciscans all say, "let's take the one nice day of the year and fuck it up by going to the once place in town where we know we're going to freeze our asses off!"

I've been here for 18 years, and I still wish it was 15 degrees warmer on average. Back in the Blighted East, I grew up with the seasons oscillating between 90° and 90% humidity, and -10°: the kind of weather where ice crystals grow in your eyebrows. Greasy black snow in the winter, and a dead gray sky 360 days of the year. I never, ever need to see snow again as long as I live, but I love it hot.

I love almost everything about San Francisco but the weather. The weather in this city is only what I'd call "good" about twenty days a year.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

riiiiiight. that's why they call it the Jersey Shore. And why Ocean Beach has miles of beutiful, not-rocky sand

If you haven't swam in the NorCal Pacific without a wetsuit (I used to say "in the Winter" but I'll relax that in my old age), your residency should be revoked.

[jwz.livejournal.com]

Feh, Ocean Beach is a lie.

I've been in the water in Santa Cruz, but it'd take restraints and violence to get me in the water up here.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Dude, SoCal is calling you.

[jwz.livejournal.com]

Only weather-wise. I've learned to live with the tradeoff.

wetsuit? no way.

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

I live 3 miles from the coast and it's just torture for me, who loves nothing more than bobbing in the ocean for hours ( Jones Beach...)

One October the water warmed up here( maybe 60 deg?)and I swam in it until I could no longer feel any of my extremities. It was glorious.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about the weather in SF. When it is sunny and mild down in the south bay, I am very happy to have it and would rather be there, enjoying driving with the top down. But I have quickly lost the tolerance for heat that I built up in Florida. This week has been uncomfortable down south. When we came up Wednesday for the Giants game, I was miserable in the heat. Last night, when we got up here and it was cool, breezy, and foggy, I was very happy about it.

I don't like heat, but I like sunny days is where I guess I am at.

[jette.livejournal.com]

It doesn't feel "right" when it's too hot here - it's like a cold heat. It's hot but the preternaturalness of it all gives me goosebumps. It's not that soul-warming feeling you get down south from being in the desert air. The San Francisco stinky sewer thing makes it So Not Worth It anyway, even if you don't have migraines triggered by high pressure systems.

Ocean Beach and Baker Beach are definitely beaches - you can too swim there, and there's girls-in-bikinis aplenty. Anything much north of Stinson, though, not like a "beach" anymore.

I'd totally live south of Point Conception in a heartbeat if it weren't for the smog and all the people.

great, now I'm crying for summers lost...

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

I've lived here for 25 years and I don't think I'll ever get used to the months and months of no rain all summer.
I love nothing more than a heat breaking thunderstorm; sitting on the porch watching it come and drinking High Life.

Oh, and lightning bugs.

Re: great, now I'm crying for summers lost...

[adjibouti.livejournal.com]

I'm so right there with you, Sarah!

I'm back home in NY and there was a thunderstorm during my craft fair this past Saturday. All the other vendors were bummed and I was so happy!! There's nothing I love better than NYC summer rain. I'm psyched that I don't have to work on Wednesday when the next storm rolls in to town...

[tuliphead.livejournal.com]

I grew up in Phoenix where summer starts in April and means most days are over 100 degrees, until October or so. I used to walk to school and work in that heat. When I didn't have to be somewhere, the only relief was in the swimming pool or in a cool dark house with the a/c blasting. One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was to swim or take a cold shower, and before drying off, lie naked under my bedroom ceiling fan... the most awesome way to cool off.

Now I sometimes miss evenings in the desert where you could hang out all night in a tshirt and shorts; in the city and suburbs, where asphalt and concrete and roof tiles held the heat until late into the night, the air cooled off but the city stayed warm. I also miss the late-summer monsoons, where in the afternoon, the heat of the day would sort of melt into a thickness in the air and the strong tang of ozone. Giant fortress clouds would roll in on a strong wind and begin to dump rain right around 5pm. You could almost set your watch to it. The lightning and thunder were spectacular.

I love cold SF weather, I love the gray and the fog because they are the perfect antithesis of the scorching, unyielding sun of my childhood. It will never be 108 degrees here, ever, and I really love that.

[clynne.livejournal.com]

My parents operated on the scarcity values of their youths though so when it was sunny, you couldn't waste the day. ... Many a summer day was spent trying to find a place to hide from my parents so I could finish a book.

I never thought of it as a "scarcity" thing. Hm. My mom and dad used to punish me by taking away reading privileges ... and one of the fairly common infractions that caused this particular punishment was "sitting outside reading after having explicitly being told to go *play.*"

Scarcity gives it a different perspective.