11 Sep Cheese-baconsauce

Everything I see here gets the label ‘American’ or ‘different from home’. Cheese-baconsauce to put on your hamburger: so American! A small coffee into which I can easily fit my arm: typical. Hearing ‘I was like, yeah’ constantly: just like on television. And all the homeless people in the streets: so different from Amsterdam, where I come from.

Yesterday I was walking around Dolores Park and it hit me: the things I see here, do not happen because I’m here, I am just there when things happen. There is no director that organizes an authentic American experience for me. ‘Send that homeless guy to her, now she must go to Chinatown, and let’s take her to a baseball game after this burrito’. The city is here and all I have to do is shut the door behind me and go explore. An encounter between me and San Francisco. It’s in my hands. The last couple of weeks I walked around like a tourist. I looked at things with my Dutch glasses. I took pictures of weird people, interesting buildings and new friends. But part of settling here is starting to see things as a San Franciscan instead of a Dutch girl. Because that’s what I am now: an inhabitant of San Francisco. A weird realization. Things are not ‘American’ anymore, but just: part of my daily life. And the most shocking about that is: cheese-baconsauce is real.