Last night, North Beach delivered one of those perfect, clear evenings that makes you momentarily forget about your rent, the state of Muni, and whatever fresh fiscal catastrophe is brewing at City Hall. Just crisp air, open sky, and the kind of night that reminds you this city — for all its self-inflicted wounds — sits in one of the most beautiful spots on Earth.

No agenda here. No policy gripe. No budget line item to dissect. Just an honest observation: a clear night in North Beach is free, it requires zero permits, no environmental impact review, and not a single member of the Board of Supervisors had to vote on it. Maybe that's why it works so well.

It's worth pausing on moments like these because they're the reason people put up with everything else. The $4,000 studio apartments. The car break-ins. The bureaucratic maze you have to navigate just to open a coffee shop. People stay — and keep staying — because on a night like last night, you can walk down Columbus Avenue, look up, and feel like you're getting away with something.

San Francisco spends a lot of time and money trying to make itself livable. Billions in city budgets, endless commissions, task forces with task forces. And yet the best moments in this city tend to be the ones nobody planned — a clear sky, a quiet street, the faint sound of someone playing jazz through an open window in an old North Beach apartment.

The city doesn't need to spend a dime to deliver nights like that. It just needs to not screw up the basics so badly that nobody's around to enjoy them.

Here's to more clear nights. And maybe, eventually, a city government worthy of them.