Tag Archives: san francisco

City Folk

Sunde White illustrates her weekly essay about how she imagines hypodermic needles everywhere from living in the city so long.

This morning we left our Mission neighborhood apartment early and ran our dogs out to the beach near Half Moon Bay.  We are at the coast pretty much every day since we surf and I work in Pacifica.  It’s a huge relief to have an escape from SF life which has gotten pretty messy recently.  […]

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San Francisco, The Number Two City!

illustration of the trash sunde white finds in her alley

San Francisco is dirty.  Really dirty and it’s only gotten worse during the pandemic.  When the tent city was up on my block during the lockdown the trash got really bad.  For some reason SF didn’t think they should put up a dumpster to collect the tent people’s trash so the people living in the […]

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The Funeral

Sunde White illustrates her essay about the fire fighter funeral she saw

Driving home on the freeway yesterday I eased on the brakes on the winding downhill connection between Highway 1 and the 280 because of all the flashing police lights stopping traffic from taking the freeway entrance onto the Southbound side.  As I continued past I could see police lights flashing on the other entrance across […]

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San Francisco Lock Down! Part 1

For a few months I had been reading on Twitter about some kind of epidemic over in China that doctors and experts that tracked that sort of thing seemed to be really freaking out about.  They’d tweet out statistics and graphs trying to alert us regular people about how dangerous it was and how there […]

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Valentine’s Day Horror!

I’m not proud to admit that I worked for years at a bar/restaurant that was so seedy that we employees nicknamed it “The Rat Spot”.  I won’t say what street it was on because anyone that has lived in SF will immediately know the actual name of the place. When I worked there, the Mission […]

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The City Mouse

I pulled into the alley and stopped at my apartment’s back gate to load my boards into my truck.   I sighed when I saw a guy at the fence, a few feet from my gate, squatting down and hunched over something on the ground. “Oh gross.”  I thought to myself, assuming he was a drug […]

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My Own Personal Poltergeist

I was still a teenager, maybe 18, when I was living in San Francisco in a large Victorian flat on the third floor.  My roommates were all adults in their 30’s and all except one were  lesbians that were cool and powerful and fixed their motorbikes on the sidewalk downstairs.  I was very intimidated by […]

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The Importance of Shredded Lettuce

I hate lettuce on sandwiches and hamburgers because it is always applied wrong.  When done wrong lettuce is a second thought put on in the rush of burger and sandwich making.  “For the crunch.”  People mumble to themselves as they stick a leaf of limp, veiny,  green, solidified watery vegetable onto the mayonnaise of their […]

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Shooting #1

The first time I saw someone get shot I was about 16 or 17 and had moved into my San Francisco neighborhood the year before.  SF’s Mission District  at that time, was a little bit like the wild west.  Gangs, shootings, stabbings, trash everywhere, needles, heroin addicts nodding off standing up, while trying not to […]

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The Key To Self Esteem

How do you figure out you have no self esteem if you have no self esteem to tell you? I started a plant and garden care business at twenty one because I hated working for people and also I was never going to get hired for anything other than low paying, soul sucking jobs.   At […]

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Radical Feminist

Definition of Feminism (noun):  The advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.  Political, economic and social equality of the sexes.  For some reason some men and women don’t like the word feminism or feminist.  Predictably, the word has been weaponized by society so a larger block of the population […]

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How Pie Healed Me

The police would always come up behind me and quietly stand in my blind spot, waiting for me to notice them.   I’d follow my suddenly silent pie customer’s eyes and turn to find them standing there.  They were always very polite and kind but it would kill my business for that night.  My line of […]

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No Toilet, No Problem!

So my cheap landlord hired a grifting contractor that has suddenly found a thousand things that have to get done with our apartment.  The contractor decided that he needed to fix our bathroom subfloor  around our toilet even though we’ve never had our toilet leak before.  He casually informed my husband that they’d be doing […]

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Happy New Year! What’s Your Bag?

A couple of years ago, outside of my apartment, a pigeon flew past me frantically flapping his wings but barely being able to fly higher than about my shoulder.  A pink plastic bag was attached to his foot.  With each attempt to fly, just as he was becoming airborne, the bag would fill with air […]

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Fashion Analysis: A San Francisco Dad!

I saw this dad walking along Valencia street one morning.  The giant toddler he was carrying was actually bigger than I drew him  because I thought it would look like I was exaggerating.  I don’t know if the dad was short or the toddler had exceptionally long legs but I swear to god his legs […]

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Jasmine’s Fashion Analysis!

Jasmine looks adorable no matter what, obviously, but I’m going to be honest with you—she does have a tendency to over accessorize.  This is her every day out and about style.   She’s kind of a safety first type of dog so most of her outfit is for her own protection.  Like, she has one collar […]

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Poo Paranoia!

  San Francisco has a poo problem.   Not a dog poo problem, we have a very large dog poo police force here where you can be bending down about to scoop up your dogs poo and some poo policeman will ask, “Are you going to pick that up?”  Or more passive aggressively they’ll ask, “Do […]

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Hello Ladies!

I finally figured out this spring how to successfully launch a white fly eating brigade of ladybugs successfully into my garden.  Every year I used to try to use ladybugs to kill bugs but it was never effective.  Then a nice gal at my local hardware store gave me these tips and they worked!  Here […]

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So Jelly

Last week there was a break in the incessant wind and fog of spring on the coast.  The sun came out and the surf calmed down at my favorite beach.  It was a Tuesday so the beach was empty.  The dogs and I were the only ones that saw the big grey whale surface just […]

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The Swarm

Britt and I were enjoying one of the last warm days of fall, sitting in the water at Ocean Beach, waiting for a wave, when we saw it.  At first we thought it was a rogue local storm raining down in the water south of us.   But it was moving and reshaping itself unlike any […]

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The Tidy Raccoon, Part 2: Urban Eco-System

I’ve had a dream of growing grass in my mud pit of a backyard ever since I got my big, glorious dog Jasmine.  Her two favorite things to do are relaxing and luxuriating and relaxing and luxuriating on grass.  So this September I dug out all the useless clay soil around my patio and replaced […]

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Why I Love Crows (Reason #27)

#27 Because they play team sports in the air. It’s true, I witnessed this myself a few years ago.  Hiking in a windy valley I saw 8 or 9 crows flying and swooping high above me, chasing each other.  I stopped to watch and realized they weren’t just randomly flying, they were playing catch with […]

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Nature’s Gonna Nature

I was waiting at a stop light one afternoon when a big hawk dropped out of the sky in front of my windshield.  He snatched a pigeon out of mid air and landed with it on the roof of a car next to me.  The light turned green and I drove away still watching the […]

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A Very Sad Dog Story

Years ago a little Brazilian shop opened up next to the place I do yoga.  The owner happened to live down the block from me and I would see her and her little black and white dog, PePe walking to the store each day.  He was a blocky little Chihuahua   mix that liked his freedom.  […]

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The Butt

This weird thing happened a few months ago near my apartment.  I saw a butt.   It was shining in the sun on the sidewalk about a block away from me.  People were walking by, glancing curiously at the butt and then moving on.  A few gross guys were lingering, standing too close and discussing the […]

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No Regerts

Sometimes I slip down the social media rabbit hole, swiping through one successful and amazing artist or designer after another.  I scroll through them all crying out, “Why them?  Why not me?  Why are they so lucky and successful and I’m not?” Then my honest self, my adult self, answers my question. “Well Sunde, maybe […]

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Thank You San Francisco!

Thank You San Francisco!  There’s this weird thing that people in San Francisco do that I think is really condescending, disingenuous  and gross but also funny and ridiculous.  Instead of taking their old used filthy junk to the dump they pretend like they’re doing everyone a huge favor by offering it to us…for FREE! They […]

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In Honor of Dee Dee

The only thing worse than losing our beautiful, brave, perfect dog Dee Dee after 17 years was living in a still, dogless apartment afterwards.  The very soul of our home had disappeared.    The grief was overwhelming and paralyzing, but the void of having no dog at all was unbearable. I started trolling pitbull rescue websites […]

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Surfing For the Resistance

Surfing for the Resistance The night President Pussgrab McGrifter was voted into office I threw up my chicken sandwich and went for a long, panic stricken walk.  I cried for days and then became pissed off and outraged and wandered around talking to my TV and Twitter feed.  Then my outrage evolved into purpose and […]

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Surf Zine Sneak Peak!

Hello!  I’m working on a zine about all my years surfing in San Francisco.  It’ll have illustrated stories, cartoons, art and a graphic novel surfer spy series.   Here’s one of the stories for you to enjoy! Seals Are Weird!  A sexual harassment story from the sea. I hate seals. There, I said it.  I’m more […]

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Sketch Paintings

I have a lot of ideas of I want to get out of my sketch book but I don’t always have a lot of time to do anything other than my greeting cards and coloring books which are much more detailed.  But last year I just felt like painting and I’m excited about it because […]

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