Thanks for the education.
You seem like a nice person, although you appear to have lived a very sheltered life compared to many of us in Freeperland.
What part of SF are you in? We lived in Pacifica, right above Seramonte, for most of our time there. We were right off of Skyline, just south of where route 1 crosses the hills. I ran a retail store in Weslake in Daly City. We spent a lot of time with friends on Texas Street in the Potrero district and had a good number of friends in the Mission and Marina districts. We spent a fair amount of our time around CCSF doing night classes and also got real familiar with Chinatown.
It broke my heart when I went back and found out that Edsel Fong, from Sam Wo's noodle shop, had passed away. We also dearly loved the Sunset district, particularly around UCSF where I had some surgery (had to spend a LOT of time there). We got to be friends with the director of the SF zoo at the time, as well as Roosevelt, the cook at the Leon's Barbecue right outside the zoo.
There are a good many things about that town that I miss, dearly.
Where in Mississippi is your boyfriend from? I was in Jackson, Mississippi, with family during the "race riots" after the Jackson State Massacre back around 1970. We were only about 5 blocks from the school and fully expected to be killed. My aunt and uncle had a small grocery / general store in an all black neighberhood, kind of near where the big mall is now. Almost all of their neighberhood customers came in and told us they would help protect us, but that we had to understand they couldn't come into the store for a few weeks. We had no problems at all and business was back to normal inside of a week. The incident did kind of focus my attention on the issues, however, particularly as a 15 year old from "liberal New York." I still have relatives scattered from Philadelphia, through Jackson and then on down through Moss Point (so far as I can find out all are OK after the storm).