put my finger on it

Today I finally put my finger on what makes living on the peninsula feel so significantly different than living in San Francisco. It's not just the weather—the lack of fog, the presence of warm nights, the chorus of crickets chirping outside my open window. It's not just the surroundings, which here are flat, which here include more grass than a San Franciscan can ever imagine seeing outside of a park, which here include squirrels and raccoons and other critters, which here include driveways, oh so blessed many driveways, such easy street parking, that I can overlook the fact that the cars filling all the parking spots are BMWs. That the place itself is different is not surprising; the thing that strikes me is just how much the difference is also in the people. And what gets me about them is not that they are all so wealthy, though they are; it's not that they are all so preppy, though they are; it's that so many of them—or any of them—are over the age of 45. If one thing more than even the fog and the hills makes San Francisco a unique place in my mind, it's the youth of the its inhabitants, so many of them ranging in age from wee little guy to parent of wee little guy. Even in Noe Valley, aka family central, my oldest neighbors had kids in high school. Anyone older than that I rarely saw.