Take this quiz to determine if you’re a real San Franciscan!
1) Which vehicle would you rather be stuck behind?
a) A Cruise or Waymo driverless vehicle.
b) An Uber driver who commutes from Stockton.
c) A Tesla.
d) A kid straddling a recycling bin bombing down a steep hill.
2) Your restaurant check indicates several charges at the bottom, including “worker health care contribution,” “livable wage,” and “optional surcharge,” which together amount to more than the cost of the menu items. You should base your tip on,
a) The whole bill.
b) Just the menu items.
c) How many tattoos your waitperson sported.
d) Whether or not the service was actually good.
3) You’re walking in the Mission, and a man wearing filthy clothes topped with an eccentric hat comes stumbling towards you, waving his arms wildly, shouting, “Everything is awesome!” Do you,
a) Cross the street to avoid him.
b) Keep going but avoid looking him in the eyes.
c) Pull out your cell phone and pretend to be making a call.
d) Give him a high five as he passes, saying, “Great burn on the playa, dude!”
4) You’re at an Apple store, exploring buying a new iPad, when a dozen young adults storm in, grab items, and fast-walk out of the store. Do you,
a) Try to stop them.
b) Video them with your iPhone.
c) Stand there looking dumbfounded and continue placidly shopping after the incident is over.
d) Grab some items yourself and run out.
5) You’re shopping at a Walgreens, with all merchandise behind a case that a clerk has to unlock to purchase. Do you,
a) Ring the bell to summon a clerk and patiently wait for them to arrive.
b) Storm out of the store muttering how messed up the city is.
c) Wander the aisles identifying the products you want and order them on Amazon from your phone.
d) You wouldn’t be in a Walgreens.
6) You received a $125 parking ticket for a meter that expired five minutes before you arrived. Do you,
a) Crumple the ticket and throw it on the ground.
b) Crumple the ticket and throw it in the recycling bin.
c) Take it off your windshield and place it on the windshield of the car behind you.
d) Hold it in your hand, staring at it, while muttering about how much you hate San Francisco.
7) You’re participating in the school lottery for your soon-to-be kindergartener who is assigned to a school in Daly City. Do you,
a) Contact the school district to protest.
b) Quickly determine whether any slots are open at a nearby private school.
c) Move to Daly City.
d) Go to the public school of your choice in San Francisco with your kid on the first day of class and insist that you’re already enrolled.
8) As you’re walking, you come across a passed-out, or maybe dead, guy with a needle sticking out of his bicep. Do you,
a) Keep walking.
b) Call 911.
c) Call 311.
d) Pull out that Narcan you carry in your backpack and administer it.
9) You email a complaint to your district supervisor about constant encampments on your block, occupied by mostly naked, often screaming, individuals, located in front of a preschool. Your supervisor forwards your email to the mayor and police chief, cc’ing you. What happens next?
a) Emergency response personnel specially trained in fragile populations arrive expeditiously, offer the campers decent shelter and mental health services, and assist them with transporting their stuff.
b) The supervisor initiates a structured conversation with the mayor and key municipal departments to determine how to address this issue more effectively.
c) Irritated by the supervisor, the mayor calls a press conference to remind voters that they have experienced homelessness, know about poverty, and will respond to the situation in the best way possible given this life-experience.
d) None of the above.
10) You’re thinking of going to the many free concerts offered at Stern Grove and Golden Gate Park in the summer and fall. Do you,
a) Buy an extra-large blanket with eyeholes to spike down with foot-long metal rods in the best possible location in front of the stage, to be left there on the morning of the show and largely unused throughout the day.
b) Contribute to the charities sponsoring the free concerts.
c) Tell everyone that you used to love going to free concerts, until they got too crowded with people deploying oversized blankets to save excessive amounts of space that they don’t use.
d) Launch the “AirBnB of concert blankets” which enables people to share their free concert space, for a fee, which quickly fails in competition with “concert.me,” an AI-based app that uses drone-enabled Starlink data to identify real-time strategies to secure the best spots at free concerts and other public spaces.
11) The term “doom loop” refers to,
a) A sugar-free cereal.
b) A lazy catchphrase adopted by local media and politicians as shorthand for the collapse of downtown due to overinvestment caused by loose monetary policy and pandemic-induced shifts in commercial real estate occupancy.
c) A privileged understanding of San Francisco history, in which a similar economic disruption caused by the abandonment of the Central Waterfront and Hunters Point shipyards, with devastating consequences to Black and working-class populations that lingered for decades, was largely ignored by the local media and politicians.
d) The concern that without downtown’s tax base, City Hall may have to learn how to effectively budget with only somewhat more resources than other municipalities around the world.
Answers: 1d, it’s the only one that’ll move in predictable a pattern; 2d; 3d if early September; 4c; 5d; 6b; 7d; 8d, but after the man is revived, he’ll yell at you for ruining his high; 9d, nothing will happen; 10c; 11b, c, and d. Completion of this test provides AP credits in every state except Florida, Texas, and Alabama.
Steven J. Moss