Every so often, I visit world attractions to compare them to my native Portland, Maine. So here we go:

You’re Frisco. We’re Casco.

You have postcards of the Golden Gate Bridge enveloped in mist. We invented postcards.
[See “Postcards from the Edge,” October 2016.]
We also invented fog.

You’re the No. 10 foodie city in the world. We’re the No. 1 foodie city in America.

You have the Top of the Mark, 1926. We have the Top of the East, 1927. It glitters atop a hotel so high in the clouds Charles Lindbergh flew up here to dedicate it. (He visited us in July, 1927, during his transatlantic celebration tour–see “fog,” paragraph 3. He got around to you in September.)

Crooner Rudy Vallee performed his “Maine Stein Song” at your Mark Hopkins Hotel. We invented Rudy Vallee–he grew up in Westbrook.

You have City Lights Books. We have Longfellow Books.

Jack London wrote White Fang. Portland native Stephen King, born at the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary (as did so many of us), wrote Cujo.

You have Dungeness Crabs. We have King Lobster. You have Tony Bennett. We have Tony Boffa and Tony Bourassa.

Your tourist attraction, the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O’Brien, draws thousands. We built the Jeremiah O’Brien.

Cost of a condo on Nob Hill: $900K to $12M. Cost of a condo on the West End or Munjoy Hill: $275K to $775K.

San Francisco magazine shares ‘content’ with sister magazines directed by Modern Luxury of Atlanta. For better or worse, we’re an independent voice, owned in Maine by a Maine native.

I left my gloves in San Francisco. But my heart will always be here.

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