Jesus christ I have missed you all!
I spent two weeks in California recently, bookended by three weeks of 70 hour work weeks before and a completely mad two weeks of work on the other end. So here I am, finally making my first posts back here in what feels like a decade. I'm going to ramble and bitch and talk about my life for a bit all here because it's going to be fucking cathartic and if any place or people in the world deserve to know about me, it's Hubski. You've all become some of the most important people in my life and it feels right to talk about my feelings for a bit. Things have been shitty for a while, so whatever. I don't mind if you don't read it, so I'll let you know below where I'm talking about my trip mostly.
Anyway.
I went home to visit family and friends in the town I grew up it. I do this once or twice a year, begrudgingly, mostly against my will. I do have friends I love to see, but almost none of them are in that town. I go because my mother still lives there and living in that town with my sister is truly the most taxing mental experience I can imagine and I couldn't possibly tell her 'no' when I provide some brief respite for her by being there. Thankfully for everyone involved, my sister is leaving soon enough, and then she's probably going to jump on a plane with all her stuff three minutes later to DC and-- if she had any desire to create a better world-- will burn the entire place to the ground before leaving.
My hometown in San Ramon. About 45 minutes outside San Francisco, 30 minutes from Oakland, and part of what they call the Tri-Valley, where San Ramon is really part of the amalgam of towns including Pleasanton, Dublin, and Danville, while more or less being non-distinct from the other large surrounding towns of Livermore and Walnut Creek. There's nothing really special about these places. I'm sure there are hundreds of them across the country that are just as unworthy to mention or visit as here. But the one thing that really stands out about it/them is the absolutely ungodly, filthy, actually obscene amounts of money.
My family grew up very poor. My parents bought their first house in 1988 in a small, new community called Oakley. At the time, it was a desert that was being built into a suburb. (Side note: boy the times have changed. They worked as a cashier and a car mechanic and bought a house and built a pool and fountain for it, then had a kid and lived... okay. Try that today.) A long dull story short, they moved to San Ramon, my father was an abusive, alcoholic, cheating, brutal asshole, and because there's such an abundance of justice in the world, got a chance at a career, got rich, got a trophy wife, and now lives in the south of France. I hope to never hear from again. Either way, it left myself, my mother, and my sister living in one-bedroom, low-income apartments on a car salesperson's income.
Let's start there.
What does a one-bedroom, moldy, leaking, government-defined low-income apartment cost 45 minutes from the city cost? Did you guess over $2000 a month? Because the answer is over 2000 dollars a month.
As such, we had practically nothing. However, it did allow two children to grow up experiences both sides of the world; because while my sister and I were eating pasta for the 23rd straight night, we lived in a place best known for Blackhawk, and if that link doesn't give you an idea: it's the most republican city in the county, one of the most in the state, and was mentioned by the punk band Rancid as "the place where the rich people hide." The average home price in the entire tri-valley at one point was well, well over a million dollars. Like much of California, it's defined by tech jobs at this point, and a lot of that is centered around San Ramon's Bishop Ranch, a corporate park that had plans going back to 1955 but really took off around 1980 when there was... nothing there was almost nothing back then. This place includes the world headquarters of Chevron; what was once the world-headquarters of Pac Bell (A very nice building. Four 1/4 wings that was high tech when built, including a robot on tracks throughout that can speak, who's role was delivering mail. My father used to work there); and a massive regional headquarters of Toyota. There is.... a lot of money being thrown around there.
Of course this didn't mean much when I was a kid, because despite how absolutely evil and manipulative and amoral kids are, the one thing that doesn't really come into the equation at that time is money. Thank the god of small things. But come middle school and high school, I absolutely felt class disparities, and I absolutely became angry. Nothing quite hits a teenagers mind as succinctly as barely eating for a year, then learning about a 16 you know getting a Lamborghini for their birthday, paid in cash. He promptly totaled it. I didn't have ways back then to express to people why I wouldn't have them over to my house. They show me their place with their bedroom, and they're interesting hobbies like their violin playing that had gotten them a scholarship, or their new rifle that they took hunting to Montana the week before, or any of the things that decorated their bedrooms. I'd given playing my instruments years before because of the pressure from my father. I wouldn't be going to college because of money. I didn't even have a room. I didn't even have a bed. I slept on a couch for six years. I don't know how to tell peers I'm embarrassed, especially when I was so appreciate of everything I had from my mother who, by any way of looking at things, is an absolute saint. I could not possibly have a better mother, and she alone is the reason I've turned out so well.
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This is the part where I'm not rambling about myself as much anymore, if you want to know about my trip, and just read general rambling.
So, yeah, anyway, I got out. I never felt a connection to California really, and obviously not to my home town,and I felt way more in place on the east coast. DC is my home, absolutely, 100% my home. I love everything about being here, but my worldview was built almost entirely from California. This trip back was the first time in a long time though, and I fully consider myself an east coaster at this point, so I was really viewing everything there for the first time as an outsider. I really wanted to be able to make observations and separate what I felt from years of abuse and hardship, and say once and for all if, yes, I truly despise this place or it's been tainted for all those years.
Anyway, it's a fucking terrible place. Capitalism is disgusting and boy oh fucking boy does it live gluttonously in California. I landed in Oakland late at night after a four hour layover in Boston, and I was actually pretty excited to get there, because really, as a huge Orioles fan, there are few things worse to me then spending time in their territory. (Actually on the way back, I had an even longer layover there and the bar tender at the airport bar I was getting blitzed at, playfully, refused to turn the game on for me because he was bitter about the season. Whatever AL East champs now and I couldn't be more exited woooo!)
Immediately getting out of the airport I'm blown away by how much money there is. I'm just not really used to seeing 15 Porsches at an airport to pick people up. It was cool to see how much Tesla has really taken off, because there were at least 5 of them there, but it's still a shock. It set the tone for my entire trip. Everything is defined by wealth and capitalism. It's inescapable. My hometown area of San Ramon/Danville/Pleasanton is nearing the same size as DC, but every single bit of it is suburban homes. No, really, I need you all to understand the scale of this. Imagine 6-10 completely uninterrupted miles of one million dollar homes and schools. There isn't a store, restaurant, or anything else in between. It's just very expensive, very generic homes.
You know what, fuck it, I'm done talking about that place. I don't know anyone there. I want to talk bigger.
When I go home, I get the fuck out immediately to anywhere else but my town. I have a car there that my mother uses while I'm away, but when I'm there, I log around 1500 miles in a week. I usually hit up some combination of Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Oakland/Berkeley, Santa Rosa/Point Reyes, Yosemite, Humboldt County, and whenever I have the time, drive down Highway 1 to San Simeon.
The one fantastic thing about California, and the one thing I'll always love, is that I can get the fuck away from people. There is so much gorgeous natural beauty away from anyone at all that it's just myself, whatever music I have, the road, and all the beauty around me. I don't care what else you do in California, but if you are ever there, you need to drive down highway one at some point in your life. Get as much of it as you possibly can. Start north. Start in Fort Bragg, or fuck, even better, start on the 101 up in Crescent City and head all the way down to San Simeon. Stop as much as you want, wherever you want. It won't matter, because most wherever you do will be extraordinarily beautiful. just don't go south of there. LA is... god, fuck LA. I don't have time to write about LA. I'll write about LA some other time when I really just want to talk about the evils of the world.
This time, I was poor as shit and only had the time and money to visit my friends in Arcata, who go to Humboldt University. Arcata's a nice place. Next to Eureka, lots of nature, no corporations. Don't talk to anybody. You'll regret it.
That's really my main issue with California, though: the people. Everyone's so obsessively driven by such petty bullshit. I love technology, I work in technology, but to be that focused on the newest consumer object, or driving yourself to the point of death to get a chance to be a code monkey for one of these companies is fucking ridiculous. Or outside that, or part of it, needing a six figure salary to even live close to comfortably because of ridiculously high demand is bizarre, but instead of fighting it like most places, wanting to end gentrification, everyone seems to embrace it. More McMansions are built, more expensive cars are bought, more shops open up that charge fucking $13 for a sandwich smaller than my hand. Everyone wants massive corporations to come in and buy up huge amounts of land for a new office building, or they want another walmart that's larger than the campus I work on. It isn't sustainable, firstly, it isn't healthy, secondly, and that class disparity I talked about before is fucking bonkers. Has anyone here been to Oakland? There's the Oakland hills that have five million dollar homes and then literal fucking slums. Houses made of plywood and sheet metal in the city. People without electricity living in these things and the homeless communities are massive. Look at the numbers for SF, Oakland, and LA. These are absolutely because of Reagan's fucked up policies, but they're still like that today, and no way in fuck are these even top ten priorities for the politicians there. It's always about catering to that top percent.
And I'd forgive all of that if everyone wasn't so vapid and unaware of the world. California is the beginning and end for so many Californians. It's the best state in the country because they're told it's the best and they know it is, but I've never heard an argument for that. I know people who've chosen to stay there despite the fact that they can't find jobs in their field and are paying the two-thousand-fucking-whatever to keep having the privilege of sticking around. And then outside their underemployed jobs, there's just absolutely fucking nothing to do outside the cities themselves. You literally have a movie theater 20 minutes away, and that's all for the suburbs. All right then, let's drive to the city, there's bound to be culture in one of those righoh no that's right, we drove all that away for more office buildings. San Fransisco has some good music venues left, between Slim's, the Great American Music Hall, and the War Memorial Opera house, but outside that, it used to be a lively, diverse city. Now there's tech employees. Oakland and Berkeley had some of the best goddamn poetry cafes I ever went to. Each year I hear of another one closing because that place is fucking gentrified, so they either couldn't afford the new rent, or the buildings were sold off to be demolished and rebuilt. LA is the worst of all, but again, that's another post. Maybe one of the other residents out there can chime in with their own opinions of the place. I know kleinbl00 hates the fuck out of it, and maybe insomniasexx does too.
So what makes this the place people want to be? They sure as fuck aren't there for the nature, because I don't know many of them leaving regularly to our national parks. I feel like I missed some fundamental part of growing up there just for not liking it. I always felt like an outsider, and I think, the longer I'm away, it's just peer pressure. All these people have been told for so long that California is great and you're wrong that they... just believe it after a while. I'd say 80% of the people I knew have never left the state, so what frame of reference do they have? California is fucking massive, so it's really, really isolated from other people that aren't Californian. And given how expensive it is to live there, there are very few people who move to California to give them even a shred of reference; and generally, those that do are fairly rich already, so that's fairly isolated from the real world too. It's a closed system.
I've noticed, though, that there are two types of "California ex-pats" I meet.
- Person type 1: The one who, when learning I'm also from California, waits for my cue for my opinion on the state VERY carefully, and when I say how much I despise it, exasperatedly says they do as well, and it's such a relief to meet someone else who feels the same way; that they felt they were the only one. They're always careful because they're afraid I'm
Person type 2: the raging fucking asshole who, whenever he goes anywhere and talks about [place], goes on to rant about how much he fucking hates [place] (ESPECIALLY DC. God don't get me started on this subgroup of people here. Fucking hell.) and how much divinely superior California is and cannot wait to get back to California because nothing is as good as California so much so that they refuse to try to enjoy anything in the place they live because California.
So it's just a place where people wear blinders about life, is what I'm getting at. And it seems that companies have latched onto that, and know how easy it is to suck these people into brands and money and useless fucking shit. They've done so damn well with it. Fools and their money and whatnot.
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I don't know what I'm going on about now. I'm just a crotchety, angry misanthrope yelling about unimportant shit right now. I'm sorry for making you all read this crap. I can't tell you how much getting out meant though. I had to stay there for two years longer than I had ever wanted to, and if I didn't get out on my last attempt, I truly don't know how long I could have gone without suicide. Even visiting takes me to a very dark place mentally and it just needs to come out about how much everything about it disgusts me.
I've never been as good about talking about these things in meatspace, because even here, in text, when I have the time to organize my thoughts and emotions and put them down, it's mixed up angry jargon that I don't edit as it comes out, but I'm always more true and honest in text, and I really fucking love so many of you, and I really consider a lot of you as my best friends, so it seems right to put it here, especially knowing how many of you can relate to shitty childhoods and that shithole.
Anyway.
I'm back. I missed Hubski.
Welp I guess thiss is where I chime in. I live in San Francisco. I pay $800/month for a room in a house, which as far as things go in the city is pretty good deal. I'm studying computer science and building a new social network (it's gonna be a good one), and hope to live and work in the city for the rest of my life. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, with tech in my blood. My dad's an engineer, he did some thing about disk drives for IBM in the nineties that was a big deal, but I'm not entirely sure of the details. I grew up in one of those $1m+ suburban houses you talked about, although we were about a half mile from the store so not really as isolated as what you described. I never really appreciated that until I moved to the city, but they're really peaceful places, and incredibly safe. I once left my car open with a bunch of expensive electronics in it on the street, forgot about it, and when I came back nothing was even out of place. We knew the neighbors, although for the most part everyone kept to themselves. Polite conversations when we were out walking the dogs. I think there is a certain "new toy" syndrome that is incredibly common among people out here, which certainly sells new iphones and tablets and whatnot, but I'm unconvinced that's a bad thing. It's "Pop Progress" - the iPhone 6 is to technology what Kesha is to music. There's a culture here that's massively progress and innovation oriented, and that manifests itself as smartwatches and smartrings. In turn, that drives advances in all sorts of other things - driverless cars, drone delivery, eBay/Amazon, apps, etc... It's certainly enabled by the immense wealth of the region. My point is, of course we're immensly concerned with new technologies. That's what we do. I would like to dispute your claim that 80% of Californians have never been out of the state. Of course we're both speaking anecdotally, and my perspective reflects a very different upbringing than yours, but a Califonian who's never been out of the state is something of a rarity in my experience. Not unheard of, but mostly everyone I meet has been somewhere else at some point. Not to mention that around here, most people aren't even from the state in the first place! $2k a month for a one-bedroom apartment is insane, that would buy a pretty nice pad downtown. I'm not sure what the prices are like out where you're from, but that is pretty incredible to me. There's not really much of a logical thread to this, I just fired of things as they jumped to mind. I'm sure there's loads I didn't address. If anyone cares, I'd be happy to elaborate.
While I agree with a lot of what you say, this: Is delusional. Cheapest unit available in San Fran right now: 750sqft shithole, yours for $1500/mo with a $42k downpayment.$2k a month for a one-bedroom apartment is insane, that would buy a pretty nice pad downtown
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4675541420.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4666530716.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4664739228.html I was talking about renting, of course.
LOL. As one of the delusional fools trying to get into one of these spots for 6 months before giving up and going to Oakland, GOOD LUCK EVEN GETTING THE DAMN PLACE. at a minimum: -Have 6 months of paycheck stubs -at least 2 months of rent deposit (NOT including the first month's rent) -have the landlord/roommates (not even like, but) love you -Don't have a pet Have all this the day you go for an interview, stand around with 20 other people all equally vying for the place with better stories than yours, bring some damn baked goods, and you probably still don't get the spot. If you live in SF, you know this already, don' play. Your $800 a month would drive some people to murder.
Yes. Which is all of SF all of the damn time right now. I was doing this from Jan-August. I made no mistakes. Still moved to Oakland. You're arguing the wrong thing here. You found a cheap spot, you got lucky, good on you this doesn't work out for most other people. You're also touching on a thing that is a hella sensitive issue for a lot of people in the bay nowadays, and being rather obtuse about it, I might add.The biggest mistake people make is trying to rent when everyone else is as well.
I don't know what everyone else is doing wrong then, because my place certainly wasn't an outlier in my search. It was the best deal I found, which is why I took it, but there were plenty of other, even cheaper units I was looking at. Had I not gotten the place I did, I'm sure I would have wound up in one of the other, equally reasonably priced places I was looking at.
You're buying the neighborhood there. Also, there's this if you are looking to buy: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4124-Geary-Blvd-San-Francisco-CA-94118/2105682283_zpid/
You could reside the shit outta that pizza place! ...I was gonna try and play it off like I meant to do that but to be honest that was a total fuck up. Anyways, wages are higher here which offsets the enormous price of living, and expensive-ass houses are what we call "retirement plans". When you're ready to retire, you sell your house and move to Utah or some shit where a mansion costs the same as a cheeseburger and live off the profits.
This is becoming glaringly obvious.I grew up in one of those $1m+ suburban houses you talked about
Which was why I said that in the first place. It's useful to consider my perspective in this sort of a discussion. What isn't useful is throwing that back at me like an insult. I hold no illusions regarding income inequality and which side of the disparity I'm on, but I can't simply cast away my biased experiences and replace them with others' because I understand I have a bias.
Hey - I pay $2650/mo for 3 bedrooms near the ocean in Los Angeles. But that doesn't make it any less crazy. And if you're renting it, you don't get to sell it. Let's have a come-to-Jesus: You can go to Ikea. You can buy a shitty-ass Poang Chair. And you can sit it in your $2000/mo 400sqft apartment and it will take up nine square feet. $45 a month of your rent goes to having a place for that fuckin' chair to sit. It only cost you seventy bucks. Let's put it in San Fran terms: You bought a BMW 5 series. if you were spending as much on your parking spot, comparatively, as you're spending on the spot under your Poang chair, you'd spend $35k a month on PARKING.
Of course I have no intention of renting indefinitely. But if people didn't think the area was worth the prices, they wouldn't be so inflated in the first place. The prices are what they are because people will pay them, so either everyone's insane or there's something about the area that really is worth so much. I tend to agree with the latter premise.
To review: You, 22 hours ago: Me, 5 hours ago: You: Selection of $2000/mo apartments, all under 600 sqft, one without pictures Me: You said buy, and those are tiny shithole apartments You: Also, pizza place Me: Also, $2000/mo for tiny shithole apartments You: Buy now, shit on proles later Me: You said rent You: Location location location Me: your coffee table costs more to park than my Dodge You: location location location Look. Rent in San Fran is insane. You're trying to justify the insanity, not disprove the insanity. I ain't even getting into that. Fact of the matter is, fuckin' Bay Area rents are completely off the hook, which is why those who didn't grow up in million dollar houses are resentful. Buddy of mine paid $450k for a shithole bunker with razor wire off the Macarthur BART terminal in Oakland, which was f'ing insane until he sold it for $800k three years later. Not bad, considering the $450k came from his homegrocer.com severance package. but people without a homegrocer.com severance package resent shit like that. Because the prices are insane. Because of the trust fund kiddies and their severance packages who say "I rent a room for $800, don't know what your problem is" and then act as if San Fran weren't a case study in class warfare.$2k a month for a one-bedroom apartment is insane, that would buy a pretty nice pad downtown
750sqft shithole, yours for $1500/mo with a $42k downpayment.
Seem to remember hearing that you could get a place in, like, San Diego for not an arm and a leg. One of San Fran's problems is that its population is far outstripping the rate of new apartment construction. Reason being that San Fran makes use of a number of historical preservation laws that way restrict building code. So only a few new apts going up every year, and boatloads of eager twentysomethings trying to get their hands on them. So for rentals, not just a problem of gentrification, then, but also growth disparities. When it comes to buying, though, pretty sure that's mainly Silicon Valley gentrification. Got a couple friends there who gave up trying to live anywhere closer than Oakland because people were paying over asking price for 1.5 mil houses (which, no, doesn't actually get you much), and doing it with cash. Not much better in Oakland these days, from what I hear...
San Francisco suffers from a clean, well-laid-out, affordable rapid transit system. As a consequence, anywhere within commuter distance from a BART terminal is within commuter distance of downtown (since downtown is also eminently walkable). For $2 you can go from a convenience store that sells Old Crow pint bottles to the SFMOMA. And it takes you 20 minutes. That drives up the expense of the suburbs for the simple reason that you can now, like, get places.
Boy, talk about unintended consequences. Cheap, efficient transit, historical preservation, strong economy: bye-bye middle class. What I wanna know is why I'm being priced out of my shitty Seattle suburb. Like you already said, no viable public transit in sight. And it's getting worse with the latest round of budget cuts. Half an hour to wrestle with 12 mi. of I-5 by car, and that's during non-peak hours. And still, people across the street are asking half a mil for their 3-bedroom with a scenic view of Aurora Ave.'s asscrack.
Because everyone is being priced out of their shitty suburbs. 1) Glass-Steagall repealed; trusts can now be investment banks 2) Home lenders now capable of packaging investment products full of mortgages 3) Investors sold financial instruments based on the derivative value of investment products 4) Risky loans become attractive investment vehicles 5) People who shouldn't have gotten loans stop paying them 6) Crash of 2008 7) Lots of houses foreclosed, real estate prices crash So there's what you know. Here's where things get really dumb: 8) Foreign blocs and investment banks decide that there's lots of money to be had in renting to formerly foreclosed homeowners 9) Stupid prices are paid for houses, this time by investors rather than homeowners 10) Anyone who doesn't currently have a house is priced out of the market because they're dealing with multimillionaires with cash who have no intent of moving into the neighborhood. We get 2-3 unsolicited offers a week on our house. We've been renting it happily for six years now. And they're all folksy, downy-homey, "gee my family sure would like to live in your house" mash notes, and they're all from large institutional investors looking to slumlord my neighborhood.
It's gotten better since they started changing out the seats, but I've seen some pretty gnarly stains on those systems. I don't know that I would give bart "well-laid-out" either, but if it touches your area (i.e. not Marin or south peninsula), it's relatively nice. I've had some 2-3 hour trips that mixed muni / caltrain / bart / vta that could've easily been done in a third of the time via car. Methinks the better question is how the hell your city works.clean
Economically speaking, Hollywood has about the same impact as the sports teams (hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer). Silicon Valley is not without its impact, but San Fran has long been a financial center. Keep in mind: The LA Metro area has more population than the Netherlands. San Francisco has a third of that... but San Francisco proper (~1m) is a tiny peninsula. It really is about the location. That's why rents in Tokyo are so insane.
Judging by the rest of the original post, I think Meriadoc is making the point that everyone is insane. The prices are what they are because people will pay them, so either everyone's insane or there's something about the area that really is worth so much.
Damn, you just ragged on my home state and I agreed with most of it. The weather. It's sunny, yet cool, year 'round. Winters require a sweatshirt and jeans. No iced roads, no snow boot. And make no mistake, there are plenty of people that fill up the camping sites all over the state when the holidays come. The fact that you can make enough to live there, and if you choose to, spend that money on materialistic items or otherwise interesting hobbies. Careers can be rat races at times, but if you make it into your mid 30s without being spat out by the managers you gave the best years of your life to, you're almost guaranteed to be making a solid six-figure salary. Hell, I know people making six-figures straight out of college. The culture. I think the excessive liberalism can be exhausting at times, and there are some dumb / corrupt politicians that have come out of the state, but (the bay area) it's also the birthplace of the free speech movement, the LGBT rights movement. SF and Oakland are cities for the young, and a bit more affordable than NYC, yet still the center of technology. You can't go a mile in the urban areas without encountering some sort of counter-culture headquarters. And hey, some people dig that. The young people there are funny of energy and /want/ to do good, be it via urban farms, green energy, or activism. They just tend to be misguided...So what makes this the place people want to be?
I guess, three thoughts. And I read every word of your post. 1. Echoing galen, I grew up in a rich (the richest?) suburb in Texas. By the time I turned 10 we had a house, but it was the smallest in the neighborhood. Badge of pride. All my friends, literally every single one, was much richer than me. Another badge. What I think is this: I'd rather be me than them. I'd rather eat pasta 23 nights in a row -- hell, I'm eating pasta right now -- than whatever the hell it is rich people eat. Maybe that's irrational but it's shaped by experience. 2. You should really, really read The Dharma Bums. I think it would do interesting things to your headspace. 3. Completely forgot my third thought. I'm listening to Revolver, sipping cheap sangria and halfheartedly writing a research paper. Extremely peaceful night. I hope you have some peaceful nights ahead.
My parents divorced when I was six years old and mom and I moved into the "Rochester Meadows" apartment complex. The kids I went to school with who didn't live there called it "Rochester Ghettos." It was probably the cheapest apartment complex in the area, the carpets where cheap, the kitchens were worn the carports roofs had ragged holes with pieces of jagged wood sticking out. It never bothered me much, I don't know why, I've never been the kind of person to give a fuck about other people trying to keep me down. The apartments boardered a nature preserve and had a little creek running beside it, the nicest park in the area was real close by, it was a wonder land to me. I'm sure the kids in school learned "Rochester Ghettos" from their older siblings and shared it around. The toughest kid in class also lived in the Ghettos and he was my best friend and a real ass beater, we were poor but feared. Saw him break a kids arm in a play ground fight in second grade, guess we were just poor dumb thugs who had a fun time playing in the creek and woods. My family gradually became more comfortable financially as I got older and by the time I was in middle school and high school my folks had bought their own home. Being solidly middle class seemed to bring no stigma even around the rich kids in our high school.
I know next to nothing about California, but I'd be wary of any state that thinks it's a good idea to elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor.
I've been enjoying my life in Los Angeles (West Hollywood, not the suburbs). I've been here for three years, after living in Boston for twelve and upstate New York all of my life before that. I think a lot of the LA hatred in San Francisco is a projection. There is an assumption that everyone just left a film set. Why? Because that's what gets shown to you, then you get told that's a part of your state's image. You know it's nearly 400 miles away and another culture, so you resent being clumped. Once I lived here, I realized that's the cover story. It's not the 1980s here. The mass transit changeover is making a new city, and just in time. The food is great, the surface streets bypass the freeway traffic, and the place has fascinating hidey-holes in plain sight. The city unveils another part of itself to you when it feels you are ready. However I can relate to the hometown hatred. That part changes over time, but the reactions never leave you. I feel a horror and a pity for Utica. I cannot bear to be there more than a couple days. People try to steal your life essence because they're stuck in a dead cauldron. I cannot be an adult there -- I'll always be my father's son in Utica, not the adult I have become. I can't even explain what I do without getting "so, why didn't you become a lawyer like your dad?" You can never be truly objective about your home town. You can circle it, but you're really wishing you could drop atom bombs with your eyes. You want the people that hurt you to go away, but they're all there so you had to do the leaving.
Oh buddy you opened the wrong can of worms. Inb4 Meriadoc wakes up and unleashes his hatred of SoCal.
That sounds terrible. Suburbs are generally awful places, bereft of anything worth living in (in my opinion), but that takes it to a whole other level. That was really interesting to read, because I have a roommate who is enamored with just about everything about California that you hate. Oh - and guess what he wants to go over at the radio station's executive board meeting this Friday? Branding. Shitty childhoods happen everywhere, and I'm sure a lot of us can attest to having gone though some stuff like that (hell, galen already has). Can't say much about super-wealthy people seeing as how I've grown up and lived in some pretty poor areas, but that sounds like something out of a modern day Great Gatsby. It's good to have you back, and you know, despite "hating the fuck out of California" maybe that gives you a greater appreciation for what you have on the East Coast and in DC. You know that you like it there, and that's what counts. I think? Oh and just...I have to...but. Fuck the O's.My hometown area of San Ramon/Danville/Pleasanton is nearing the same size as DC, but every single bit of it is suburban homes. No, really, I need you all to understand the scale of this. Imagine 6-10 completely uninterrupted miles of one million dollar homes and schools. There isn't a store, restaurant, or anything else in between. It's just very expensive, very generic homes.
You should catch up on my life then...bitch. ;-D I was just having a similar conversation with a family friend who's ~55 years old. She did something similar in the town I grew up in. She was a bartender and her husband (they've been married 34 years!) was working construction. They bought their house. My parents did the same (although my dad ended up becoming pretty damn successful, when he bought the house he wasn't). Today, in the town I grew up in, you can't buy a 1/16th lot (basically 1/32 acre?) for under $1m. Most are $4-$10m+. We were talking about - no matter what kind of successful career I have - how it's possible that I could buy a house around here. Even if I work and make decent money, the fact that I'm not a star athlete, movie director, etc. means that I'm no where close to having enough money to afford a $1m house. Even on a 100k salary (which is what, 62k after taxes?), that's still only 8,333/month before taxes / 5,100/month after taxes. Here's a nice house - not too big but big enough for a family, not on a busy street, nice area, etc.. That's about $5000/month for mortgage (assuming I have amazing credit, get the best mortgage available, and have already saved enough to actually put 20% down.) Let's not forget the $1,200/month in property taxes. And all the other shit that comes along with buying a house. Let's hope I have a hubby (hubski - bahahahah sorry I'm kinda tipsy - apparently this is a thing to call your husband on twitter) that makes 100k too. K. I read the rest. But I'm too tipsy to keep fucking around. I have to code more. This deadline is going to kick my ass. At least its going to kick my ass for 4x my old salary, though.I'm going to ramble and bitch and talk about my life for a bit all here because it's going to be fucking cathartic and if any place or people in the world deserve to know about me, it's Hubski.
(Side note: boy the times have changed. They worked as a cashier and a car mechanic and bought a house and built a pool and fountain for it, then had a kid and lived... okay. Try that today.
ON CALIFORNIA - About the same population as Canada. - Two thirds the population of the UK. - North and south as far apart as Berlin and Barcelona. - Los Angeles:
As I ride through the Valley I find myself repeating "worst drivers on the worst roads in the worst traffic in America" like they're the lyrics to a Korn song. And I'm getting out, I am. I've had my way with the place and it with me and it's time to move on. When you no longer consider Maseratis delivering Dominos to be noteworthy you've pushed past jaded and arrived in bizarro-world. but It ain't all bad. I hate the fuck out of my hometown, too. Lots of people think it's beautiful. My hometown isn't Livermore. That there is a sun-blasted hellscape if ever there were one. Set aside any personal bullshit and Livermore and Environs have one thing going for it - the BART. Me? I was two hours away from Albuquerque, which scored an Olive Garden when I was a senior in high school. Meant we didn't even know what we were missing until 7th, 8th grade. It's a big state. Lots of it is gorgeous. The 1 north through Tiburon and up into Humboldt is absolutely gorgeous. Hell, the 1 south to Ventura is a lovely ride, too. I'm rather fond of Lompoc, Pismo, Monterey, all that. It ain't bloody bad. But if you're looking for comparisons to Livermore, you'll find 'em. Welcome back. Glad you survived. Glad you made it free. But keep in mind it's easier to find something to be offended by if you're looking for it.
I wasn't driving yet last time I went to California so maybe I just didn't pay enough attention, but i'm sure Montreal could compete for the worst driving experience in North America prize. Weather and corrupt construction make for the worst roads ever. I remember laughing with my friends at the "Bump ahead" sign in the US. We drove over the bump and everybody had the same reaction: "that was the bump?". That's pretty much the norm for every second street. And the people behind the wheel are insane. I think 20% of the population never heard of turn signals. Thank god for public transport and the new pretty decent bike paths."worst drivers on the worst roads in the worst traffic in America"
Preach. Also, the 401 corridor in Toronto overtook the New Jersey Turnpike a few years back as the busiest stretch of road in the world. The traffic on the way out at 4:00 is insanity - I didn't even think there WERE that many people in Toronto. I think 20% of the population never heard of turn signals.
I can relate to your experience growing up. I grew up in SF proper. I too ended up in a high school full of rich kids. Even though we were poor, I somehow went to a private school that basically bankrupted us by the time I was finished. It is a very molding experience to grow up around a bunch of kids that can throw around money and possessions with impunity when you're acutely aware of it. It's hard for me to go to back to SF and not see the gaping wealth/poverty divide very prominently. I went back for a conference about a month ago and had about all I could handle in ~5 days. As much as there may be many cool things in SF, I don't think I'd ever want to live there again. The cost of living there is getting so fucking ridiculous that just being there lowers your quality of life drastically. It's not worth it for more than a visit. The SF inflation also affects everything within a 50+ mile radius too, so there's no escaping it. California probably is the most diverse state in the union though. You can go from redwood forests to deserts to beaches to liberal metros to agrarian hillbilly towns. Right now I'm in the inland empire, outside of LA. I'm more content with it than I think I realize. It's bland and boring but there's nothing especially detestable about it besides the smog.
I'm from the Midwest, northern Illinois suburbia. No culture, no downtown, endless houses, have to drive to get anywhere. I moved to California about two and a half years ago for a job. The California I moved to however, was filled with cows, farms, heat, and pollution. I moved to the San Joaquin valley, South of Fresno. It reminded me of the Midwest if you took away all the water and green (granted, there has been a severe drought). The people were a strange mix of burnouts, Mexican families, wealthy Republican ranch owners, people who weren't able to get away, people who had kids too early, and transplants. Most of the friends i made were from elsewhere. Even in the Central Valley there is a present disconnect between the Haves and the Have-nots. The large houses with their Romney signs (many still up by the way) and the billboards pleading to stop the "politician caused" water crisis. California is a strange place. Now I live in the Bay Area due to finding a new job. California is still strange. People here seem much more aware and concerned about the drought even though it rains more than twice a year here. There is even larger income inequality. Finding a place to live that I could afford was a challenge, and even then 100 people would show up to the open house. Instead of conservative people are liberal, sometimes in a way that seems like a parody. This isn't really going anywhere other than to say that California is strange, huge, diverse, and has some of the most gorgeous parts of the country. I feel a disconnect here and I can't shake the weird feeling I have here. I don't know how long I will stay, but I do know that I am often very aware that I am not from here.
Should have driven up to Trinidad and relaxed with a spliff and arguably some of the best beer in recorded history. Up where dogs are welcome in bars and nobody has Facebook because neighbors actually know each other. It's mostly fucked, California, but there's still a slice of heaven here and there. No jobs in heaven, of course, but lots of food and beer and cannabis.
I know what you mean about all the rich, vapid shits. I come from a super-wealthy suburb in Texas, so it's a particular brand of rich and vapid (think half redneck, half Donald Trump), but I am so fucking tired of it. Everyone here is obsessed with all the money they have and it's goddamn useless. I can't wait for college so I can get the hell out of here-- and out of Texas. Anyway, before this turns into a fuck-Texas rant, I'm glad you got out of there. Hope all goes well in DC. PS The paragraph from "I've never been as good" to "shitty childhoods and that shithole"? I feel ya on that too.
Nice! I might stay here in Ireland, because I'll most definitely do something programming/IT related and currently this isn't a bad spot for that sort of thing, plus I'd rather avoid the US government with recent news. I also plan on not going to college because my family isn't very wealthy, and most IT skills can be learned on your own(I'm making an engine in shameful face java)