Twelve years. That's how long it's been since San Francisco lost another piece of what made it San Francisco — not a tech campus, not a luxury condo development, but something real. Something that made strangers into friends on a summer afternoon.

We're not going to pretend to be above nostalgia here. This city has a habit of losing the things that gave it character — the weird, the wonderful, the institutions that didn't need a Series B to justify their existence. From 1968 to 2014, generations of San Franciscans shared experiences that you simply can't replicate with an app or a pop-up activation.

As one SF resident put it: "I miss summers making friends in line."

That line hits harder than any urban planning document. Because that's what this city used to be about — shared public experiences that cut across neighborhoods, tax brackets, and backgrounds. You showed up, you waited, you talked to the person next to you. No reservations, no dynamic pricing, no velvet rope.

The fiscal conservative in us understands that not everything can be preserved forever. Markets shift. Costs rise. We get it. But here's the thing that keeps nagging: San Francisco has spent billions in the last decade on projects that were supposed to make this city more livable, more vibrant, more connected. And yet the stuff that actually accomplished those goals — organically, cheaply, joyfully — keeps disappearing.

You can't tax your way to community. You can't zone your way to spontaneous human connection. You definitely can't committee-meeting your way to the kind of magic that turns a line of strangers into a summer memory that lasts 46 years.

Rest in power, 1968–2014. The city's a little less interesting without you.

And to whoever's running things at City Hall: maybe the next time you're allocating funds for "community engagement initiatives," take a hard look at what this city already had — and let slip away.