"Oakland wouldn't be so bad, would it?" said the man at breakfast. Over french toast, he and his friend were swapping horror stories about being evicted from their apartments. My apologies to them both for my conversational theft. It is the hallmark of nosy writers.

Everyone in the Bay Area, it seems, is talking about the housing crisis.

I'm not old enough to have crossed through dozens of names in my Rolodex, a sad byproduct of AIDS and the loved ones whose disappearances it evinced. But lately I have been erasing addresses like crazy, replacing city information with suburban Bay Area addresses. Some of my friends have thrown up their middle fingers to the entire area, moving to places like Portland, Palm Springs, Vancouver, and Los Angeles.

Oakland is being called the new Brooklyn, but that's misleading. Brooklyn has a cheap, efficient, 24 hour subway system so that people can play in Manhattan. The fact that the BART system is expensive, infrequent and stops at midnight keeps many an East Bay resident under house arrest. More's the pity when tourists come to San Francisco only to find empty bars and streets. The other day, a visiting friend asked me where everyone was. I told him they'd run away from home.

A particularly telling piece of news is that lesbian Supervisor Leslie Katz, who has long championed high tech industry in the Bay Area, will not run for reelection. The reason? She can't afford to live in her district. Katz, until quite recently, was making six figures. Her income and network resources are considerably greater than those of the average San Franciscan. If she can't get affordable housing, where does that leave the rest of us?

I moved to San Francisco in November of 1998. I've lived in two apartments on the same street near the Castro. I've been fortunate enough to live with gay men who rented to me below market value because they want to see young people contribute to the cultural landscape. These opportunities, alas, are becoming few and far between. Mrs. Madrigal, of *Tales of the City fame, would have converted her building to live-work lofts and retired in Sonoma.

People in their 20s are either working in dot.companies or splitting egregious one bedroom rents with four other people. If you're wondering why there are so many "Help wanted" signs in the Castro, it's because $8-$10 an hour doesn't pay rent anymore. The green haired kids who serve pizza by the slice are being pushed out of the city that has for decades been a queer mecca.

The thing is, those green haired kids are often the people who, in their spare time, organize poetry series, club nights, and activist movements. The saddest irony here is that the people getting squeezed out are often the ones who make the city so desirable in the first place. My dot com friends are working so many hours that they don't have time to participate in the city's cultural scene, let alone play a hand in creating it. We've all licked our chops over the city's proverbial golden eggs, but the goose is getting evicted.

If I had a nickel for every Castro lifer who gets glassy eyed upon recalling the days when you could live alone and make it on a part time job, I'd have one hell of a down payment. But those days are long gone, and we are ill-served by the chilly nostalgic fog that hangs over the city.

Real estate appreciation, for all intents and purposes, is an irreversible trend. The best we can hope for is a plateau. Sorry, kids, but an earthquake isn't going to bring back those $300 Victorian apartments remembered so fondly by longtime residents. San Francisco, for all its diversity and opportunity, is over. If there were an earthquake, I'm certain of one thing. Four competing internet startups would emerge, selling e-shovels. It's gotten that sick.

The city is turning mean, like a swirling mosh pit. The other night, I found a parking space after fifteen minutes of circling the block. I feel like a parking vulture anymore. As I was backing into the space, a yuppie scooted his BMW into the space and blocked me. I got out of my car and looked at him. I was horrified by his lack of decency, especially since he wouldn't look up from his cell phone long enough to acknowledge that he'd done anything wrong. I got back in my car, circled the block, waited for him to walk away, and double parked. I dragged my keys across his door, scraping the paint until I saw silver. I am not proud of this, but I do not regret it. I moved to San Francisco for free love, not class warfare, but I'm a Southern girl, and we were raised to win fights when need be.

I wish it were so tidy a quandry that I could point my slightly bent finger at the dot.communists and utter pronouncements of contempt for killing off our nifty little ghetto. But queers are playing an active role in blocking a living wage ordinance and a homeless queer youth shelter. Many of us can't even be bothered to sign petitions that could give tenants a few measly rights. I shudder to think how many queers are sitting back, content in their jobs and leases. Tomorrow, their asses could be out on the pavement.

Well, kids, we've succeeded. We're just like them. We are inextricably and undeniably part of the problem. Decades of struggle by us homosexuals has basically amounted to a strip mall where tourists can hold hands and buy rainbow trinkets. San Francisco is over. Now that's a reason to be proud.