Ask Me SF's Ellen Lo, Part 2 (S7E9)

In Part 2, we pick up with Ellen's life after she graduated from Washington University. Next up was a move to New York City.

 

In the Big City, she consulted for a financial services company. It was 2007, just before the financial crisis of those years. She found the job market tight, so she got a job in Washington, DC, where she lived for four years. Ellen says that during her time in the nation's capital, she behaved like a New York snob, never really giving DC a chance. She'd go back to NYC just about every weekend. Some of her New York friends didn't realize that she'd moved, in fact.

 

Her return to NYC four years later was perhaps overdue. Ellen spent the next four years in New York, and she still loves going back to visit friends there. But it was time for a move across the country.

 

Ellen's then-boyfriend/now-husband got a job in San Francisco, a city she'd visited before that move. She hadn't spent significant time here and was somewhat reluctant to leave New York. But she saw what a good opportunity the move was, especially for her partner.

 

She approached her move out West setting aside her own reservations, and decided to embrace her new hometown. She wasn't able to keep her East Coast job out here, so that meant looking for work. It was 2016, and Ellen was able to find folks here whom she'd known in New York, and that of course helped her transition to SF life.

 

Ellen goes into some detail about the adjustments that New York City transplants make in San Francisco. Parks, brunches before noon, exercise, just being outside a lot. She also noticed people complaining about the weather a lot, which we do. We're spoiled AF, right?

 

We take a short conversational detour to talk about what all attracts us and draws us to SF, including when we leave on vacation and come back.

 

Then we pivot to talk about Ask Me SF. Ellen lays the background for us, describing what folks who don't live here kept saying about her new city. She felt offended. "How dare you?" she often asked herself. She might not have had this term in mind, but Ellen was experiencing folks on the Doom Loop. But she felt differently about San Francisco.

 

And so she set out to provide a service for people, a collection of resources meant to help experience all the good that is here. Like Storied: SF for me, she wanted to promote the things about living here that she finds joy in, to get word out so that others, too, might experience the wonder that's so woven into life here.

 

We end the episode with Ellen's thoughts on our theme this season: Keep it local.

 

Visit Ask Me SF and follow them on Instagram for more info and inspiration.

 

We recorded this episode at Ocean Ale House in February 2025.

 

Photography by Nate Oliveira