Just Evil Enough

Chapter 20:

 

Reframing

San Francisco is famous for its hills. The city juts out like a thumb with the chilly Pacific Ocean on the west. A ridge of three mountains—Davidson, Twin Peaks, and Sutro—lift damp ocean air to their summits before sending it racing down steep city streets to the bay on the other side. This topography means some neighborhoods, like Ingleside and Stonestown, are shrouded in fog roughly half of every day, while nearby SoMa and Nob Hill are clear for 18 hours.

Locals call this border between gloom and sun the Fog Line.

The San Francisco Fog Line explains why two otherwise identical houses have dramatically different selling prices. If you didn’t know about it, you’d be hard-pressed to predict prices from a map of the city, ...