I’m first-­ generation, nothing special; I know people whose roots stretch much deeper. But I still see newcomers as an invading force—here to colonize, pillage, vanquish. The gold rush all but obliterated the Ohlone. Hippies displaced Black families from the Haight. The gay liberation crowd took over the Castro. Techies overran the home I remember. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the balance again. Businesses that had been around my whole life ran desperate fundraising campaigns. Many went dark forever, dragging chunks of our collective culture into the murk of history. Change is always violent to that which came before.

The city is less familiar every day. The extreme poverty in our expanding tent cities is heart-­wrenching. And I’m irked by the entitlement, the flashy cars, the souped-­up strollers. And yet, those strollers carry San Franciscans, homegrown sons and daughters like me. They may come of age feeling inseparable from this new San Francisco, as I felt inseparable from the version that made me. Someday they’ll be usurped, too. Understanding that your hometown thrives on cycles of mass migration and collapse doesn’t make the loss less keen. That bitter backward glance is part of growing up in a chameleon place.