Self-Centered Miniature Universes

I finally got back on the horse and rode my bike in on Tuesday. It was gorgeous, fantastic, and I felt fabulous. But in the process I rediscovered that commuting bicyclists tend to be assholes. Case in point: the lack of a friendly nod. When I ride my bike to work, I feel in some way part of a community that for whatever reason (to exercise, to save money, to save the planet) has opted to sweat it out on a bike rather than relax in a car or bus. This community is a myth! Cyclists rarely respond to my "hello" or even when I say it's a beautiful day at a red light. I'm not expecting a deep and rewarding friendship, but I would like to see something, to feel like we're together on this.

So, on the way home on Tuesday, I conducted a test. I gave the nod to each and every cyclist I crossed paths with on the Golden Gate Bridge. To be fair, my timing was a little off at first, so a few cyclists didn't see me nod (and thus couldn't be expected to nod back, although there was still plenty of room for them to INITIATE a nod, heaven forbid). Either way, I rode past about 20 people, and none of them nodded back.

This isn't the end of the world. But it's indicative of larger problems with today's big cities, which are that people are engulfed in their own worlds and don't take two seconds out of their day to acknowledge people they don't know (or don't want to know). In a word: unfriendliness. I find this occurrence particularly ironic in San Francisco, where people make such a big deal of being community-oriented and grassroots-centered, where democracy is allegedly vibrant and people are allegedly caring. But after living here for three years, I still have many more friends in New York than in San Francisco, and that's certainly not due to lack of trying (I've joined sports leagues, writing groups, tried to hang with people from work, etc). People just aren't all that outwardly friendly, and getting to really know somebody takes years.

Are San Franciscans too busy? Usually it doesn't seem that way, and it's not hard to clear out a couple hours a week for new people. Are they comfortable with their current friends and not actively looking for more? That's probably part of it. Am I (gasp!) boring or uninteresting or not worth being around? Impossible.

This is a blue state problem we need to work on.