…AKA this election year
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REWRITE FRIDAY!
From: March 10, 2009
Secret Cities: San Francisco
The basic concept behind this is that every large city has a second, secret city existing inside it…sort of underlying it or existing in a dimension that overlaps ours. This secret city does not register on most peoples consciousness. To them, that bakery on the corner is just a bakery like any other.
But for a select group of folks, that bakery looks different. The name is different…the products it sells are decidedly more upscale…the interior is laid out differently…and they also sell handguns that you won’t find in your average gun store.
The people who can interact with the secret city come in several flavors:
Noobs, who have only just become aware of the different city. You can spot them because they are either staring in wide eyed wonder, or asking directions.
Tourists, who know about it and use it as a sort of playground/vacation spot. To be honest, a Tourist is just a Noob on their 3rd or 4th visit.
Splitters, are sometimes from the real city, but more often Steppers who spend about equal time in both cities.
Steppers, who are native to the secret city, but spend some of their time in the public city. The amount of time they spend varies, with many of them spending very little time outside the Secret City.
Finally, there are Citizens, the people who are native to the secret city and for whom the “real” San Francisco doesn’t exist. They know it’s there, but can never see it.
Secret San Francisco has some decidedly strange shit going on that the original doesn’t (and that’s saying something), like people who aren’t 100% homo sapiens any more, others who never were homo sapiens, practitioners of weird science and/or the occult, and maybe some people with low level superpowers.
On the other hand, it doesn’t have much overall crime, there is no poverty or hunger, politics is outwardly always polite and simple, and the environment is healthy. Most Citizens will tell you that Secret San Francisco is this way because it has The Mayor.
The Mayor is the heart and soul of San Francisco made flesh. Well, at least partly flesh. Originally, The Mayor took the form of Emperor Joshua Norton I, but later incorporated aspects of everyone from Mark Twain to a Chinese shopkeeper to a wealthy socialite to columnist Herb Caen to a hippie and several more distinctly San Franciscan characters. He, or sometimes she, is everything that is good and decent and fun and goofy about the City By The Bay.
If you want everything bad about The City, which is a long list, that would be The Boss. Never quite as strong or as focused as The Mayor, The Boss is still a power to be reckoned with. You could call him (never her) a Criminal Mastermind, but that would be rather limiting. The Boss has too many interests to be just a mere criminal. Oddly and perhaps inexplicably, most of his bigger and badder plans involve his many dealings in the Real Bay Area.
As far as size goes, the secret city is maybe half the size, both population-wise and area-wise, of the public city. There is a whole lot more parkland and undeveloped land there, along with the associated wildlife. Sadly, only Citizens, Splitters and Steppers will ever see that part of the city.
Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, animals can see both cities, which goes a long way towards explaining those spooky times when your dog or cat seems to be looking, and perhaps growling, intently at something you can’t see.
If you are looking to try stumbling your way into the secret city, you might try wandering around Chinatown, Castro Street, the Tenderloin or Market Street downtown.
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