Michael For about six months now, rent and real estate prices have been declining rapidly in San Francisco. Reason seems to be that there's a mass exodus happening, with young affluent people fleeing the city. On almost every block, you can see moving trucks, and techies sheepishly loading in their $3,000 bikes, and off they go to mommy and daddy in Kentucky! Just by walking the neighborhood, you can peer into many empty homes, and every block has at least one house for sale. Also, if you're in the market for expensive yuppie crap, check out Craigslist for some real bargains!

Angelika One night in mid August this year, we woke up to rolling thunder and intensly bright lightning. Thunderstorms are extremely rare in the San Franciso Bay Area, I can count the occations on the fingers of one hand since we moved here 20 years ago. Also, they don't happen in combination with rain, which is concerning in a region without any precipitation all summer long. Vegetation becomes bone dry only a few months into summer, and if lightning strikes, there's a high likelihood of a devastating wild fire to start. And indeed, a few days later, forest fires in many regions in California were all over the news.

Michael Once a week is laundry day in our apartment, we're hauling several baskets full of dirty laundry down to the in-house laundromat and use the washers and dryers there. Each of them wants to be fed with quarter coins, and since one wash cycle costs $2.50, this requires ten coins each time. Each additional load adds more, and after the finishing spin cycle, the wet laundry needs to go in the dryer, which costs an additional $2.00 per load. In this way, it's not uncommon, that we spend 40 quarters per week, just for doing laundry.

Angelika As we're regular viewers of the German news show Tagesschau, every single day for more than a decade to be exact, we've recently become aware about how different countries are imposing very different types of restrictions on their citizens to battle the Corona crisis. We learned that apparently in Germany, there's nothing more important than traveling to your summer vacation destination. In comparison, I'd be quite happy already if at least my hair salon would be allowed to open again. It feels like we're stuck in a time capsule here in San Francisco. Mayor London Breed has put city life to a grinding halt since mid March, and there's been hardly any remediation since. I keep getting emails from the hair salon that they're going to open real soon now, but several dates have now been canceled, because Corona case numbers kept bouncing back. I've come to the conclusion that we'll have to wait until a vaccine is available, to see the city come back to life.

Michael Due to the lack of entertainment options during Corona, many residents in our neighborhood have, just like us, adopted the habit of daily extended walks through city streets. It is not easy to maintain social distancing etiquette on busy and narrow sidewalks, though, and the city came up with the new idea of declaring select streets as "slow" and allow pedestrians to use the road as well.

Angelika It's hard to believe that yet another ten years have gone by, and it's time again for the US Census again. This one is our third time around (2000, 2010, 2020), but like everything today it was heavily influenced by Corona. Ten years ago, there was a questionaired mailed to individual households ( Rundbrief 05/2010 ), which had to be completed. For those who did not comply, a friendly census employee came by in person, to knock on the door and help filling out the form. This time around, it was pretty evident, even before Corona hit, that the bureau had hoped to get people to answer the census questions online. It was the first time in history that this option even existed. And because of Corona, the bureau naturally aimed to reduce the number of census employees having to visit people in their homes.

Michael A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to the infernal noise of revving muscle car engines and tires screeching over asphalt. No doubt, underoccupied juveniles, usually drag racing their cars and doing donuts on empty supermarket parking lots at night had discovered our idyllic neighborhood for their illegal activities.