Here's something you won't find in a budget report or a Board of Supervisors meeting: San Francisco is still breathtakingly, absurdly beautiful.

Scroll through any local forum this week and you'll find residents — lifelong natives and six-year transplants alike — sharing golden hour shots from Ocean Beach, blue-hour magic over the Marina, and fog-kissed panoramas that look like they were ripped from a Hollywood storyboard. One immigrant resident put it perfectly: the city looks exactly like the American movies they grew up watching overseas. After six years, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge still gives them a mix of joy and awe.

That's not a small thing. In fact, it might be the most important thing.

We spend a lot of ink — rightfully — on what's broken in this city. The budget bloat. The bureaucratic inertia. The streets that don't feel safe enough. The housing costs that push out the very people who make neighborhoods worth living in. All of that matters, and none of it should be swept under a pretty sunset.

But here's the thing: the reason any of us care enough to fight about San Francisco's problems is because of moments like these. The reason fiscal accountability matters is that this city is worth being accountable for. Every dollar wasted at City Hall is a dollar that could have gone toward preserving what makes people pull over on the Marin Headlands with their phone cameras.

The beauty of San Francisco isn't a government program. Nobody at DPW scheduled that Ocean Beach sunset. No commission approved the Marina's blue hour. The city's magic is organic, natural, and free — which is probably why it still works.

So yes, keep pushing for better governance, smarter spending, and safer streets. But also: step outside tonight. Look west. Remember what you're fighting for.

This city earns its residents' love every single evening. It's time the people running it started earning it too.