Girl Gone Wild!

Deliriously crazy times in San Francisco in 2020, during Our Times of Covid

A young college student from the East Coast comes to San Francisco during Our Times of Covid to work an internship. Little did she know that she was about to experience the most thrilling six months of her life…

APK hoped to meet people in the city — at the very least, her new colleagues — and make new friends, have adventures and fun. Instead she was mostly stuck in the apartment, usually in her room. (Although she did make one new friend: me). It’s true that once she signed up for a subscription to a bike rental app, she got out more but still, even though we did things together every now and then, she did most activities outside the flat almost always by herself.

She had compiled a Must Do In SF! list and crossed things off it, one by one: trips to the Botanical Gardens, the Golden Gate Bridge, museums, etc. I’m glad she managed to keep herself interested and motivated. But I’m not joking when I say that sometimes the biggest adventure of her week was to go shopping for groceries!

We would often laugh wryly about the insane times we were living in, and I would say we had to make a short film about her crazy time in SF before she left, which I’m glad we accomplished.

My heart goes out to everyone who was forced to socially distance isolate. Using guilt as propaganda — “Stay Home, Save Lives” — and the myth of asymptomatic transmission, humans were trained to think of other humans as potential bioweapons, were made to believe that it was dangerous to mingle, gather, hug or go on dates.

But my heart goes out especially to our youth who had their trips cancelled, proms cancelled, holidays abroad cancelled, internships cancelled, potential friendships and relationships cancelled; they were forced to live their lives even more through a screen than already was the case. We all know that depression and suicide rates, particularly amongst young people increased dramatically during “The Pandemic”.

We will be counting for decades at least all the many other ways in which humanity has been adversely evented affected.