Let other cities build grand monuments. San Francisco days are better spent sunning by the bay and digesting lavish seafood dinners – no matter whether you’re a human or a sea lion that’s bellyflopped on Pier 39.

Outlandish behavior comes with the territory here. What with all the earthquakes and eccentrics, this peninsula keeps only a tentative hold on the planet, not to mention the continental US. But as any San Franciscan will tell you, gravity is overrated, anyway. With 43 hills and a population of free thinkers, crafty inventors, and weirdoes passing as normal, this city stubbornly refuses to be brought down to earth. Instead reality is forced to rise to the occasion, with flocks of wild parrots taking to the treetops, ingenious meals by rising star chefs and poets who just keep on riffing until their words take flight. San Francisco’s stratospheric booms and crashing busts aren’t for the weak of heart, but as anyone who’s clung onto the side of a cable car will tell you, this town gives one hell of a ride.