San Francisco

This week's Character of the Week challenge at CA was The City. Take a city and give it a personality and render what it would look like if it was vaguely humanoid.

San Francisco: A laid-back city where you can remove the masks you wear. Kind of a techno-pagan. She’s got a long history and a history of activism and culture. She’s friendly to artists and crazy people. She’s environmentally friendly (and while you can’t tell, her clothes are probably made of all-natural hemp.) Of course, every so often she throws a tantrum, and you end up with a major earthquake, but most of the time, she’s just chilling, making her own beat.

Annotations to the symbols: gold dust (for the gold rush), heart-in-a-cage tattoo (double duty for Alcatraz and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco"), goggles (technologically inclined), marijuana leaf border on her tank top, sash turning to fog, djembes (Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park), rainbow peeps (gay pride), Chinatown, the railroad (railroad barons), the Golden Gate bridge, cracked ground (earthquakes), portrait of Emperor Norton (the most famous craaaazy person in SF history), Chinese coin, and a parrot from Telegraph Hill.