SAN FRANCISCO -- Bill Scannell, a public relations consultant with whom I dined here last week, tells of the adventure of ordering a beer in a city in which sex and politics are indistinguishable and all-encompassing.

"I asked the bartender what beer he would recommend. He said, 'As a gay man and as a gay bartender, I think you should have...' " Scannell shrugged. "Sometimes you want to shake these people and tell them, 'I don't care what you are. What do you do?' "

It has been so many years that it is hard to recall that when my uncle first moved here after the war, San Francisco was a conservative town that occasionally held an earthquake. Forty years later, Jeanne Kirkpatrick stood before the Republican National Convention and dismissed "the San Francisco Democrats." Geography alone was enough to doom the 1984 Democratic slate.

After his wife died, my uncle brought her back to Johnstown, buried her in her family's plot at St. John's Cemetery, and returned to San Francisco. He came here because there was work as a university librarian, an established, even stodgy, community, and weather nice enough for him to golf in early spring and late autumn.

In 1976 one of my closest friends left Johnstown because he was gay. He ended up in famously gay-friendly San Francisco. He was a leftist as well, and San Francisco is so left it is a wonder the cars keep in the correct lanes. It is strange to think about, but as we play the red-state, blue-state game there is much reason to consider the implications of a nation in which someone would select a home not for the climate but its political comfort level.

In San Francisco, the feel-like temperature for the Democrats is a balmy 78. For George Bush, it is arctic. Those of us in the gelatinous middle are left to wonder at a town in which people walk with such moral certainty about everything from smoking (banned) to sex (encouraged) to driving (aggressive). It could be argued, I suspect, that this place is Dallas for lefties.

Both my college friend and my uncle are now dust. I mean this literally. One was cremated in 1988 and, according to his former partner, deposited in a grassy corner of Golden Gate Park. My uncle was incinerated a decade later and dropped into the neighboring waters.

A city that becomes both a resident's identity and columbarium puts an enormous stake into personal liberty. That is to say, much is tolerated around here. Berkeley was famous for years for a man known as The Naked Guy. His name escapes me and a request for photo ID would be futile. There was open angst about how to handle the presence of a man who lived there and simply did not believe in wearing clothes. Nobody wanted to impose on his right to wander around a town starkers and it would never have occurred to anyone that this right did not exist. He was not, after all, smoking.

This ethos of not interfering with any vice that cannot be smelt was evident in Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle. It contained two letters lamenting the Super Bowl broadcast -- not last year's broadcast with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and enough Cialis and Levitra ads to frighten Sigmund Freud. This year's broadcast troubled two letter-writers.

One was puzzled at Fox for yanking the GoDaddy.com ad parodying the fuss of Jackson with a blouse strap that broke, frightening members of an official committee.

"I would much rather have my children watch a woman popping a strap than I would have them see the Toyota commercial that shows a man using his new, powerful truck to pull off his neighbor's garage door so he can get his tools back," a woman wrote in. Sex, yes. Powerful truck, no.

"Is the rest of the country Texas?" demanded another writer, mortified by the country music, "boring commercials" and Fox's decision to yank the GoDaddy.com ad after one run. "I guess I did not realize the rest of the country was so uptight. God bless the Bay Area and its free and open-minded way of thinking."

I would second that final sentiment, much as I would second praise of Las Vegas for its gambling, Florida for its marlin fishing and New Orleans for its binge drinking. As the proverb tells us, there is a place for everything. Apparently, that place is San Francisco.