Never thought it would happen but…
…I think I’ve fallen for California, or at least for the Bay Area.
I fell for San Francisco a bit before I moved here, loving the little houses all packed up in the hills. It reminded me a little of Edinburgh (the city I love best). I also had an affection for BART — the speed, the frequency, the sounds it makes when it accelerates.
But moving to the Peninsula isn’t really like moving to San Francisco. It’s suburbia on crack, high-density, long-range suburbia, set into a landscape that would be much more beautiful if only it weren’t crowded with overpriced, undermaintained homes. It’s a frustrating place to live — I think whether you have a car or not (because if you do, you spend a lot of time in traffic), but more so if you don’t. Not dense enough for transit to be effective, too dense for transit not to make sense. I was angry with Caltrain for being crappy. I didn’t feel at home. I couldn’t get to places. I didn’t know people.
But I got seduced by the flowers in everyone’s yards, the beautiful weather, and the ever-tantalizing closeness of both city and wilderness. You can go to San Francisco and have your fill of urbanness (I don’t need that much, it turns out). And there’s that little strip of undeveloped area off to the coast edge as you start to come south from the city, progressing to a wide swath of ranches, estates, parks and near-wilderness as you go further south. Hiking and riding in that area isn’t too far from being a little strip of heaven.
Farmer’s markets overflow with produce from farms in the nearby area and the Central Valley. There are towns and cities with a multitude of different sizes and personalities, and interesting places to go that aren’t really that far away, even though they’re a lot further away than most people want to admit. Slowly, I started to get the measure of this place. I didn’t realize how at home I’d become until a fortuitous invitation to temporarily get away came my way, and I realized I didn’t want to miss anything.
I have the uniform, but I never really thought I’d become a California girl. I guess I underestimated California.
Maybe I’ll be an Ohio girl some day…doesn’t really have the same dramatic ring, though.
Comment by shari — May 25, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
I’m glad you’re happy where you are. California is a beautiful place.
Comment by Jamie — May 27, 2008 @ 10:21 am
Aha, we got another one!
Hi–I wandered over here from Language Log. My spouse of almost 38 years and I live in the City, near Twin Peaks; when we drive toward Downtown (as e.g. to the Saturday morning Ferry Building farmers’ market) we take Portola and Upper Market, and there’s a point where the road curves and the whole South of Market area, and the Bay Bridge, and he East Bay–Mount Diablo if it’s clear–spread out beneath us, and we remember (often out loud) why it’s worth the high cost to live here. We’ve been here a long time–me almost 50 years, Peggy almost forty–and we grouse, with more or less justification, about features we miss–pre-Redevelopment, pre-deindustrialization demographics and neighborhoods mostly; still it’s where we both want to stay. Welcome to the ranks.
Comment by rootlesscosmo — June 13, 2008 @ 5:36 am
Thanks for your comment, rootlesscosmo! The view from Twin Peaks and the nearby hills is remarkably beautiful even for the Bay Area. Surely the cityscape is part of the beauty, but I sometimes wonder what it must have looked like before all the people…
Comment by Alexis — June 13, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
I gather the East Bay hills were a lot less wooded, but beyond that I don’t know much about the pre-human, or even pre-European incursion, layout of the area. I do have a couple of local day trip suggestions if you want to get away from density, though. One is South from Livermore on Mines Road; this leads through a virtually uninhabited canyon–not even any ranching to speak of–with wild turkeys etc. and eventually winds steeply up Mount Hamilton to the Observatory. You’re never more than about 10 or 15 miles (in a straght line) from dense urban sprawl but you’re all alone–I mean all alone. Another terrific road, though less deserted, is State HIghway 25, South from Hollister toward PInnacles. (If you turn off near Paicines you find yourself in another nearly-empty zone, headed for New Idria, a long-abandoned mercury mine.) In general the Coast Range, and the East-West highways that traverse it–20, 108, 198, 156, 58–are magnificent; there’s a way the hills look in Summer, brown and baked, with isolated cottonwoods or live oak marking underground water, that just makes me deeply happy. I worked on the railroad for many years and one benefit was that we went places most motorists didn’t or couldn’t–through the Pajaro River Canyon between Gilroy and Watsonville, up Eagle Mountain East of Indio, along the stretch of coast where the Santa Ynez river empties into the ocean. In fact I think it was railroading that really made a Californian out of me.
Comment by rootlesscosmo — June 14, 2008 @ 4:42 am
I hope some day to take more trips out, and those sound lovely! But they will have to be biking or railroading trips (or scheduled with a generous friend) since I don’t have a car. In a way, it’s my lack of traveling by car that has made such a Bay Arean out of me…I feel more rooted to my local area than before.
Comment by Alexis — June 26, 2008 @ 2:07 am