{"id":127397,"date":"2026-01-10T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T01:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127397\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T01:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T01:00:20","slug":"real-san-franciscans-wear-jackets-indoors-whats-your-stay-warm-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127397\/","title":{"rendered":"Real San Franciscans wear jackets indoors. What\u2019s your stay-warm strategy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My little brother will no longer visit me in San Francisco in the winter. Or the summer. This is because whenever he has, he\u2019s been forced to wear a jacket and hat and gloves indoors and is, apparently, too thin-skinned for that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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)<\/a>), many houses don\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019t keep out the chill, he put a hotel room on his credit card and pledged to never return in cold seasons.<\/p>\n

Clearly, he is not cut out for this city. Part of being a San Franciscan means handling drafts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This week, as temperatures have dropped across the Bay Area \u2014 below freezing Friday in some places \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have a landlord to complain to \u2014 she\u2019s the homeowner. She deals with it by layering up.<\/p>\n

\"AYep, that\u2019s the outside, inside. | Source: Alicia Cocchi\/The Standard<\/p>\n

Another colleague who lives in a converted Victorian with beautiful high ceilings in the Haight\u00a0 has cracks in her windows that let in the slightest breeze. She has central heating, but it\u2019s no match for the chill. This winter she\u2019s been \u201cwalking around my apartment like a cold-blooded gremlin, wearing sweats, a jacket, fuzzy socks, and, often, cushioned sandals.\u201d After she broke down and got an electric heater, she was greeted with a $300 bill from PG&E for December. (It\u2019s normally $40).<\/p>\n

\"ANow that is one cozy kitty. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve been wearing my thickest sheepskin coat and prowling the house looking like that cold and bundled pet monkey found lost outside an Ikea \u2014 you know the one. (Fun fact, 13 years later (opens in new tab)<\/a>, the monkey is living his best life at a primate sanctuary, where he stays quite warm, unlike me.)<\/p>\n

\"A\"AThe resemblance is uncanny, right?<\/p>\n

What about you? I\u2019d 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\u2019ll publish the most ingenious and creative responses as soon as our fingers defrost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My little brother will no longer visit me in San Francisco in the winter. Or the summer. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[36210,1742,388,101,103,102,104,106,105,19],"class_list":{"0":"post-127397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-cool-factory","9":"tag-fashion","10":"tag-real-estate","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}