The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco by Gary Kamiya

The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco Reviews

• 
  Lisa Vegan

  Understandably, where I am there is a long library queue for this book so when it was ready for pick up I had to borrow it or wait a very long time to read it. I was probably more in the mood for a novel or a non-fiction book with a single long narrative. I love biographical essays but I think I was not in the mood for them at the time I was reading this book.
  
  There are many contributors. Some of the pieces are great and some I was tempted to skim and some are good or good enough. Most I’m glad that I read.
  
  What the whole of the collection did was confirm to me what I already knew but maybe more so: that San Francisco has changed and that I haven’t changed with it.
  
  I did feel represented in some of these accounts. Most of them I did not. Of course, San Francisco has ALWAYS been many San Franciscos/multifaceted. Most of the contributors are not San Francisco natives and many were not residents of San Francisco for that long, relatively speaking. I would have appreciated even more lifelong or at least decades long San Franciscans being included.
  
  It was enjoyable to read about others’ experiences.
  
  What I did love about this book is that while with most of the essays I caught only glimpses of “my San Francisco” the essays got me thinking about how in my nearly seven decades relationship with the city I’ve also known and experienced many versions of San Francisco.
  
  I did particularly appreciate the essays written by Stuart Schuffman, Duffy Jennings, Grant Faulkner, Gary Kamiya, and especially loved the one by Peter Coyote, and the one by Elizabeth Khuri Chandler because even though she doesn’t talk much about experiencing the city she does talk a lot about Goodreads and that essay happened to be the most effective at getting my understanding about what happened at Goodreads from its inception and especially the reasons for what happened in 2013 and then what also happened six years after that. I should also mention the essays by Ginna Green, Alia Volz, and Larry Smith (husband of
  Piper Kerman.)
  
  Overall, I was left feeling more than a bit melancholy and not feeling the sense of belonging I’d hoped I’d feel, yet I still want all my San Francisco/San Francisco Bay Area friends and all my friends who’ve left the area to read this book. It’s interesting and thought provoking and worth reading. Highly recommended for readers interested in past and present San Francisco!
• 
  Linden

  I really enjoyed Gary Kamiya's two books on San Francisco, so this one seemed promising. It was a huge disappointment; in fact, his intro and essay were the best thing about this collection of whiny and self-centered essays. Everything used to be better, the tech bros ruined everything, baby boomers complain about improper composting, rents are too high, I am discriminated against, my relationship failed...and the list goes on. Maybe it was just aimed at a different audience, but for this reader who enjoys reading about the City By The Bay, it just didn't work.
• 
  Teresa

  This book is the summer selection of the SF Book Club.
  
  What an exasperating read (and listen). Some stories soared and captured the crackle of San Francisco at distinct points in time.  Others induced much eye rolling. From the back patting (I set up non-prof y, I discovered this coffee place all on my own, I hung out at Zeitgeist when it was still cool) to the bitter sounding authors blaming, most recently "tech bros" for "ruining" their versions of SF. Maybe look in the mirror? I think Alia Volz (author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco - check it out) captures it best in Spit Shake by conveying that the SF of one's memories doesn't exist and never really did. It's always changing. The city doesn't owe anybody anything. But SF doesn't need me to defend her. 
  
  Adding to the negatives - the audiobook was a joke. From flat delivery that sounds like Alexa is reading to you to mispronounciations that take you right out of the story. Lake Merced, Bernal Heights, Cafe du Nord, Duboce Triangle.  Palahniuk! For a project so close to the contributors it seems the audio could have used more care and editing. 
• 
  Tom Scott

  To live in San Francisco is to constantly hand wring about what it means to be living in San Francisco—It’s sort of a joke among us transplants (which is most of us) that no matter when you arrived here you’ve already missed it and your experience isn’t really true. I arrived in 1990 and over the next 30+ years, I got married here, bought a house here, had a career here, raised two kids here, and yet I still have this nagging feeling I don’t have a right to belong here. But here I am.
  
  This is a collection of essays from 25 writers musing on about why they either left San Francisco or why they’ve stayed. The writers and their experiences span from the 1960s on but is heavy on 1990s and 2000s nostalgia. There's an unstated hypothesis that the latest influx of tech culture and wealth starting in roughly 2008* has finally and truly killed The City That Knows How.
  
  Maybe. I dunno.
  
  But on a personal note, there’s enough shared nostalgia from the 1990s in these pages to make me finally realize I do, and have always, belonged here and my San Francisco is just as valid as any other San Francisco. (Hey—I remember the Red Man, the White Lady, Bum Jovi, Herb Cain, Live at Leeds, etc., etc., etc.—so get off my back.)
  
  *Perhaps sneakily included as corroborating evidence, the two essays written by tech transplants (including the founder of Goodreads) are truly obnoxious.
• 
  Bianca

  Quite a bittersweet read as I too loved and left San Francisco
• 
  Michael Smith

  Great collection that tackles the complexities of life in the Bay.
• 
  Tara Robinson

  Mixed thoughts on this one. I enjoyed learning more about the history of San Francisco, but by the end of the book, the essays were redundant and incredibly masturbatory for San Francisco. For a lot of these authors, their relationship to San Francisco feels like an emotionally abusive relationship. My favorite essays tended to be the ones that were more critical of the city and how a lot of its “wokeness” is performative. I’m also sad there were no essays that talked about the homeless crisis explicitly; most of them just mentioned it offhand as a “great tragedy.” Same goes for rising rent rates and gentrification — these phenomenon were mentioned as a problem, but ultimately not enough to make people leave because every author had money and can afford to be the few artists that stay in the city. Interesting read, but can’t say I recommend the whole book, only a number of the essays.
• 
  Kala

  As expected in an anthology like this, some of the essays were five star worthy, and others were one star. Gary Kamiya, Michelle Tea, W. Kamau Bell, Elissa Bassist, Peter Coyote, Margaret Cho, Sarah Coglianese, Alysia Abbott, Ginna Green & Alia Volz were all well worth the read, but others made me want to fling the book into the mouth of the Broadway tunnel and yell after it to stop whining.
  
  As noted by other reviewers, the audio book was gravely disappointing. This collection needed to be read by its authors, but barring that, people who would at least pronounce our streets, restaurants, and neighborhoods correctly.
• 
  Anné Jude Anderson

  I thoroughly enjoyed these varied essays on San Francisco, and as I’m one who falls into the “still enamored with the city” camp, the stories by Fayette Hauser, John Law, Duffy Jennings and of course Gary Kamiya tickled me the most. But there are so many of my other favorite local writers found in these pages, including Daniel Handler, Alysia Abbott and Alia Volz, who provide poignant and critical observations of our ever-changing, outrageously unaffordable city by the bay, and I loved their stories too. And finally, those authors who laid bare the racial inequity and segregation of our city, like Kimberly Reyes and Ginna Green, wrote some of the best and most important essays in the book. Out of the 25 essays I liked some more than others, but on the whole I enjoyed them all. The different vantage points across generations and socioeconomic situations makes this a worthy read for any San Franciscan.
• 
  Leah

  Ugh. I love San Francisco. Like many of the contributing authors, I fell in love with her accepting and welcoming environment and non-judgmental style. What I was hoping for in this tome were some “sea stories” about the “good ol” days”, the kind were you’re reminiscing over beers and laughing or sitting enraptured in amazement. 90% of this book is people bitching about how expensive San Fran got, or how the people who came after them ruined it, or how small houses were, or how much money they made there. There wears even a story that barely even talked about SF, but instead was all about this person’s career. Boring and disappointing.
  
  I received a digital ARC as part of a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and honest review.
• 
  Claire Fry

  Finishing this book was like pulling teeth because as a San Francisco native, it was brutal to keep reading different essays on why creatives and artists keep moving away. A few essays were beautifully written and offered borrowed memories of a city I know so well whereas others read like they were just doing Kamiya (the editor) a favor and had nothing meaningful to add except for name-dropping long gone SF cultural institutions.
• 
  Peter Colclasure

  I'm not sure how relevant this book would be to someone from Boston or Missoula, but for me—a resident of the Bay Area—this book hit hard. It's basically every conversation I've had since moving to San Jose in 2012 at any party or bar or barbecue, where the talk inevitably comes around to rents and housing prices and the tech industry and the slow suffocation of the arts. It's basically those conversations, only better. Because every essay in this book expresses things that I've felt a burning yen to say at one point or another over the last decade, but it does so with more eloquence and style that I could ever muster.
  
  Nearly every identity box gets a check mark in these pages. What is like to be a woman in tech? To be Black? Gay? Lesbian? Asian? Rich? Poor? A comedian? An indie rock musician? The founder of a start-up? A struggling writer? Peter Coyote?
  
  I kind of wish I had stock options that were about to vest just so I could buy 4000 copies of this book and hand it out to every single person I know in the Bay Area. Not every essay will be everyone's tea and scone, but if you value good writing, you should love this book. Every sentence is art. And true. And often funny. Reading it was a balm for my specifically-south Bay-existential angst. I can't afford to buy a house. Am I a failure in life? Well, if the logic of the rampant late-stage capitalism that spawned the economic landscape where I live is to be trusted: yes, I am. But so is everyone this side of Elon Musk. So we're in good company.
  
  Quotes:
  
  Nostalgia is history without guilt.
  
  San Francisco is a place with its own death embedded in its history.
  
  To live in the Bay Area is to wonder whether or not to leave.
  
  The funny thing about life is that as you get older, you don’t need to be in an exciting place as much as you need to have once been in an exciting place.
• 
  Doug

  Only not a 5 due to a bit of a repetitive feel. Great variety of styles and perspectives on the whole, though. It captured the best and worst kinds of people and often underlined that SF is a city of change and the doom loop narrative we're currently digesting is one that's been repeated many times over the years.
• 
  Whitneye

  There were only a couple of stories in this book that I found enjoyable. It was a slog to get through…
• 
  Allie Cho

  Wanted this to be more of a love letter than it was. Probably would have been more prepared if i read the summary on the back lmao
• 
  Chantal Kloth

  incredibly bitter-sweet. i love this city that will always feel like home so much
• 
  John Marr

  In one of the better essays in this SF bitchfest, Daniel Handler points out that "....people spouting nonsense is not a new phenomenon in San Franciso..." There's no shortage of that here in this intensely disappointing volume. The standard essay consists of some artist/musician type whining about how the techies have ruined everything; a few even make cringeworthy apologies for their sin of hiring on with the enemy. Of course, when you read Elizabeth Khuri Chandler's (Goodreads founder!) entry, a few thousand words of enititled white woman whining about her First World problems that could just as easily gone done in Palo Alto, Laguna Beach, or wherever the overpaid congregate, you'll understand they're not entirely wrong. But too many writers here display an inability to accept the inevitability and reality of change and, on a more personal level, the fact that they are no longer 25.
  
  Luckily Gary Kmiya, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea and Alia Volz capture the changed and the unchanged dynamic San Francisco; Kamiya even hits the "trade offs" nail on the head. And John Law makes a key point how much of the San Francisco art/music/weirdo scene utterly lacks any sense of self-criticism. Long-suffering attendess of gigs and events can rejoice, if only someone would listen.
  
  While much of the writing in the book is four & five star quality, it averages out to two stars. Too bad, I really hoped for more. (less)
• 
  Maximilian Itsikson

  Simultaneously loved and hated this book because half of the authors I could relate to and the other half are literally part of the problem
• 
  Alvin

  This collection of personal essays has it all: terrific writing (some of it REALLY terrific), a multiplicity of viewpoints (most of them pretty right on), and great subject matter (San Francisco!). Some pieces conjured bygone scenes and/or articulated nuances about life in SF with such skill I wanted to stand up and applaud. Only two pieces actually annoyed me. Definitely read this if you're at all interested in SF, la vie bohème, gentrification, or psycho-geography.
• 
  Jeanine

  Really enjoyed this book. So great to hear such a diverse group of people talking about our beloved city. Things have really changed here in the last few years, yet I cannot think of any place as beautiful as the Bay Area.
• 
  ✨ Ally

  Great read for those of us currently or in the past enamored by the great instant city.
• 
  Sara

  Some of these essays were amazing