In a city of transplants, my friend Jane is that rare creature, a native San Franciscan. She traces her family five generations, back to the Gold Rush.
And like her parents and grandparents, she has lived her entire life in the Outer Mission. Back when San Francisco was a city of ethnic neighborhoods, this was working-class Irish, corner grocers, pubs and parochial schools.
One Sunday, I asked Jane for a tour of the block where she grew up. She laughingly showed me the laundromat that's now a sleek $5-per-cup coffee bar. That chic home decor boutique used to be a corner store. The hip hair salon was a shoe repair, the microbrewery a locksmith.
Those million-dollar condos may be new, but for Jane the street still has memories.
"See that sidewalk? When I was six, I tripped there and I still have the mark on my knee," she told me, pointing to a faint scar.