There's a certain kind of person — usually living somewhere with a Chili's as the cultural centerpiece — who hears you're moving to San Francisco and immediately launches into a TED talk about doom loops and dystopia. You know the type. They've never actually been here, but they watched a YouTube compilation of Walgreens shoplifting videos and now they're urban policy experts.

We bring this up because a familiar story keeps popping up: people who left SF, endured years of unsolicited pity from neighbors and coworkers, and are now moving back — thrilled about it, haters be damned.

One returning resident put it perfectly: they know it's expensive, they know it has issues, but what big city doesn't? The difference is they don't go around telling people in other cities they live in "a backwards ass pit of despair with limited economic opportunity." Fair point.

And honestly? This is the energy San Francisco needs more of — not blind cheerleading, but clear-eyed affection. You can love this city while acknowledging that we have a budget bigger than some countries with results that would embarrass a lemonade stand. You can miss Sutro Tower and still be furious about how your tax dollars disappear into bureaucratic black holes. These things coexist.

As one Bay Area resident put it, "Things are expensive here, but your love of San Francisco makes those of us who also moved to the Bay Area love it more and know it is worth living here."

Here's our take: the doom-loop narrative was always overblown, but so is the everything-is-fine crowd. SF's real strength is that people choose it — actively, deliberately, often at great personal cost. That self-selection creates a city of people who actually want to be here, which is more than most places can say.

The folks who keep writing San Francisco's obituary from their couches in Phoenix are going to be waiting a long time for the funeral. People keep coming back. They keep choosing this ridiculous, beautiful, maddening, seven-by-seven-mile sliver of land on the Pacific.

Welcome home. Now help us hold City Hall accountable so the next generation can afford to stay.