A re-written excerpt

Just to spur myself on, here...

I began a re-write on a part that I've posted on here before. Its where Nina runs into John after years and years. I hope this is a better lead in. One problem I have is the setting- in San Francisco. I've been to San Francisco plenty of times. I know what it feels like and what it smells like- but I don't really KNOW it well enough to know exactly what it looks like near the BART station. It's not that big a deal, right? Because the reader may not know, either.

I AM going there in a couple weeks to spend the night and run the Across the Bay 12K. I'll have to take some notes .

Heres what I re-wrote, though:

Nina stood against the side of a building for a long time. The sun was going down, casting long slants of shadow across the busy street. The BART station entrance was just across the street and she had intended on walking in, but she stopped before crossing. She inhaled the sweet city air. It was saturated with perfumes of passersby, food, the sharp smells of cars pulsing along the hills, and the ever present salted sea smell that carried it all. She always thought she’d live here. She’d have gone to art school here then gotten an apartment that looked over the slope of one of it’s pastel streets. The morals of any city troubled her father, especially San Francisco with its reputation for being less-than-traditional. He wanted her out of the city, into the safe suburbs and all it’s mediocrity. She felt like a tourist and she hated it. She wanted to belong here, but, she didn’t.
Nina pushed chapstick over her mouth and sighed as she watched the people, trying to discern who lived in the city and who was visiting. It was hard to say. She imagined it was the casual ones with their heads down, not the people meandering, looking up and down the alleyways and stopping at every vista. She wondered f she could ever stop looking around if this was her street, everyday.
Her eyes ran over faces in decadent procrastination. If she got on that train, she’d have to go home and face her father and the fact that she’d have to find yet another job. She needed to pay for school, and help with the rent, though she didn’t think he’d actually put her out on the street. She shook her head pushed away the thoughts, letting her eyes glaze over the steady throb of people. Curly hair, white hair, dark skin, pale skin, suits, sweats, shorts, smiles, frowns grimmaces, smiles….and…something she hadn’t expected.
Familiarity in the form of eyes and nose and mouth. Brown hair laying every which way over dark brows. He was tall and he was walking towards the BART station on the other side of the street. Ninas feet began to walk without her knowledge towards the edge of the sidewalk. She stopped at the edge, thankfully, letting cars pass, but kept her eyes on the brown head with mind racing toward the possibility that she was right.