Visibility is poor as we come into land. That's because California is on fire.

One thing you can say about San Francisco is that…it’s honest? You will find yourself walking to the Financial District (abbreviated to FiDi in the California fashion, because of course it is). And you will find yourself walking by people on electric scooters, people having deep conversations about ‘their product guy’, and people carrying branded backpacks for local food delivery services. You’ll walk past fancy restaurants, the Alcatraz landings, and bars where they will happily charge you three figures for a shot of bourbon if you’re silly enough to think it’s a good idea.

You’ll also walk past people carrying their lives in trolleys, people searching through bins, and lines of mildewing duvets that occasionally twitch as you go by. There’s no attempt to hide what we (far too) optimistically call late capitalism.

And then you turn right on Mission and you’re looking up at the skyscrapers of Salesforce, Wells Fargo, and the Transamerica Pyramid. All this is what’s supposedly one of the most progressive cities in the country.

So all in all, my recent brief visit to SF hasn’t really changed my view of the place much.

Otherwise, much of a holding pattern this week. Meanwhile, I may have spent the past two weeks complaining about Ohio’s BMV transfer process, but things back down in NC seem much worse at the moment…