But here's the tension that never gets talked about honestly: the very thing that makes this place magical is the same thing that makes it brutally expensive, and our local government has done shockingly little to make sure the economics work for people who aren't already rich. As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly: "You and everybody else on the planet — that's why it's so expensive to live here."

They're not wrong. San Francisco attracts millions of visitors a year. Tourism dollars flow in. People fall in love with the city, move here, and discover that the cost of existing in a place with iconic bridges and world-class burritos is roughly equivalent to a second mortgage. And instead of building housing to match demand, City Hall spends decades strangling new construction with permitting red tape and environmental review theater. The bridge was built in four years during the Great Depression. Today we can't approve an apartment building in under five.

We're not anti-tourism. We love the bridge. We love that people visit and spend money and leave thinking San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities on Earth — because it is. But beauty isn't a governing strategy. The visitors go home. The rest of us stay and pay.

If the city wants to remain worthy of all those golden-hour photographs, it needs leadership that treats fiscal discipline and housing production with the same reverence we give a sunset over the Marin Headlands. Otherwise, we're just curating a really expensive postcard.