SAN FRANCISCO EDITION

Green Apple

She carries a scrap of fabric in her pocket at all times. It’s from her favorite sundress that she wore as a child. She has cobbled every shoe that she owns at least once—partly because she can’t afford new shoes, and partly because repairing the soles by hand makes her happier than she ever could have imagined. She rolls her eyes at people who run for exercise. She writes stunning Yelp reviews.

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The Booksmith

Graphic design was always just a hobby, but one of his rock-climbing buddies is launching a new photo-sharing app (or a food delivery app, they’re still figuring it out) and they’ll pay him in stock options to design it. One of the crusties who sleeps on the corner of Haight and Cole is an old classmate from his small high school in Walnut Creek, and when they bump into each other it’s awkward. Like, really awkward.

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City Lights

He rents an apartment in Chinatown. He says it can be exciting, sometimes, to share a bathroom with five men who don’t speak English. All he ever wanted was enough income to keep interning at Poetry magazine. He’s been scrawling his phone number on pieces of trash—receipts, bus transfers, napkins soiled with dumpling sauce—and dropping them all over the city. So far, no calls.

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Book Passage

She never planned to give up her career as a Senior Vice President at Deloitte. But after her husband’s hedge fund took off, the idea of making money started to feel boring, you know? She consumes a staggering amount of NPR. She doesn’t garden, but she reads about gardens, and she has some constructive criticism of her neighbors’ gardens that she is keeping to herself, for now. If she ever cheated on her husband, it would be with Hillary Clinton.

– Brian Hurley