Leaving San Francisco

I felt an urge to get these thoughts out as soon as possible just so I can go on with my day. I’ll split it up into three sections: I love San Francisco, I don’t love San Francisco that much, and I’m moving to Saigon.

I love San Francisco.

This was my dream city for the longest time. I grew up in the South Bay and constantly did day trips up to SF to explore and discover the city. I loved the art and culture here – I felt like it was “my people” more than when I was at home in the South Bay.

I’ve been to Outsidelands just about 6 times now, starting in 2010, back when it was only two days long. I remember smoking weed at the Twin Peaks stage, encompassed by trees as the fog rolled in.

When I just graduated high-school, I joined a startup in Mountain View. We’d take trips up to San Francisco to see what all the hardcore startups were doing and join in hackathons. Does art and technology really coexist in a place like this?

Moving to SF has been a life-changing experience for me. It’s so strange to think that I can walk down the Mission and be able to recognize and say hi to a bunch of baristas, shop owners, security guards, and homeless people. I’ve felt myself slowly sewn into the fabric of the local community and many of the miscellaneous art scenes that exist.

The weather is so beautiful, and biking around the city fills me with awe. I’ve biked to Twin Peaks, I’ve biked up Bernal Heights, I’ve biked across the Golden Gate Park and took the ferry back from Sausalito. I’ve biked down the Great Highway beside Ocean Beach. I’ve biked down the Embarcadero. I’ve ran from the bottom of the Mission district all the way to the Ferry building. I’ve motorcycled through Chinatown. I’ve had a picnic in almost every single park in the city. It’s a damn beautiful city.

I don’t love San Francisco that much.

Most people in San Francisco are hard to talk to. I think other people have different experiences, but this is my own experience. It took me an incredibly long time to find people in my life, and because of how transient the city is, most of those people eventually move away or forced to move because of layoffs. It is a constant churn where the initial friction is just incredibly hard to get over. When I do find the kind, warm and beautiful people, I have to put in a lot of work to keep it going – hosting things can get really stressful, and not a lot of people are willing to host.

It’s hard / long / expensive to get around. Since leaving my tech job, I had to rely less on Uber for getting from place to place. The commute times in San Francisco have averaged to about 40 minutes going a single direction for me, and the bus schedules / transfers are finicky. This means 2 hours are cut from my life and I have to plan everything out with less spontaneity. My life improved a lot since getting my motorcycle.

There feels like an undercurrent of competition in San Francisco, even in artist communities. This is kind of hard to explain. I think that this is a personal problem that I have. I bring this out of people, but it’s so annoying because I don’t consider myself a competitive person. I just want to do things that I feel like are cool. I do think that this is a San Francisco-specific problem, because of the type of people it attracts. It’s a lot of people from prestigious colleges with highly competitive computer science programs who then work really really hard and compete for the best tech jobs in San Francisco. Because a lot of artists in San Francisco are actually just tech workers who do art on the side, they bring this atmosphere of competition into local artists communities. I couldn’t feel it at first, like it was the “Hint water” of competition, but it was super noticeable when I left to visit communities in Tokyo, Montreal, New York and London and couldn’t feel this level of competitiveness.

Finally… Big one… I don’t relate to many people doing tech startups. I am not a hater of technology, I am actually a techno-optimist. I love what technology has done for the world – it’s brought me the internet and video games. I just don’t believe in the “Hackathon Hacker” / grind lifestyle. I’m not wearing a college hoodie, sweatpants, sat at an apartment-turned-hacker house, snorting Adderall, drinking three cups of coffee, and eating Blueprint just to get an AI prompt to be consistent. I am also not into trying to save or change the world – I’m more into helping out my local communities. I legit think AI is really cool and when cryptocurrency came out I also thought it was really cool. These things came out of the community of geeks that I was apart of, but now it’s appropriated by Waterloo computer science graduates and trust fund VC’s who I barely relate to. I also think startups are cool, I think it’s insane to want to try and build your own thing, and I’ve met legit geniuses in startups, but it’s getting so streamlined and diluted as more and more people flood the space. The golden age of cool startups was 2010, and ended maybe in 2016. Tech was still a “counter-culture” kind of thing back then and not hyper-capitalistic corporate America like it is now. Maybe SF always had this gold-rush pull of the most insufferable people, but I don’t think I can take it long term.

Imagine that you discovered a small band or musician, you go to their concerts and you meet other people who have the same music taste as you, these are people who went down the same rabbit hole as you to discover this artist. Then they get one song really big on TikTok and suddenly their small shows are filled with people who you don’t really relate to and are only there for just one song. The community and shared mutual understanding of a small concert is now lost for you.

Why don’t I just isolate myself from the people I find insufferable? Why don’t I find my own community away from these people? Because they’re everywhere in San Francisco. Again, I also love technology. I’ve been programming since I was in elementary school, it’s my main medium for expression. To exist in the field that I love, to be around people that I relate to the most, I also have to be next to people I get absolutely drained by – and the population of these people just keep increasing because SF’s hit song, “Artificial Intelligence Startup” is trending on TikTok.

I also think way too many people are trying to “save” San Francisco which strengthens the narrative that SF is in some kind of terrible doom loop. I actually don’t think it’s in a doom loop – I think it’s just changing. I think SF is fine and it will do fine. However, it is growing into becoming a city that isn’t designed for certain people that currently inhabit it.

Also I don’t like Burning Man, but that’s just, like, because it’s not my vibe.

I’m moving to Saigon, Vietnam

When I landed in Saigon, I fell in love instantly. I think I just really love the South East Asian culture, architecture, and style of living. I also love the humidity and heat, my skin and hair were getting so nice. People are so warm here. It’s so hard to explain, you really just have to visit to see. Vietnamese people fucking grind, they got a 6-day work week, but I also think that Vietnamese people are way more relaxed and they make time to chill out and nhậu.

People are much more friendlier in Vietnam and I found it super easy and casual to meet people or to strike conversation. Yes, there are still lots of people who are cold in Vietnam, but on average I found Vietnamese culture to be vastly friendlier than in San Francisco – and I am talking about the non-tourist spots. And I can also tell you it’s not because I am giving them money – in fact, I got so much free food, alcohol and cigarettes in Vietnam it was insane. I visited what was considered by other tourists as “the ghetto that you should avoid” but was really just a suburb and made friends with Viet families who were surprised I even discovered the place. I mentioned before how hard it is to host things in San Francisco – In Saigon and Hanoi, I was invited to so many little small events or hangouts, there are a lot more people who are willing to put in the effort to host things.

There is a burgeoning art scene in Saigon and there are really cool people doing cool stuff everywhere. I felt like I was in Vietnamese L.A. because I would run into musicians at odd places or pass by people filming a TV drama. There’s also a DJ and hard techno scene that’s been in development for quite a few years, which I’d love to be adjacent to. Just check out V2X Magazine for more insight on the culture that’s coming up in Vietnam. I really do think that Vietnam is having a moment and I want to be there to see it rise. I would also love to be a bridge for bringing in the art/tech space to Vietnam, as well as to find Viet artists to collaborate with on my next games.

Finally, it’s a whole different country! I never lived outside the country before and I would love to try sometime before I die. This is the perfect time for me, and all the cards are in my favor to make this move without any resistance. I speak a little bit of Vietnamese, and I want to become even more fluent. I love Vietnamese food and look forward to discovering more and more dishes, especially because Vietnamese cuisine has evolved separate from Vietnamese American cuisine. There’s so much more new stuff that not even my parents have had before.

There are still problems though. I found a lot of annoying expats in Vietnam who are basically just horny passport bros, but it’s so much easier to spot and avoid them. I will also be seen as an expat, and that might be a problem later, but I’ve felt nothing but warmth from everyone I’ve met. Even though there is an acceptance of LGBTQ+ in Saigon, their view towards gender and sexuality is still stuck in 2012 – but it’s getting there. There are also a lot of infrastructural issues, but I’m okay with having to buy potable water and taking a Grab everywhere I go.

I think problems exist in every city. Replace the word “Techie” with “Expat” and you will find similar problems in Saigon. Replace “Expat” with “Finance Bros” and you will find similar problems in New York. It’s about which problems I am willing to deal with more than others, as well as learning more about myself. I might not like Saigon and it might not like me. I might find that the problems I’ve been running into are actually everywhere. I also might find that the problems are easier to deal with because what I gain outweighs what I lose. But… I won’t know until I move there.