The Gay Man's Guide to Moving to San Francisco

I've been living here for two months now, so I figure it's time for me to give a summary of things that I've found. I moved here from Troy, Michigan to give you a baseline for my prior experiences.

Yelp.com is your new best friend. It features community reviews of everything in the city. Restaurants here are expensive, so it is good to know before hand what to expect. Also useful for prescreening gyms, bars and discovering places you never thought to try.

What's that smell? The answer is always urine or reefer. Most employers don't drug test. If they do, they will give you multiple attempts. It's difficult to have a clean sample even if you don't smoke from all the contact buzz around.

From the Financial District and Soma all the way down to the Castro, San Francisco is like a small town mostly populated by gays. I grew up in a small town of 1,500 people, so the small town environment is really festive. You will get checked out EVERYWHERE. It's a nice ego boost and kind of degrading all at once.

Find an apartment near a Muni and Bart station. And leave your car back in Kansas Dorothy. The cost of living here isn't as bad as everyone says IF you don't bring a car. I was paying ~$900 a month for my Acura including payments, gas, insurance and maintenance. Sign a six month lease on your place if you can. There are great deals around the city, but you have to know about them in advance. As you meet friends here, they will hook you into the great deals that never make it to craigslist.

Learn to love shopping online. The retail stores here are not as large as where you came from. There are three H&M stores within a few blocks of my loft, but somehow, they are all missing the stuff I'm used to seeing. The same with Macys. It fills two seven story buildings, but seems to carry less stuff than the ones in Detroit.

Don't be afraid to ask anyone for directions. Everyone here is used to having tons of tourists and newbs around. San Francisco is a very friendly city. Even the bums can be helpful.

Most importantly, always enjoy the weirdness. I've seen tap dancing nurses leading a procession to the Bart stations, Cheney protest groups using opera instead of pickets and bullhorns, homeless people crapping in the street, bums making puppets out of cardboard boxes and naked people everywhere.