SF is the worst city in America for a breakup. Here's why.
Published 1:53 pm, Tuesday, April 24, 2018
At the end of the day, it's a small city, so get ready to see your exes everywhere... San Francisco is a city of about 865,000, and never does that number feel smaller than when you're trying to avoid one person and can't stop running into them at every bookstore, bar and dim sum spot you've ever loved. What's a broken-up couple to do when they share the same haunts and there aren't enough good dives to go around? My strategy thus far has been to literally hide, but I am open to your suggestions, dear reader.
lessAt the end of the day, it's a small city, so get ready to see your exes everywhere... San Francisco is a city of about 865,000, and never does that number feel smaller than when you're trying to avoid one
... more...Especially along SF's few high-functioning transit corridors. At times, BART and SF's most popular bus lines can take on all the worst qualities of a college reunion (people you used to be intimately involved with and all of their friends, occasional screams, someone peeing in the corner) with none of the qualities that make college reunions bearable (beer). This is the real reason why we need a second transbay tube.
less...Especially along SF's few high-functioning transit corridors. At times, BART and SF's most popular bus lines can take on all the worst qualities of a college reunion (people you used to be intimately
... moreMoving is a special hell here. Between the impossibility of finding a reasonably priced apartment and movers so swamped with people trying to leave that there's a U-Haul shortage, leaving the digs you share with a partner is especially brutal in SF. And if you try to lug your stuff from one place to the next by yourself, have fun with all the hills and impossible parking.
lessMoving is a special hell here. Between the impossibility of finding a reasonably priced apartment and movers so swamped with people trying to leave that there's a U-Haul shortage, leaving the digs you share
... moreUh oh, now you have to date tech bros. There is something uniquely dispiriting about taking a walk post-breakup and coming to grips with how much of the dating pool is clad in basketball shorts and zipping past you on Bird scooters with nary a care in the world, off to spend some of their six-figure salary buying some bulletproof coffee or Dragonchain or heaven help us, a Onewheel.
lessUh oh, now you have to date tech bros. There is something uniquely dispiriting about taking a walk post-breakup and coming to grips with how much of the dating pool is clad in basketball shorts and zipping past
... moreAnd the apps make everyone too picky. It's an inevitable side-effect of swiping culture that everyone thinks they can do better. Getting the self-esteem boost you crave after a breakup can be challenging when even the scooter people are scooting along to see what else is out there.
lessAnd the apps make everyone too picky. It's an inevitable side-effect of swiping culture that everyone thinks they can do better. Getting the self-esteem boost you crave after a breakup can be challenging when
... moreEverybody else is getting married, apparently. Long a bastion of people who married late or not at all, San Francisco recently experienced a huge surge in the frequency of nuptials. The marriage rate has increased a staggering 52 percent since the 2007-2008 fiscal year, the assessor-recorder's office said in February. And with it, a 52 percent increase in our fears of dying alone.
lessEverybody else is getting married, apparently. Long a bastion of people who married late or not at all, San Francisco recently experienced a huge surge in the frequency of nuptials. The marriage rate has
... moreYou know that person in a group of friends who's always, always, always dating someone, to the point where something might be a little wrong with them? Yeah, I'm that person. I did the math recently and I've spent a third of my time on this Earth in serious long-term relationships.
As something of a next-level serial monogamist, I've experienced more than my fair share of breakups, mostly scattered across four U.S. cities: New York, N.Y.; Princeton, N.J.; San Antonio, Texas; and now, quite recently, San Francisco.
MORE DATING: Does your job make you sign a 'love contract'?
Even though the SF breakup was the most mature, mutually compassionate and adult I've ever had, it was still, holistically speaking, also the absolute worst.
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“My wrists were bound together with iron chains,” said the man who calls himself Abu Firas. “They put me onto an iron bar under the ceiling so that my feet were two centimetres above the floor.” “They hung me on my hands from the ceiling,” Abdul Karim Rihawi told Euronews.“They beat me with an iron stick.” “My finger felt like it was the size of a football,” said Yazan Awad. “I felt my arms were very long because my shoulders became dislocated (by this torture). I looked and saw my arms far away. “ Sometimes, when emotions run high, Nahla Osman takes her clients for a walk alongside the river Main. Osman was born in Germany to parents from the Syrian city of Aleppo. She helps victims of torture. She and her brother run a law firm in the German city of Rüsselsheim. She has compiled hundreds of witness reports detailing torture on a massive scale inside Syrian prisons and will file criminal complaints using the principle of universal jurisdiction which Germany enforces. Why have so few survivors decided to go to court? “Many are still waiting for family reunification,” Osman told Euronews. “If family members are still in Syria, those in Germany are afraid of taking legal action. If they trigger a case here, the Syrian regime would imprison or kill their relatives.” Euronews reporter Hans Von Der Brelie met two people who say they survived Syrian prison torture: co-founder of the Syrian Human Rights League Abdul Karim Rihawi, and a civil rights activist from Damascus, who didn’t want to be named. He calls himself “Abu Firas” and is speaking out for the first time. “They had an electric instrument and they put electric cables under my toes, under my arms and on my thumbs,” Abu Firas described. “You still can see traces from that procedure on my thumbs. Then they turned the current on and off, on and off, again and again.” Abu Firas wants to submit his case to the German public prosecutor and wants arrest warrants to be issued for high-ranking Syrian officials. “They tortured me with the car-tyre method, squeezing my body with bent arms into the tyre up to the knees so I could not move,” he alleges. “They hit me with a piece from a tank engine, a kind of a V-belt… After the first two blows, my body felt paralysed. I just hoped to see the son my wife was pregnant with.” “Reconciliation with all the sectarian groups in Syria is possible, yes, but not with this criminal regime,” Firas said. Abu’s friend Abdul Karim Rihawi invited Euronews to the hotel room he’s called home for more than two years. This is where he has been gathering evidence with his civil human rights network, which is still working undercover in Syria. Euronews asked if the photos shown during our visit included people who had tortured, he replied: “A lot of them, many of them: torturing… a lot of crime… they committed a lot of crime… For that reason, we are asking the German authorities to take action again. “We make a list of these murderers. Until now we have six lists, we presented this lists to the German government… There are at least 7,000 war criminals (from Syria) in Europe but the highest number of them (are residing) in Germany, especially they arrived after the massive arrival of refugees in 2015. “That’s also what makes me very angry: they are enjoying their life here in Germany and they have all the benefit from the law and they are war criminal.” The war crime unit at the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation told Euronews that they have 4,300 reports from Syrian and Iraqi survivors, resulting in 43 person-related investigations. But it’s difficult to collect hard evidence. “Torture in Syria is very normal, very systemic,” said Abdul Karim Rihawi, co-founder of the Syrian Human Rights League. “It is an abnormal thing if you go to the prison and nobody tortures you… They beat me with cables, with their hands, with their legs… When they get us to the toilet we had to pass through the dead bodies on the ground. Oh my God, that was really terrible…All the night you still hear the voices of the people beg
Media: EuronewsSlogging through the aftermath pointed me toward one glaring, admittedly hyberbolic conclusion: San Francisco is the most annoying city in America in which to end a relationship.
Click through the gallery above to read why
ALSO: Is SF a hotspot for singles? WalletHub says yes
Why stay, if San Francisco makes life's transitions so much harder? It's a hard question.
We all have complicated relationships with this city — its dysfunction, its challenges, its many wild beauties. There's lots to love here, lots we want to fix and more we do not want to lose. Leaving is always bittersweet.
Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at fioannou@sfchronicle.com and follow her on Twitter