The San Francisco Green Card

The story behind it is simple: I’m not from here, but have lived here long enough to say that I’m a San Franciscan.  I’d joke, when only here for a few years but already steeped in history, that after ten years I could apply for my green card.
Having come from a city where no one was a native—people moved there to become something—I was an anomaly.  Here, I was just another emigré, lucky to have made it this far.

This is a city where people move for so many reasons: because it holds promise or challenge (and often more of both than they’d like); because it is not New York; and that most ridiculous but most true reason of all—because it is beautiful.  Every city has a mythology, but at times it’s more apparent here than anywhere else I’ve lived. 

Anyhow—click on the link above, and download your own Green Card and swear yourself in, and send feedback to the site in the form of pictures and questions.  I’ll be happy to explain the various elements of the card, as a few people I encountered over the weekend were unfamiliar with both Caen and Norton.  There’s some argument about whether that’s a pomegranate or an opium poppy pod above the Emperor’s head; discuss.