Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network.

Since everyone in Austin is 'from' our perfect little corner of God’s green country, and would never have any rational cause to drive any further than Marfa, I thought I might give you a little taste of the strange and peculiar experience of moving to a new place. Not just moving to a foreign land, but also enjoying its idiosyncrasies while also attempting to replicate some of your favorite experiences in the place you loved but fatuously left.

The following format should be pretty easy to follow: If you loved X in Austin, you might enjoy Y in San Francisco.

If you loved Veggie Heaven in Austin, you might enjoy Lucky Creation in San Francisco's China Town. Now, Lucky Creation doesn’t offer anything that rivals Mei Wang’s Spicy Yam, Protein 2000, or Nugget Island, but they do dispense some things that Veggie Heaven can’t touch, such as giant soups and their basic, primary attraction: cheap but very respectable meat-free versions of the exact same food found in every expatriate Chinese restaurant between London and Los Angeles. Take-out Tip: If you opt for one of the five flavors of puffed wheat gluten, be warned: the three choices on the top shelf only look somewhat like Protein 2000—their flavor and texture is quite a departure. Instead, ask for one of the two beet-colored varieties on the lower shelf, and never look back. Final Note of Interest: While I was one of four white guys in the restaurant, I was the only one without a Chinese girlfriend. So Lucky Creation may be a kind of culinary commons, a neutral location for some arcane vegetarian, cross-cultural mating ritual.

If you loved Sound Exchange in Austin, you might enjoy Amoeba Records in San Francisco and Berkeley. Amoeba is basically a massive Sound Exchange, except that the last time I was at the Haight-Ashbury store, the cashier told me Spoon was just about the best band in the country.

If you loved Barton Springs in Austin, you might enjoy Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Go West on Fulton Street along Golden Gate Park until, well, until you get to the ocean. Like Barton Springs, the water is just a few degrees above absolute zero. But there’s wind, sand, and you can surf, kind of. The downside is that it’s just as freezing outside the water, so unlike Barton Springs, there are generally no 17 18 22-year-old topless sunbathers.

If you loved both The Gingerman and The Dry Creek Saloon in Austin, you might enjoy Naturfreunde, a.k.a The Nature Friends Tourism Club in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. Plainly, the ‘secret’ bier garten in the woods is no longer so secret, and probably hasn’t been in quite some time. But if you like to yodel and you’re in the dark, here’s the non-exhaustive lowdown: In the early 1900’s, members of the Viennese Naturfreunde cut out a modest parcel of land on the piney slopes of Mount Tamalpais, and built a small number of German-style chalets hidden under the old growth of Muir Woods overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The club is private, but opens to visitors between 2 and 6pm on the weekends (except the 2nd weekend of every month), when one can drink from kegs of impressive Austrian draughts, sit on the deck, and take in an awesome view. It is a truly singular experience. Even the beer is good, with a helles lager and a heffeweizenIn on tap ($5 pints, $18 pitchers). In fact, this may be one of the bay’s most ‘Austin’ attractions—on our last visit, nearly everyone there was young, fit, and more than willing to make the very steep 1/3-mile downhill hike to get there, not to mention the slightly pixilated trip back up. This despite a recent and very un-Austin development: no dogs allowed. (There’s beer enough for man, just not man’s best freund, apparently.) As I said, it’s not a secret anymore—owing, I think, to the rise of the dreaded blog—but I’d still feel somewhat complicit if I actually gave directions, so you’re on your own. But if you time your trip with Oktoberfest, the smell of pretzels and bratwurst and the sounds of an oompa-oompa band will help you find your way.

If you enjoyed The Relative Regularity of Cool Author Readings at BookPeople, then you might enjoy Frequent Readings by Tons of Authors all over San Francisco. On a previous trip I narrowly chose to hear William T. Vollmann read from Rising Up and Rising Down at The Booksmith in the Haight, even though it meant missing a Russell Banks reading at the exact same time across town. And on a recent trip, I heard Irvine Welsh read from The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs at Edinburgh Castle, which as you may know, is not a book store at all, even though they do sell a book composed of contributions by their regulars, Public House, including work by Mr. Welsh, Mary Roach, Anthony Swofford, and others.

Speaking of which, if you loved the The Draught House Pub & Brewery in Austin, you might enjoy Edinburgh Castle Pub in the Tenderloin. They’ve got a decent beer selection, cask ale, and better than passable fish-and-chips. Really, it’s the closest the peninsula can get to 16th Century England, what with semi-lucid crackheads dashing through the door to make off with a patron's purse. (Actually, they fit the mood, if you simply refer to them as 'rapscallions'.) I suggest you go to Union Square first, and get sentimentally soused among the shopping bag-encumbered tourists sitting at the piano in Lefty O’Doul’s, then shamble up the street. If you get to Edinburg Castle before they open, which I often do, safely cross the street to Ha-Ra, where if you’re under 30, you’ll make the average age drop to 90. On my first visit I showed the bartender some mysterious black sediment on the bottom of my fresh pint of Anchor Steam, to which he said, ‘Just drink it through your teeth.’

If you spawned and loved taking your little replicants to The Austin Children's Museum, you might enjoy The Exploratorium at The Palace of Fine Arts, which manages to stay relevant while including the 'classic' demonstrations of magnetism, particle psychics, and the vagaries of perceptive stimuli. Also, nothing says 'I care' more than taking your tike to touch and climb on hundreds of tactile learning displays just in time for the cresting epidemic of drug-resistant staphylococcus. Which can also be a kind of lesson.

If you loved Postulating about the Imminent Civic Screw-Ups in Austin’s near future, you might enjoy Living in the Present in San Francisco. Because not only can you make dire prognostications about Austin's own increasing SF-ness, but you can also come here and smugly witness artery-clogging traffic despite extensive light rail (Muni), intra-metro heavy rail (BART), and toll roads (well, bridges, technically)—each of which are great for many people in many situations, yet are in no way a transportational panacea—just ask the guys pushing their fixed-gear bikes up California Street. Also, you can see countless condo towers and stacks of ‘lofts’ cropping up like mushrooms, going for $600 to $1200 per sq. foot, slowly swelling toward a cumulative 90% occupancy. And, if you’re part of the new panhandling bandwagon, you can personally witness what it’s like to live in the city with (possibly) the highest rate of homelessness per capita. San Francisco is one of the most visited cities in the world, and yet a consistently high-ranking complaint from tourists is the pervasive smell of bum urine. And some of those tourists were from Houston.

Finally, if you loved Nearly Year-Round Air Conditioning and an Annual Two-Month Love Affair with your Furnace in Austin, you might enjoy The Weather in San Francisco. Although, 362 days of clement weather a year does have its price: layers. You'll be sporting the cords and a pea coat long before your BFFs in Austin quit showing off their carotene-colored cleavage. Basically, if your day involves visiting both the East Bay and the peninsula, or requires you to be away from home for a good part of both day and night, you’ll probably have to wear jeans, and will most likely end up tying a sweater around your waist, or have it draped over your shoulders, resulting in the strange phenomenon that half the people in San Francisco look like they’re either about to go sailing or were just pulled from a Newport cigarette ad. (Or in some cases, both.)