My little brother will no longer visit me in San Francisco in the winter. Or the summer. This is because whenever he has, he’s been forced to wear a jacket and hat and gloves indoors and is, apparently, too thin-skinned for that.
On the East Coast, where he lives, radiators and boilers crank out heat at nuclear-reactor levels, and the buildings, though old, retain that heat. But here in the temperate city of 48 hills, with our exceedingly long-in-the-tooth housing stock (third-oldest in the nation (opens in new tab)), many houses don’t have central heating, and those that do are unable to retain that warmth during the few weeks that temperatures plummet. (Our utility bills can attest.)
So when my brother came to stay with me for Thanksgiving when I lived in a glorious loft in the Dogpatch (back when the rent was only $2,100 for 1,200 square feet, can you imagine!) and found that the upper windows did not close and even his cashmere scarf couldn’t keep out the chill, he put a hotel room on his credit card and pledged to never return in cold seasons.
Clearly, he is not cut out for this city. Part of being a San Franciscan means handling drafts.
This week, as temperatures have dropped across the Bay Area — below freezing Friday in some places — real ones know what to do. We take out our enormous jackets and our wooliest sweaters. We wrap our pets in fleece blankets. We crank up the space heaters. We don our cutest fingerless gloves. And we call our landlords and beg for them to spray-foam the gaps around our single-pane antique windows where we can see bits of cloudless blue sky. We get annoyed, but we bear it, because this is part of living here.
I surveyed my colleagues at The Standard, and heard classic tales of old, cold, housing stock. One colleague who lives in a loft in Oakland shared this photo of the literal hole in her roof. She doesn’t have a landlord to complain to — she’s the homeowner. She deals with it by layering up.
Yep, that’s the outside, inside. | Source: Alicia Cocchi/The Standard
Another colleague who lives in a converted Victorian with beautiful high ceilings in the Haight has cracks in her windows that let in the slightest breeze. She has central heating, but it’s no match for the chill. This winter she’s been “walking around my apartment like a cold-blooded gremlin, wearing sweats, a jacket, fuzzy socks, and, often, cushioned sandals.” After she broke down and got an electric heater, she was greeted with a $300 bill from PG&E for December. (It’s normally $40).
Now that is one cozy kitty. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
As for me, I now live on the west side in a 100-year-old standalone home that has one properly insulated room that my whole family crams into whenever the temp drops below 60. I’ve been wearing my thickest sheepskin coat and prowling the house looking like that cold and bundled pet monkey found lost outside an Ikea — you know the one. (Fun fact, 13 years later (opens in new tab), the monkey is living his best life at a primate sanctuary, where he stays quite warm, unlike me.)
The resemblance is uncanny, right?
What about you? I’d love to hear how you are handling the cold this week. Share your tales of woe and your go-to indoor cold-weather fits. What are your tips for avoiding massive PG&E bills and keeping your toesies warm through the night? Email your photos and send in thoughts below. We’ll publish the most ingenious and creative responses as soon as our fingers defrost.