Almost precisely twenty years ago, on Monday, June 23, 1986, me and my bird (name: Bird) boarded a plane in Syracuse, New York, bound for northern California. I’d spent the prior four years in the northwest of New York, in a town called Ithaca. Ithaca, they say, has two seasons: August and winter. It is an exceedingly unpleasant place to reside for much of the year—bone-chillingly and beard-freezingly cold, icy, windy, barren and gray. For this reason, and for reasons too complicated and depressing to go into here, but generally having to do with having had a screwy mother (lived in New York) and a distressed childhood (in and around New York), I did not waste anytime getting out once I’d finished college. And I aimed for parts as distant as I could manage, while remaining within the continental U.S.

San Francisco, right? Actually, no. I never thought of living in SF. Rather, I headed for the East Bay. I cannot say exactly what I was thinking, at the time, because I have a lousy memory. I had one friend who lived in Berkeley, and his couch was available for a short time while I looked for a place to live. But I had another friend in the city who must have made a similar offer. There was a law school in Berkeley I contemplated applying to; but the one I attended was in SF. I lived in Oakland for the next four years. And after bouncing around for a while–Reno, SF because my then girlfriend insisted, SF because of my job–nine years ago I returned to Oakland. I strongly suspect, this is where I will live until I perish. For a moment, hold that thought.

Yesterday me and A’s crossed the Bay Bridge for a game against the Giants at what was first called Pacbell Park and is now, I believe, called AT&T Park. I have never been to Giants stadium. For years people have been reacting to this news with the same stunned, mouth open, drool collecting against their lower lips, look as I get when I tell people I’ve been in California for twenty years and have never set foot in Yosemite. (By now my reason for not going to Yosemite has simply to do with wanting to be able to evoke this look in people. I have nothing against Yosemite. I get out and about, both in the state and around the world, quite a bit. It’s just never come up. Now it’s like a badge of honor. I may well never go just to spite the rest of you.)

But the looks of disbelief vis a vis the stadium are about more than the fact that its widely considered to be one of the best parks in baseball, or that it’s easily accessible, or that it’s now been around for a few years, or that almost anyone who can afford it, whether or not they have any interest in baseball, has been to see the park. Consider: if I say I’ve never walked around Fisherman’s Wharf, or been to the top of the Transamerica Building, or gone to Alacatraz (actually, I have done all of those things, but that’s not the point), there would be no such looks, no horror.

The reason for this is that in San Francisco, as in New York (and elsewhere, no doubt, but these are the cities of my personal experience), some experiences are cool, and some less cool. And in SF, Fisherman’s Wharf is uncool, for tourists, and happily avoided, while AT&T is the opposite of these things.

The new park arrived during one of San Francisco’s periods of greatest glory: the Internet/real estate boom. It is located in an area–south of Market street, close to the new Mission Bay project–that is strongly associated with the explosive growth of new media businesses. The park is a towering, gleaming, gorgeous symbol of the great riches that were (and are still) being generated in SF. It is, actually, a big-assed-hot-dog-and-Bonds and-garlic-fries-filled Golden Calf.

I assure you, no one would have given me a dirty look if, years ago, I’d said I’d never been to see the Giants play at Candlestick. It isn’t about baseball. It’s about being part of the boom. It’s about patting ourselves on the back for how attractive and rich and smart and, well, cool, we are.

Now I’ve been there, so quit your drooling. The park is almost absurdly stunning. We sat in what are probably the worst seats in the house, as high as we could climb, way out over the first base line. But the game was still extremely easy to follow. And the views–out over the bay, over to Oakland and parts south, of the boats and kayaks trolling around McCovey Cove–made the day at the park feel almost like going for a ride over the city in a small plane. The place is extremely clean, the bathrooms do not evoke waves of nausea, the lines for beer and munchies are very reasonable. The prices are insane–$5.25 for a small Diet Pepsi?–but the place runs at an extremely high level of efficiency and that must be costly. It is hard to imagine an inner-city baseball stadium that is more beautiful or more workable that AT&T.

And the fans. Listen, I’m new to this baseball thing, and my experience is limited to Oakland (more on that in a bit). But I was truly shocked at how the SF fans seem genuinely to love their team, to appreciate their good fortune for having such a comfortable and pleasing place to see games. They fill the park no matter how the Giants are doing. They behave civilly. They cheer on cue and when Bonds hits a homer, which he did (719) yesterday, they go absolutely nuts–maybe he’ll get indicted, maybe he juiced for years, maybe all of those things; they just don’t care. He’s their Barry Bonds and they love him. I admire them for their loyalty and their enthusiasm.

I don’t have one negative thing to say about the experience. The park is perfect, the fans are wonderful. Shit, even the game proved that the Giants have incredible heart. They are by all accounts a squad much inferior to the A’s. They blew the first game against the A’s in the Ninth. In the second of the series, they were down by five runs in the sixth. By the bottom of the ninth they’d cut the lead to two. And then, with two men on, the struggling Ray Durham hit a shot over the right field fence that brought the stadium to its feet in a thunderous, unison, blissful roar. I certainly was not pleased that the A’s lost, but I couldn’t help but be impressed by the Giants and their fans and the whole enterprise.

And still, still somehow I was glad to get the hell out of there.

I know, I know–the A’s park is a complete mess–horrifying bathrooms, rotten food, no views, no interesting design elements. It’s an out of the way, by the airport, sandwiched between industrial enterprises and who knows what sort of toxic waste dumps, smelly, concrete jungle. It is as uncool as uncool can possibly be without being so uncool that it becomes cool. (If it were that uncool, people from San Francisco would start flocking to the park in droves.) But it will never be that uncool. It will always be just uncool enough to be the perfect place for the Oakland A’s to play, in the same way that Oakland will always be sufficiently uncool (compared not only to SF, but even to Berkeley) that someone like me can live here.

Which is what struck me most about my day at AT&T–that the difference between the parks, the difference between the fans (although the A’s are doing better than the Giants, have a better chance of making the playoffs, and are in many ways a more exciting team to watch, attendance in Oakland is often sparse, and the energy at the park rarely exceeds idling level), reflects in lots of ways the differences between the two towns. San Francisco is gleaming; Oakland is forever trying to buff itself to shining, but can never quite succeed. San Francisco is can-do; Oakland is we’ll see. San Francisco is all about breaking ground and moving forward and not getting stuck; Oakland is, often, simply stuck. San Francisco is cool; Oakland, well . . .

Admittedly this is an absurdly simplistic analysis and no doubt I’ll get lots of complaints along those lines. My point is a simple one, though. There is no denying the magic of AT&T or SF itself. And, still, I choose to live in Oakland, and I choose to root for the A’s. Go figure.