Megan Brubaker

Cue outfit change number one.

We are parked on Greenwich Street in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood. Megan is fixing her makeup, rather masterfully, using the car window as her mirror. Just a moment ago, she took off her cortado-colored tank top and slipped into a luxurious white blouse and a castleton green cardigan coat. This combo, along with the long black skirt and the brown block-heel Chelsea boots, is what she considers the first official outfit for the day. The tank top’s sole purpose was to be the coffee stain-friendly garment on our car ride from Lower Haight to Russian Hill, during which Megan held the car wheel with her left hand and drank Peet’s holiday spice latte with her right hand. Mind you, all that, without any help from GPS.

“At this point in life, I know myself,” she told me in the car. “Me, coffee, and white clothes. It never ends well.”

Our interview has barely even started and I already know it’s going to be a great one, because when Megan comes through, she comes through. Planned outfit changes, jam-packed itinerary for the day, and an element of surprise that, according to her, will floor me. I am excited and a tad nervous.

Earlier this year in June, Megan celebrated her tenth anniversary of living in San Francisco. These days, she is a licensed therapist who lives on a steep hill in The Mission with her partner Sebastien, but ten years ago, she had just arrived from Sacramento—where she was doing a four-year Master’s program in counseling psychology—and had moved into a big blue house by the Greenwich Steps in Russian Hill to work as a live-in nanny. This is why we’re here, in Russian Hill, by the same big blue house today. It’s where Megan’s life in San Francisco began.

“This is what I used to call ‘The Mansion’,” she points to the house. “I had my own mother-in-law unit. I really liked the family, and was really close to the girl I nannied. It was a good time.”

I mention that many people, when they visit San Francisco for the first time, think the colors of San Francisco’s houses are tacky. And that I consistently fail at defending the city’s aesthetic because I can never find the right words to explain why the colors are not tacky.

“What? Tacky? Absolutely not,” Megan says. “Just think about it, San Francisco houses are in drag. That’s why they’re so fabulous.”

Moving to the city was not a happenstance. Megan had a plan. After finishing grad school, she took the nanny job to have a steady income and a place to live while working on her thesis.

“Look, I’m an ocean girlie. I knew I wanted to live here. I was already traveling on a regular basis from Sacramento to SF to visit my friend Ali, who had moved to SF before me. Also, SF was the right place to be for me. It’s super fun, and I had focused on the LGBTQ+ community in grad school.”

“Yeah, why did you pick the LGBTQ+ crew as an area of focus?” I ask.

“Well, I kept making queer friends once I started working,” she says. “For me, I think the queer community has always been the one community that has consistently defied rules and expectations, and the one community that spans across all aspects of identity, from socioeconomic status to gender to sexuality to ethnicity. It’s the community that represents what America is supposed to be.”

But there was also a personal aspect to it. Megan, who grew up in a small town outside of Redding, in Northern California, found solace in San Francisco for another reason.

“I am more invisible here,” she explains. “I definitely needed to get away from the valley and figure out who I was. I was always open-minded, but San Francisco pushes you to a whole new level of tolerance and acceptance. Like, you learn to not be shocked when you see naked men walking down the street in the Castro.”

The setup worked out well for Megan. She finished her thesis at The Mansion and became a central figure in the life of the girl she nannied. At her sixteenth birthday party, which happened recently and featured a Victorian era-inspired candling ceremony, the girl dedicated the eighth candle to Megan. Last year, the family invited Megan to go see Lady Gaga’s The Chromatica Ball tour with them at Oracle Park.

It also meant that Megan lived in one of the most beautiful parts of San Francisco, right next to the famous Lombard Street. She takes me there next, and we stand still, for a moment, at the top of the street stairways, looking at the skyline of Telegraph Hill. I tell her that it’s my first time seeing the city from this angle, with the Coit Tower as its centerpiece.

“You know about the Coit Tower story, right? That it looks like the tip of a firehose?”

I shake my head. I have no idea what Megan is talking about.

She tells me a San Francisco rumor that the Coit Tower was named after a wealthy widow who, apparently, had a love affair with a firefighter. This is why the tower resembles a firehose tip, Megan says, but also emphasizes that I should double-check the details.

Turns out, based on my investigation a few months later, that the widow was a famous socialite named Elizabeth (Lillie) Hitchcock Coit (b. 1843, d. 1929). There isn’t explicit evidence that she had a steamy romance with a hulky firefighter. The tower’s architect also repeatedly denied that his tower was supposed to look like a fire nozzle. But Lillie certainly was enamored with the firemen of San Francisco, who, back in those days, were all volunteers and who ran the engines to the fire by pulling ropes and who were therefore greatly respected for their courage and strength.

When she was fifteen, Lillie helped out the guys one day when they were short-staffed and had to put out a fire in Telegraph Hill. She saw them struggling on the street and ran to an empty spot on the rope, helping pull the engine up the hill and thereby effectively becoming the official patroness of the city’s firefighting service. She later became an even bigger deal: she wore pants when it was unacceptable for women to do so, she gambled, she smoked, and even dressed in drag to enter male-only establishments. After she died, as per her will, part of her wealth was used to expand the city’s architectural landscape, which is how the Coit Tower came to life.

The verified version of the story, with Lillie as the late-nineteenth-century OG queen who slayed, is one for the books, but I still think I prefer Megan’s version. A rich widow and a steamy romance with a muscled firefighter somehow feels more appropriate. Because what the Coit Tower, just like its buddy Salesforce Tower, actually resembles is one big penis.

“Well,” I add, “just about everything in this city is phallic.”

“You should add that as another reason why we love San Francisco,” she chuckles.

Megan is funny. It’s a trait of hers that completely threw me off when we first met. The date was July 13, 2019, and my friend Sebastien told me there was a house party happening in The Mission that night. This girl that he had been seeing—a therapist—and her two roommates were having a few people over, and I distinctly remember that July 13, 2019 was a gorgeous summer Saturday in San Francisco and that I was sad on July 13, 2019 because I was feeling an intense bout of post-party blues after an all-night clubbing bender with a very good friend who was leaving the city.

Therefore, a party with therapists sounded great; maybe they would know how to fix me. I don’t know what I expected this girl Megan to be like, but I certainly did not expect a witty, whimsical, winsome woman in her thirties with a lot of flair and a lot of style. When Sebastien introduced us, she started cracking jokes the moment she registered my t-shirt with the print of St. Vincent’s Masseduction ass-and-thong album cover. Woah, I remember thinking, therapists are not supposed to be funny.

But, as I would learn over the next four years, Megan is not a jester. That’s worth calling out because a jokester can easily slip into this troubled archetype, when humor becomes a way to veil deep-seated pain. Her punchlines are instead a natural extension of her lively personality and are cued up for moments that call for a comedic relief. At the same time, when life gets tough, and there are no jokes to tell, Megan shows up and she listens. That’s the therapist in her, and it comes from years of experience working with adults and children who have struggled with mental health issues, trauma, and sometimes addiction.

“To become a licensed therapist, I needed to accumulate three thousand countable hours,” she says. “So, I did six months at a methadone clinic in the Tenderloin. That was really hard. After that, I worked at a company for a while, in Therapeutic Behavioral Services.”

Methadone is a medication used to treat opioid addiction, most commonly to heroin. The company where Megan worked provides the highest level of psychiatric care to children with acute mental health issues before they are sent to out-of-state programs.

“I am just genuinely amazed by people like you, who do this for a living,” I tell Megan. “Isn’t it difficult?”

“It is,” she replies. “But, that particular period was prior to getting licensed, and my goal was always to be a licensed marriage and family therapist. I am now in private practice, and typically work with adults. I specialize in life transitions, self-esteem, anxiety, stress, and, of course, the queer community.”

“I never really asked you, but why? Why do you like being a therapist?”

“It’s great, you get to be a part of people’s life stories,” she answers emphatically. “Being a therapist, basically, is like the CliffsNotes of life.”

We go for a walk around the block again, and when we reach Leavenworth Street, a few parrots suddenly fly above us.

“What the hell? Why are there parrots in the city?” I ask, absolutely baffled.

“You don’t know about the San Francisco parrots?”

I shake my head. I have no idea what Megan is talking about.

“Apparently a few wild parrots once escaped a pet store and they have been living in the North Beach area ever since. We’ll probably see a few of them around.”

Except that, when we walk up from Leavenworth Street back to Greenwich Street, we don’t see just a few of them. We see a flock of colorful parrots perching on and squawking from the shrubs planted along the stairway. Megan is visibly spellbound.

“I didn’t plan for this,” she laughs. “I have never seen this many parrots in the city.”

I will later learn that these parrots are cherry-headed conures, exotic species native to Ecuador and Peru. Internet stories about their presence in San Francisco abound. Some say a woman had a psychotic episode and burnt down a pet store and then someone released the birds to save them. Some say what Megan said as well, that the birds simply escaped a pet store. Some say it’s most likely that a pet owner was fed up with these birds because they are loud and obnoxious.

Whatever the real reason is for their presence, the parrots have become famous. There is even a 2003 documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, that chronicles the relationship between the parrots and Mark Bittner, a musician in San Francisco, who has written extensively about them.

Parrots aside, there is another reason why there is a layer of profound depth underneath Megan’s cheerful demeanor. In 2016, Megan learned just how fickle life can be when she had a near-death experience.

She tells me about this at Za Pizza, a neighborhood joint in Russian Hill, where Megan used to come during her first years in the city, when she didn’t have much money and a slice of pizza was as much as she could afford on a night out.

2016 was the year she had broken her neck, and the injury shattered her C1 vertebra and cracked her C4 vertebra. Injuries to C1 and C2 vertebrae are considered the worst types of spinal cord injuries.

“Most people die when something like that happens,” Megan says.

But she was given another chance. Three months of halo brace and then three months of neck brace totaled six unnerving months of recovery, but Megan eventually healed. She says that the experience was a pivotal moment for her, and that everything after the injury is what she considers her life number two.

Just as she is telling me about the importance of each of the top seven vertebrae, a tiny gnat nosedives into Megan’s glass of beer and begins fighting for its life, jolting manically on the surface of the hoppy liquid. Our conversation halts momentarily. Megan grabs a napkin and is now determined to help the gnat escape the grim future that awaits in the depths of the alcoholic ocean.

When the beer waves wash the gnat ashore on the napkin, I want to resume my questioning, assuming that Megan will simply squish the gnat and crumple the napkin, but I then realize the rescue mission is not over. Megan puts the napkin on the ground and gently takes the gnat off. The gnat does a drunkard’s walk while it finds its bearings, and proceeds to begin a second life, bestowed upon this petite creature by the sheer generosity of Megan, the Homo Sapiens benefactor.

“You know,” I say, “most people would have killed the gnat.”

Megan takes another bite of the pizza and smiles.

“Have you ever read The Crime of Being Small poem?” she asks.

Yet again, I shake my head. I have no idea what she is talking about.

Megan opens her phone, and realizes that she is actually thinking of specific verses from two different poems. Both poems have recently taken off on TikTok, through the #crimeofbeingsmall hashtag, and have caused a profound philosophical crisis among TikTok users, who now find themselves in a pickle. They have seen an insect in their house, and have trapped it, but are unable to kill it because they have the poems stuck in their heads.

The first poem is written by Rudy Francisco and is called Mercy:

She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.

If I’m ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the the same kind
of mercy.

The second poem is written by Althea Davis and is titled Kinder than Man. The last verse that Megan is referring to reads:

If I am killed
For simply living,
Let death be kinder
Than man.

“These just make me cry,” she adds.

* * *

Cue outfit change number two. 

We are done with our lunch at Za Pizza and have stopped by Megan and Sebastien’s house before she shows me the big surprise for the day. I still have no idea what we are doing and where we are going, but judging by Megan’s equally stylish yet more relaxed new outfit—light blue denim shirt over a breezy beige top, paired with black tights and black Chelsea boots—we are going somewhere with fewer fancy mansions and fewer exotic birds.   

“Megan, where are you taking me?” 

“Oh, you just wait,” she laughs. 

I can at least tell we’re driving south, seemingly toward Hunters Point or Bayview. After fifteen minutes of this enigmatic drive, Megan finds a parking spot near the water. It looks like she is taking me to Pier 96, but when we get out of the car, she starts walking in the direction of a spacious lot, filled with plants, that has large black-bordered blue letters painted on top. They read: ‘Heron’s Head Nursery.’

We walk through the jungle of flowers and plants and enter a big dark room, where a guy is playing the guitar under a hot magenta light. Few other people are around him and they smile when they see us walk in. There is also an empty bar and a bunch of leather furniture.

“Anyone can come here,” Megan tells me, while I quietly observe the surrounding environment.

Just when I thought this impromptu venue was the surprise, Megan grabs my hand and takes me outside, where a whole new world opens up. First, a wired gate with a makeshift wooden sign that reads:

WELCOME
To the New Farm
PUSH
Chicken Gate

Behind the gate, another vast lot. I can’t tell if it’s a wasteland or a junkyard, but there is a stage. And an old piano. And an orange traffic cone. And an upholstered pony. And two dudes chilling under a sign that reads ‘FUNLAND,’ behind which there is a heap of old bikes. On the other side, a wire fence, behind which goats are bleating. And, the chicken gate was not a metaphor, there are also chickens roaming around. The entire space looks as if a magic circus came here yesterday, and if I can be more specific, it feels maybe like the Magic Town in the Sims: Makin’ Magic expansion pack.

Megan was right, I am floored. But only briefly, because, come to think of it, this setup could not be more Megan. It’s whimsical and exciting, and yet delicate and reflective. Maybe circus is not the right analogy. There is a level of pensive theatricality to it, almost as if I were looking into the soul of a musical while it was being written, edited, rewritten, nixed, and then written again. Then it hits me; that’s why. Because that is Megan. She is a musical in human form.

This particular analogy is, in my not-so-humble opinion, spot on for several reasons. The first is that Megan actually was a theater major in college before she went down the path of becoming a therapist. The second is that she often goes to see musicals with a crew of gay boys that she met at a ‘Vax for Vax Ball’ post-pandemic party, where each person was dressed as the COVID-19 vaccine they received (Megan was the Pfizer one). Third, as is the case with many musicals, there is a subversiveness to this whimsical junkyard, and to Megan as well.

Until she met Sebastien, Megan never interacted with the tech scene, a prominent part of San Francisco’s culture over the past decade. As far as she was concerned, techies were a foreign breed. After meeting Sebastien, however, she found herself at the junction of two worlds in the city: the artistic queer world versus the tech world. For the most part, she has been positively surprised with her social life in this liminal space. She tells me that my crew—the tech crew—is curious and drawn to her crew’s people and empathy skills, while her crew is drawn to my crew because we are friendly, down-to-earth, and typically maladjusted within the mainstream society. I guess it’s fair to say our crews are two groups of misfits, just on opposite sides of the spectrum.

But having a social life in this liminal space means that Megan will, every now and then, go against the grain when one world demands too much from her and from her core values. Recently, she gave in and went to Burning Man, an event that has become increasingly exclusive to Silicon Valley and the wealthy tech social circles.

In that sense, the vast quirky spaces behind the gates of Heron’s Head Nursery are topical, because they contain many of the elements associated with Burning Man: experiences built and maintained by a community, abundance of eccentric characters, makeshift art, performances, and separation from everyday, mainstream world.

But these spaces, tucked away behind Pier 96, are, in many ways, also radically different. Unlike the Burning Man’s Black Rock desert, the spaces of Heron’s Head Nursery are free and accessible to everyone, they are permanent, and they are genuinely, unwaveringly anti-capitalist. It feels that coming here today is Megan’s perhaps unconsciously cheeky way of saying that she is still Megan from the block.

Megan decides to buy a few plants at the nursery and then drives us back to her place, where we conclude the interview and where she gives me a gift, a book titled Legendary Authors and The Clothes They Wore.

“I saw it, and I was like, this just has Denis energy all over it,” she says.

Two months after our interview, I get a text from Megan on a cold winter morning, asking if I want to join her and a few ladies in Berkeley next month for an afternoon at a metaphysical market, where aspiring witches, seers, and healers will come together to restock their altar supplies, buy divination tools, have their tarot readings, and get hennas.

“I would be so down,” my text says, “but guess where I will be that day? At a baptism.”

“Denis,” she texts back, “that’s literally the opposite of the vibe we’re going for.”