What Do You Mean There Aren't Any Flower-Covered Hills?!

           Once upon a time, I was forced to explore the Sunset District of San Francisco for a class. I thought the Sunset looked like a nice place. Now my views have changed.

This is not THE Sunset, but it is A sunset.

            I now think that looks can be deceiving. 

            Before, I believed that crime in the neighborhood was virtually nonexistent. I thought everyone ran up flower-covered hills singing "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In."

            Talking to people wasn't very difficult. They were generally pretty open to discuss the goings on in the neighborhood. And the more I talked to people, the more I found out.

            Nothing too scandalous happens around the Sunset, but there are tons of vehicle break-ins and robberies. Murders and sexual assaults seem to be rare, but they do happen.

            One thing in particular that police are cracking down on is marijuana grow houses, which I had no idea even existed in the Sunset.

            And now with the appearance of a new medical marijuana dispensary, one that is causing a lot of controversy, people are even more concerned. What about the children, right? Yawn.

            Of course, I shouldn't offer my opinion on that, since I'm writing about it for my final story and need to be unbiased and objective and all that. All I can say is thank Cheeseus that I went to the Taraval police station meeting last month and found out about this issue because I would be up you know what creek without a paddle.

            Besides this, the neighborhood appears to be this family oriented utopia, where crime is rare and it's always foggy, but that is obviously not the case. Except for the fog. The fog is there a lot.

            There are perks of course. I can't count how many cute little shops there are in this neighborhood alone. The necklace I bought at Pearl on Irving, which has quickly become my favorite, is almost godlike in its awesomeness.

The genius who did my tattoo.

            And of course I can't talk about shops unless I talk about Tuesday Tattoo on Judah, where I got my very first tattoo in September. For my next tattoo, and yes I am definitely getting another, I will claw my way through to get an appointment at Tuesday.

            OK, OK, enough gushing.

            There are some coffee shops, eateries, Irish pubs and a whole heck of a lot of Asian shops and restaurants. Not to mention the never-ending supply of Asian-owned beauty shops, nail salons and massage parlors.

            The Sunset was once predominantly Irish and there are still Irish people around, but the neighborhood is now most definitely an Asian epicenter that prominently caters to Asian interests.

            All in all, there isn't anything exceptionally special about the Sunset. It's just another place with more of the same.

            I get a strange feeling from the police station on Taraval though. I've talked to a couple of people there and they seemed closed off, only telling me what they thought was right to tell me and not exactly what I wanted to know.

            I've heard stories that say all police like that, especially with journalists, so maybe I can understand. I guess I just thought that because of how different the Sunset seemed from the rest of the city, the police would be too. But I've come to learn that the Sunset isn't all that different, it's just a lot quieter about it.