My home in Daly City hides between the techies headed south to Silicon Valley and the tourists winding north to Wine Country. Best known for John Madden, a large Filipino population and fog, I know my home best by a four-mile hike around nearby Lake Merced, one of only three natural lakes in San Francisco. Blue herons, red-tailed hawks and a family of great-horned owls call Lake Merced home. Other than that, Daly City is the place to pass by: No Golden Gate Bridge, no Michelin three-starred restaurants, and my nearly non-existent internet connection would make nearby execs at Facebook, Google and Yahoo question my existence.

But I love it here. The heavy fog drawn through the gaps of coastal mountains every summer by the soaring central valley heat , that seasonal surprise that forces freezing tourists on July 4 to buy overpriced hoodies, is free air-conditioning for someone who grew up on the baked plains of Texas. The only semblance of a tourist attraction is a monument to the last, sad gun duel in California between Senator David Broderick and Chief Justice David S. Terry in 1859. It makes me wonder, on my to owls and hawks and herons, if being forgotten is the worst of fates.