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Vice Blog

LONDON - SAN FRANCISCO AT A GLANCE

San Francisco has:

- without the faintest shadow of a doubt the most annoying cyclists of anywhere in existence. Twice now I've been hailed down by some soft-spoken dreadlocked douchenozzle to discuss traffic rules while going 15 in the Mission. If this was New York or LA I could give you a friendly tap, flip you off and be on my way with a clean conscience. But because it's SF and you remind me of a nice Canadian I met in France once, I have to idle and nod and tell you not to cry.

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- weed and coke

- access to the East Bay, and to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Anyone who took anything resembling a science subject at uni will have heard of this place. It was Richard Feynman's stomping ground, and currently oversees some of the most relevant projects in contemporary science. But what they don't tell you is that they have a giant model whale outside for children to play on, and that in the sun it becomes blisteringly hot, and full days can be wasted watching developments unfold. Unrelatedly, it is also a good make-out spot.

- this homeless guy who you can pay to jump out at passersby from behind his own makeshift bush. He's been at it for, gosh, more than fifteen years at this point and watching it never, ever gets old.

San Francisco does not have:

- any recreational drugs whatsoever besides weed and coke. Prove me wrong.

- British tourists. What is it with the ease at which British students can pop over to Hong Kong for a weekend or make a noble attempt at the collective recolonization of South America, but the odds of Aloysius King Arthur Westminster III having visited the west coast of America are incredibly slim?

- any consistent documentation of parties or counter-cultures. Which is disappointing when one considers that San Francisco is the gayest city in the world, with a scandalous and boyish mayor-about-town, a bizarro wealthy-blogger-party-scene, and hipsters with actual wolves. I have no picture to back this up, you'll have to trust that I saw it once.

- those balls bouncing down the streets. Stop asking me that.