Dave Eggers on San Francisco

From A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

... but of course there is no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. it's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons. why not pink, purple, rainbow, gold? what color for a biker bar on 16th, near the highway? plum. plum. the light that is so strong and right that corners are clear, crisp, all glass blinding- stilts and buttresses and turrets- the remains of various highways- rainbow windsocks- a sexual sort of lushness to the foliage. only intermittently does it seem like an actual place of residence and commerce, with functional roads and sensible buildings. all other times it's just whimsy and faith. just driving to and from marny's, in the castro, is epic, this hill and that hill- oh, the sorrow of flat, straight illinois!- this vista and that, always the hills, the curves, the maybe our brakes will fail- it's always a kind of adventure in faded technicolor, starring a vast cast of brightly dressed losers."