Shivering in July

(Mark Twain didn't actually write the quote you're thinking of, by the way)

It’s been such a cold summer in San Francisco that I took a picture of the sun after feeling it for the first time in weeks. Of course the only reason I was even able to capture it is because I caught it in a brief respite from mostly cloudy skies, right before the fog rolled in from the West. I have a rule that I tell anyone visiting in the months traditionally understood as “summer” throughout North America exactly three times to pack as if they’re going on a trip in the fall.

“You’re just soft because you live in California now, I’m sure it’s not that bad in July.”

“Everybody is having a heat wave now, it can’t really be that cold out there!”

“It says it’ll be 65 degrees the whole week, that sounds pretty nice!”

Alright, add one more novelty 🌉SAN FRANCISCO🌉 sweatshirt to your collection, no big deal.

During the summer, the weather is such an anomaly that it veers into absurdity: Sometimes, I’ll catch myself wearing a hat and scarf on, like, July 12th, and I can’t help but chuckle. It does feel a little like a collective inside joke we share on this tiny peninsula on the very edge of the continent. Cross a bridge and go a few miles east and you remember how summer is supposed to be. But on this little tiny piece of land, where we can get awakened by a flock of parrots and listen to foghorns like a lullaby before the fog tucks us in at night, we get to shiver in the middle of July. Never been anywhere like it.

To say “San Francisco doesn’t have a summer” requires a few asterisks after it: It comes when you least expect it, and in late September/October, and (usually) in a short burst around February or so. We might get a taste of sunny, 70 degree and above temperatures in days smattered throughout the spring, but usually just enough to tease us into anticipating summer when everyone else experiences it. This might be where my status as a transplant comes in, because I think hot summers have been ingrained in me from a young age. A core memory in the contemporary parlance, if you will. I’ve grown used to it after a decade in SF, but it recently dawned on me that I have traded the seasonal affective disorder that usually comes in the winter for feeling a little gloomy in the summer. If I think a bit longer on it, I could probably come up with my own witticism about how you might think you can outrun the winter blues but it’ll just catch up to you in the summer. But they’d probably just end up giving Mark Twain credit for it anyway.