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Lately I have been playing around with the OG social media trick of spouting truisms. Like did you know it's hard to drive on San Francisco hills? Or that our weather has a mind of its own?
The most gaslit topic seems to be Karl the Fog. We love our mercurial weather pattern but apparently loathe its name. This wasn't always. I remember ~2023 when I'd become editor of The Bold Italic, Karl felt especially popular: he had more than 300,000 followers on Twitter and another 300,000 on Instagram. He wrote a guest column in SF Standard; he has his own store in Sausalito; and he had a coffee table book that I picked up in that San Francisco gift shop at Land's End.
Now though, he's suspended on X. He also doesn't even go here anymore: apparently the account holder moved away some time ago. Karl's last post on Instagram was 11 weeks ago: unsurprisingly, he was upset about something Donald Trump-related.
I actually discovered only today that ol' Karl has blocked The Bold Italic on Instagram, because of course. I'm guessing some beef with prior owners or editors.
The fog in San Francisco is, of course, timeless. But when did we begin calling it Karl?
Karl is older than the well-known narrative, which pegs it to the summer of 2010. In April that year, the Deepwater Horizon rig had exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and as oil kept gushing for months, a parody account called @BPGlobalPR appeared to torment the company with cheerful corporate nonsense about how slimming the ocean looked in black. One anonymous San Franciscan later told SF Weekly that it was the first parody account they ever followed, and that they figured they could do something like it.
Karl was the weather, and he was sardonic about it. "Yesterday you got sunburned. Tonight you're bundled up in a hoodie. Welcome to San Francisco." He hugged the Golden Gate Bridge. He treated the sun as a clingy ex. People who had spent their whole lives resenting the fog discovered they could now resent it the way you resent a friend.
 Photo by Andrea Lea Chase.
Older San Franciscans remember a radio station that launched in 1960 and became KFOG in 1963, complete with a signature blasting foghorn sound effect. The internet and my boyfriend both tell me this transitioned to "Carl Fog" or "Karl Fog" nicknames. The station closed up shop in 2019.
On social media, the name comes from Big Fish, the 2003 Tim Burton film. In it there's a giant named Karl whom the townspeople fear, certain he means to kill them or eat them, when in truth he's just enormous, hungry, and lonely, and badly in need of somewhere he belongs.
Twitter Karl arrived at the tail end of a very specific San Francisco craze. Starting around late 2009 and peaking in 2010, locals spun up dozens of parody accounts voicing the city's landmarks and infrastructure: the Bay Bridge had one, the seagulls circling the Giants' ballpark had one, Muni trains and cable cars had them too. My personal favorite was the N Judah.
The name Karl has endured to this day, although the social media presence reminds me of that moment in Gossip Girl when everyone had control of the account. People began saying "Karl" in regular conversation. The fog made it onto Jeopardy as a clue. In the 2020s, we saw the emergence of Karla the Fog. There's also a Karl the Fog LLC now that sells custom coffee beans, hats, and mugs. Their social media is KarlTheFog_, with an underscore.
I don't know why the name irritates San Franciscans nowadays. I think it's something like calling us "San Fran" or "Frisco." The nickname Karl gave an anonymous man ownership of something with a cute wink, in a time we all winked at everything for clicks. But the fog was never really his to own.
The real fog doesn't know it's famous. It never read a tweet or sold a tote bag or took credit for a ruined wedding. It poured through the Golden Gate for thousands of years before anyone thought to name it, and it will keep pouring, or stop, with total indifference to how we're imitating it.
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
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SF Symphony x The Bold Italic is this Thursday, June 18
This event is filling up nicely for a weeknight. I'd really love to see you. For 25 percent off the concert, that's here. And for the after party only at The Academy, that's $10 or $27 here.
Read this one for some details on where we're sitting at the concert.
When I approached SF Symphony about this partnership, I told them it was because I wanted more excuses to dress up in San Francisco. I've made many a custom ballgown to wear to the symphony. So you'll spot me easily in something fancy.
In my social media push, I've been sprucing up lots of old stories from The Bold Italic. Here are a few for your Monday afternoon:
To better understand what life is actually like as a Muni driver today, Telsee has invited me to tag along on her ride as we shadow another operator. We’re sitting down in a shiny new seat of an LRV4, one of the recently rolled-out “light-rail vehicle” trains of the SFMTA, and just agreed to do the entire KT-Ingleside-Third Street line, which takes about three hours in total.
The Indonesian civet cat (actually not a cat at all) eats ripe coffee cherries. During digestion the cherries and pulp are removed, but the beans are not digested. A day later, a golden coffee turd emerges.
The story reviews a now-closed Eva's, but I think you can find this coffee still served at Castro Coffee Company.
Have you found that you’re super single and your typical $30 Vinyasa flow isn’t quite connecting you to the inner void that your therapist Laura told you is “important to feel”? Us, too. Join in! This yoga sequence will help you find your breath and bring to heart’s center all that you have: yourself. As a longtime single lady, there is nobody else (and we mean literally nobody, lol) who can help you dissipate this built-up vata besides you. Self-deprecating energy is always present, but this practice will help you fully realize and bring this into consciousness. Inspire a deepening of the inner void, and give space to question if you actually deserve love at all!
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