Jack had never seen the gun. It was a.38 caliber Smith & Wesson Airweight, easy to conceal. Just five shots, but the kind of trouble I was likely to get into was the up-close-and-personal kind, and if I couldn’t get out of it with five rounds, I wasn’t getting out of it at all.

I stood and gathered up my single-strap messenger bag, putting it over my shoulder, when the newspapers on the counter caught my attention.

“Are you done with this?” I asked, indicating the Los Angeles Times Calendar section, its front page dominated by a profile of a young white hip-hop producer. “Can I have it?”

“Sure,” Jack said.

I slid the section of the paper into my bag, then walked ahead of Jack into the entryway, where my bicycle-it was my private transportation as well as my livelihood-leaned against the wall.

We emerged into the cool gray of June in San Francisco, me wheeling the bike and Jack holding the keys to his old Saab. He stopped for a moment, tapping a cigarette out of a pack, his first of the day. While he lit up, I looked downhill, toward the rest of the city. Jack’s studio was at the edge of Parnassus Heights, and the view was fantastic.

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t find San Francisco beautiful, and I couldn’t argue. I had been in San Francisco nearly a year. I had ridden every inch of its neighborhoods, the storied ones like Chinatown and North Beach, the quiet ones like the Sunset and Presidio Heights. Late at night, I had watched the lights of great containerships as they ghosted into the port of Oakland, across the water. I had seen this city in the rain, the sun, the fog, the moonlight, on moonless evenings illuminated by its own city lights. San Francisco seemed to pose for you endlessly, proving it could look beautiful under any conditions. People came from all over the country and paid exorbitant prices to own or rent a tiny part of San Francisco.

Only a philistine could stand on a hill, look out at San Francisco, and wish she were seeing the overheated sprawl of L.A. instead. But I did.