A Diary of Reverse Culture Shock

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts from my Notes app on a recent trip to New York, Miami, and San Francisco.

I spent most of March back in the US.

Whenever I land, the reverse culture shock hits. It feels similar to waking up in the middle of the night, when it takes my eyes a few minutes to make out the contours of shapes in the dark.

It’s most obvious in the first 24 to 48 hours after landing, when I accidentally say “merci” or “pardon” to people instead of “thanks!” and “excuse me.” Or when I quietly gripe about the potholes and construction on the drive from JFK to Manhattan.

It’s disorienting, but it gives me a fresh perspective until I adjust to being in my native culture again. After two or three days, I don’t notice these subtleties anymore. The discomfort dissipates, and I fit right in.

It happens every time I go back now, which is every few months, and feels a little different each time. So I’ve started to jot down my first impressions before I adapt. Like keeping a dream journal that captures thoughts arising in the liminal states between sleep and wakefulness, I scribble bullet points in my Notes app to remember what I notice while I’m adjusting.

This trip was unusual because I visited three cities in three weeks—New York, Miami, and San Francisco, which are all very different from one another. But it made those initial moments of disorientation that much more fun.

Below, I’ve typed up those notes verbatim in quotes and added some context.

Here’s what I thought:

New York

• "When did absolutely everyone get lip filler?" Plastic surgery culture, especially Botox, brow lifts, and other Instagram face adjustments, have been popular since 2019 at least, but this was the first time I was struck by how plump the travelers looked on the immigration line. It felt mainstream.

• "Crossing at streetlight." Everyone is so eager to get somewhere and will take any opportunity to play Frogger and cross against the light. A terrific person I worked with recently passed away after getting hit by a bus while running; it was devastating, and I'll forever be more careful about street crossings in the aftermath.

• "Bouncer at a coffee shop." I landed on Tuesday night and got a jetlagged early-morning coffee around 7:15 am on Wednesday at the Stumptown on W 8th St. There was a security guard outside. It makes sense given the state of the shop the last time I saw it a few months ago, and the many places in San Francisco I’ve seen with security outside (from Marshall’s and One Medical to bakeries), but I’ve rarely seen this in New York. What it means is that that the staff at this Stumptown location and the folks at Stumptown corporate thought it was well worth the investment because they were losing too much business due to customer attrition or fear. Bleak.

• "7:30 am and the city is alive." The US starts so, so much earlier than Europe. It's nearly impossible to get a "good" coffee in Paris before 8 am at the earliest, but really 8:30 am or 9 am. Work starts later too, around 9:30 am. People don't eat dinner till around 7:30 pm here; the US 5-6:30 pm early dinner is a non-starter. New York really is the best place to be jetlagged early in the morning. Stumptown opens at 6:30 am on weekdays and 7 am on weekends, for example. People are out and about. New York really shines in the early morning (and late night) hours.

• "Fucking dirty." Almost stepped on a very soaked, used menstrual pad while crossing the street. Foul.

• "23 dollar bagel." Went to Murray's Bagels and ordered a toasted pumpernickel with lox, cream cheese, and tomato. In between chit-chat, the affable man behind the counter spun around the POS and hit me with a $23 total. Like...?

• "Fun to stay in a different part of the city and be a tourist." My family moved out of New York in late December 2023; they're now Miami residents. It makes me feel unmoored from New York, having no official reason to visit the place I’ve called home my entire life. But since I had to be there for 2.5 days, I figured I'd embrace being a tourist and stay at a hotel with New York-y subway tiles, exposed brick, and Art Deco decor along with C.O. Bigelow products. It was fun to play-act local in a part of the city I never lived in.

• "Bagel shops, etc. = the great equalizer." Bagel shops, bodegas, diners, and Duane Reade are among the few places in New York that welcome absolutely everyone regardless of socioeconomic status.

• "Busking music different." In Paris, I do not enjoy showtime. It’s hard to be enthused when I’m enduring accordion music or Bella Ciao on loop. New York buskers, among the best in the world, play the hits. I was grooving to a Gypsy Woman rendition with live drums and vocals.

• "The screeching of the subway is deafening." Can someone find those tracks some grease?

• "People actually talk to each other." It's a stock thing to mention when marking the differences between Paris and New York, but French people don't really do small talk with strangers; it's considered bothersome.

• "Swiping into the subway with phone is amazing." Waiting for this to come to Paris.

• "The subway is so confusing? Why does the B come on the same track as the A?" I ended up on the wrong train, which is how I know I’m losing my touch, but still ended up in relatively the right place. How would a newbie understand how this works?

• "Why does the A have such janky lighting?" Looks like a yellow-cast hospital. Time for an upgrade to the white bulbs that outfit many of the other subway cars in the network.

• "Worst ads." Genuinely don't understand "Yo, Pain Law, Yo." After the golden age of startup ads in the subway, they jumped the shark. Who is copywriting these ads? What ROI is it driving? I want to understand.

• "People def trying out looks." People experiment with fashion in New York, trying to self-actualize into a main character. People dress in Paris, but the styling is not intended to individuate someone in the same way.

• "I'm so patient now lol." Can't find me impatient on a line after arriving from Paris. I can wait forever.

• "People here carry totes and backpacks to work vs. Paris where people do cross-body plus tote." I used to wonder in Paris where people's laptops are. I asked a coworker who said...people just don't take the laptops home.

Miami

• "Balmy." I landed in a heavy black cashmere sweater and a Veilance, so not exactly tropical. Took me only a few moments to put on sunglasses and disrobe.

• "Different fonts and aesthetic references." I get to learn a whole different visual reference library than what I know from New York. Different history, different communities, different place.

• "Sidewalks no one walks on (and I understand why)." Many streets in Miami just aren't human-scale or pleasant to walk on. I forgot that most American cities are structured this way—for cars.

• "Different interior design / decor preferences." Pink and green. Crystal chandeliers and sconces. Upholstery. Palm tree references. Maximalism. Coral and shell motifs. Have never loved it more.

• "Logos / loud and showy is an aesthetic here!" It looks very out of place in New York, and especially in Paris, but within 24 hours, I adjusted to it and started donning hot pink myself.

• "Cars scary fast." I forget that cars in New York and Paris drive slowly because the streets are so narrow and the speed limits are low. In Miami, people have *sports cars* and they are *speeding*. It makes walking more hostile but driving more fun.

• "Some very green walkable areas." See: Cocowalk.

• "People feel like they're part of building something." What a great time to be a transplant to Miami. There are so many newcomers, and many of them discuss feeling energized co-creating a new chapter as part of the city.

• "So distinctly Latin." Spanish is really the language of the city, and we spoke it everywhere. So much of the culture is filtered through the customs of the Central American, South American, and Caribbean immigrants who call the city home. I love that there are trendy Venezuelan bakeries, Peruvian tapas joints, and down-home Cuban sandwich shops.

• "Not many Asians." Just a completely different immigrant population from New York.

• “Politically diverse.” It’s a swing state, y’all. I do find it refreshing that people there have open political conversations across the aisle.

• "There are a few homegrown chains (Pura Vida, Mandolin) but honestly...many places are imported from other states and countries." It's disorienting seeing the "best of" every other state open a location in Miami—from Maman to Carbone and Ojo de Agua. I hope that Miami continues to cultivate and expand more of its own brands.

• "People know each other - relationship-driven city." New York is not entirely like this; Paris mostly is. Hang out with locals for more than a few hours in Miami and you're bound to run into their friends around the city, or stop by a place that their friend loves, owns, or knows another friend at.

• "Herbs." So many herbs in dishes because it's warm and plants grow. Why not keep a stockpile of parsley, mint, dill, etc. when they’re so abundant?

• "Bitcoin crazy." Heard the words crypto and bitcoin more in my time there than I had since 2022—and not just because of the bull run. Passed by a few bitcoin ATMs too.

• "Parking garages are beautiful." Parking garages are so hidden and heinous in New York and Paris that I don't pay them much attention. But in Miami, there's plenty of space, and a conscious effort to bring in artists when it’s possible, so even the garages are decked in nicer areas.

• "Miami boardwalk must be one of the best places to run in the country." It is to me!!

• "Wildlife!" A snake crossed my path on the boardwalk during my run. We saw manatees from the apartment window. Peacocks while driving through Coconut Grove. Apart from the occasional escaped zoo animal or park squirrel in New York, we do not commune with animals. In Paris, occasionally I hear birds and see green parakeets at the Buttes Chaumont, but not often. I usually have to leave the city for that.

• "Spring break was happening and honestly I didn't notice." I also didn't get to go to South Beach this trip. But that's okay; I'll be back.

• "Sooo much construction wow."

• "The merch at the airport is outrageous. Glass dolphins. Rhinestone keychains. Manatees carved from driftwood. Guayaberas." Tacky and beautiful. Miami is still in Florida.

San Francisco

• "It's always so cold here." I need to add at least one more layer than I prepared for when I'm there.

• "If you basically only stay in the beautiful parts, then it's stunning." Shoutout to my beautiful besties for hosting me in Bernal Heights and the Oakland hills. What gorgeous parts of the Bay where the California dream is alive and well.

• "Hiking here is fantastic and so easy to access." We drove to Portola Redwoods State Park and it was about one hour south of San Francisco, with a high density of old-growth Redwoods. I swooned at the blue Steller’s jays with mohawks and was bummed I saw 0 banana slugs.

• "Regional Asian food is elite." I spent a lot of time during my summer in Cupertino eating at various strip malls alone. While I don’t miss the Coop, the food is terrific, so I was happy that we popped down to San Jose to eat life-affirming pho with deep flavor in the broth, drink salty lemonade with the right amount of chunks, and drive to another nearby shopping center for Hong Kong-style desserts across from a Hawaiian barbecue place.

• "Hills so intense." Multiple times did I ask my friend Peter if his car was going to be okay when we parked.

• "Smells like jasmine!!!" Bernal Heights jasmine was blooming and my morning walk to Pinhole was marked by bright sunshine, crisp, clean morning air, and strong aromatherapy.

• “California dream when it’s sunny.” The sun shone for the entire week (unlike last year, when I visited during an atmospheric river in which trees were falling, and it rained sideways).

• "Pastries in SF very good." Not a secret but bakery culture in San Francisco is excellent. Especially on the laminated pastry and sourdough front.

• "Lol the pastry flavors are too creative." Why do we need a raspberry-matcha filled croissant with lychee dust? Not to be very France about this but...a croissant is very good in its simplest form. But then again, the curry potato bourek and ube croissant were absolutely delicious at Neighbors Bakehouse.

• "We should appreciate classic American restaurant culture." House of Prime Rib, even though the food is technically English, feels distinctly American in its theatricality. 10/10 would go again for the bottomless martinis and steakhouse classics. Creamed corn was a must.

• "It's not okay that there are people with open sores everywhere." Homelessness, a mental health crisis, and the fentanyl crisis converging and very visible in the Bay Area is gutting. I experience real moral hurt when I'm there, witnessing the pain and suffering of people in need of medical attention and housing on the streets.

• "Tenderloin so sad." I avoid the Tenderloin as much as possible (and spent a lot of time at the conference I was attending warning Europeans that their cavalier walking routines from back home require a different approach in downtown San Francisco) but had to drive through, and was struck, as I always am, by brazen open air hard drug use and decay.

• "People ask each other, 'what are you building?'" The cognitive dissonance of San Francisco is driving through the above and arriving to a spacious brick warehouse in SoMA for a startup networking breakfast at a blockchain coworking space where people are bragging about making millions in a week betting on memecoins and greeting each other with the question, "What are you building?" It's a mutation of "What do you do for work?" that's supposed to be more palatable for this thoughtful, therapized era, but no less blunt about locating you in a professional milieu and an in to showcase a demo of AI tech that will no doubt proliferate celebrity video deep fakes across the internet.

• "GrowSF." The political advocacy group founded by ex-tech workers who had enough came up a few times while I was there in conversations with friends and locals, as well as while I was eavesdropping on coffee shop conversations. It bills itself as politically moderate with the tagline "It's time to fix San Francisco," and advocates for building more housing, improving public safety, making public transit faster, safer, and more reliable, among other issues.

• "Referendum x algebra." The vote on Proposition G passing to reinstate algebra in San Francisco schools came up a few times.

• "Remote work clawbacks." In France, we had more in-office time throughout and after the pandemic than friends in the US did. Only in the last few months have big tech firms been clawing back initial promises or declined approvals for long stretches of working remotely.

Best Things I Ate and Drank in the US

• Sweet and sour beet salad @ Superiority Burger, New York.

• Burger @ Union Square Cafe, New York.

• Pan dulce @ Caracas Bakery, Miami.

• Anchovies, garlic, and tomatoes @ Mandolin Aegean Bistro, Miami.

• Snickers kakigori @ ZZ’s Club, Miami.

• Cinnamon bun @ Zak the Baker, Miami.

• Congee with watercress and pork @ Koi Palace, Daly City.

• Creamed corn and martinis @ House of Prime Rib, San Francisco.

• Curry potato bourek, banana Bostock, and ginger pull-apart @ Neighbors Bakehouse, San Francisco.

• Pho, summer roll, and salty lemonade @ Pho Kim Long, San Jose.

• Cocoa cappuccino @ Coffee Movement, San Francisco (Nob Hill location).

• Cappuccino @ Pinhole Coffee, San Francisco (Bernal Heights location).

• A salad with a lot of fresh lettuces, herbs, and avocado that Eleanor and I made @ home, Oakland.

• Chicken Special deep dish pizza @ Zachary's Chicago Pizza, Oakland.

• Cruller from Rolling Pin Donuts, San Bruno.

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