“I think that I want to live in Nob Hill, Russian Hill or North Beach,” someone would say. “Those seem like really cool areas.”

Then slowly deep scorn would pass across my face. I am not sure why there is some kind of derision. The kind that expresses my belief this person is ignorant…and yet I allow myself to be so narrow-minded.

This is not to say that I completely and utterly love the Mission. In fact, there are times that I have thought to move out. But I keep the sharp tongue in and suggest that Potrero Hill, Mission and Noe Valley are all great places.

When looking for apartments, I saw a large room with an included parking space in the Western Addition/Fillmore District. The roommates had lived there for a little over a year. When I told them that I was temporarily working in the Mission, one of them offered to pick me up.

He said, “Oh, I work near there! You mean 2nd and Mission?”

I narrowed my eyes slightly and said over the phone “No it’s in the Mission, you know like 22nd and Mission. That area…”

“I don’t know where that is…”

The room was huge and space was ample. The rent was surprisingly cheap. The roommates were normal except for one thing. They did not know anything outside their neighborhood and where they worked.

One said, “I went to the Mission once. A friend took me there. It was weird.”

There are people I still meet like that. The kind that don’t show interest in knowing their city. I don’t claim that I am a Mission-ite, never leaving this neighborhood. I go out to the Sunset and Richmond regularly. But then there are the classic San Francisco neighborhoods. The kind where I think people are trapped inside their hills, their apartments. At least it’s not as worse as the Soma apartments near the caltrain and ballpark where they think that a city means to live near Panera, Safeway and Borders. “I love living here,” they say as they drink coffee from Seattle’s Best and a sandwich from Asqew Grill.