Who are the people in your neighborhood?

I’m con­tin­u­al­ly amazed at how liv­ing in my neigh­bor­hood is actu­al­ly liv­ing in a neigh­bor­hood. This is what urban liv­ing is sup­posed to be. I’ve lived in sev­er­al neigh­bor­hoods here in San Fran­cis­co, and it’s only since my lat­est move that I’ve stum­bled upon this non-sep­a­rate expe­ri­ence of liv­ing somewhere.

What I mean by that is that it sim­ply does not fail. I can­not walk down Mar­ket Street between Cas­tro and Church with­out encoun­ter­ing some­one I know.

The only annoy­ance is that here in the Cas­tro, shak­ing some­one’s hand is seen as dis­tant and unfriend­ly. I’m sor­ry, but I just don’t want to hug every casu­al acquain­tance I encounter on the side­walk. I think that Emi­ly Post will back me up on this; a hearty hand­shake ought to be friend­ly enough for most social encounters.

Oh well. I think I can put “too many hugs” on my list of lux­u­ry problems.