we're here

Well, we now live in San Francisco. The move was ridiculously difficult. I took friday off work, picked up the rental truck at 8:30am that morning, and started moving everything that I could lift myself, since Stella was not able to take time off work, being a teacher and all.

By about 2:30pm, I had moved what felt like 3 tons of boxes, furniture and assorted crap into the truck, pretty much filling it up. The drive across the East Bay Bridge was just fine, although traversing the hills of San Francisco felt like it was pushing the limits of the engine of a fully weighted truck. By the time I emptied the truck, carrying box after box after box up 14 steps to our front door, I was bruised, sweaty, sore and completely exhausted. And it was a warm and sunny California day - usually perfect weather, but for moving it was just too damn hot. After all that heavy lifting, the long, slow drive back to Berkeley in rush hour traffic was actually a relief.

The next day Stella & I managed to complete empty and clean the Berkeley house, although I finally pulled out of the driveway just after 5pm, again completely sweaty and exhausted. Unloading in San francisco was even harder, since I left the heaviest items for the second day. Fortunately, we were able to dump much of the heaviest stuff in the garage, which is at ground level, to contend with the next day. We finally finished around 9:30 or so. While we were unpacking, one of our new neighbors came by and introduced herself to us and insisted and getting us a couple of burritos from a place near by. Those burritos may have well saved our lives. At the end of the evening, when I finally was able to shower, I was stunned by the amount of bruises covering my arms and legs. Next time we move - and hopefully it won't be for a LONG time, we will definitely hire movers. I think it is probably worth the expense.

Today, Sunday, we moved the last of the heavy items from the basement and spend much of the day putting things in their proper place. We're all completely exhausted, Jeffrey has a bad cold and mild fever, Stella is getting sick and I'm sitting in the living room blogging when I should be sleeping.

Our phone and internet, which was supposed to be turned on Friday, is not working. They are sending someone out tomorrow by 7pm, but that means I can't work tomorrow as planned. honestly, I'm not too upset by that. We still have so much more to do here.

I'll miss Berkeley. It really is a wonderful city to live in. But San Francisco is pretty amazing too. We're half a block from Golden Gate Park and roughly 12 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. We can even see the ocean from the upstairs bathroom window. You can't get too much further west that we are now.

Things Happen FAST!!!

I feel a little bit crazed right now. Okay, a lot crazed. Due to various circumstances with Jeffrey's schooling, we've decided we need to move to San Francisco, the sooner the better. Our lease here ends at the end of June, so we figure we'll look around for the perfect place and try to time finding a replacement for our current lease so that we're not paying two rents at the same time. We figure this could happen fairly quickly or take the next six months. But I didn't think it would happen almost instantly!

We spent much of our christmas vacation driving around San Francisco looking at various places, most of which we could cross off our list without even viewing the inside. And of the places we did see inside, most were crap. It's amazing how much money people will pay to live in crap in San Francisco. So we saw two really nice places inside. One was just two small - two bedrooms, under 1000 square feet, which is small for three people and two cats.

But then we saw an amazing place with 3 bedrooms plus a study, a garage, living room, dining room, 2 and a half bathrooms, a great updated kitchen, and a wonderful back yard. It's a bit pricey at $3500 a month, but actually a good deal for San Francisco. (Did I mention that rents and home prices are totally insane here?) So at the open house we looked around and said to the realtor "We'll take it!" Unfortunately, at least 3 other people did the same thing. So we drove home and emailed the realtor all our application info and waited, thinking we'll never get it. Then came follow up calls from the realtor. And a conversation with the owner's sister. (The owner lives in Florida, the sister is local). Then the realtor telling us that the sister really liked us and things look good.

In the meantime, I put an ad on craigslist to find someone to take over our lease. A precarious juggling game, to say the least. If we don't find someone, we're stuck paying $3150 + $3500 a month until this place is rented!

As soon as I put the ad up on new years day, people started emailing and calling. I set up the first showing for the following morning. A really cool couple came by and looked around for about 5 minutes and said "We'll take it!". They sent their applications to our landlord, who accepted it. Now all we can do is wait until we hear about our new place.

So 15 minutes ago I get the call. They owner chose us! We got it! The only catch is that the place is available now and the owners don't want to wait until February 1 to start collecting rent. They want to start mid-month, which still means paying two rents for half a month. But wait - the people taking over our lease would actually like to move in early if possible. I'm stunned at how this is working out. I still need to call the owner of our new place and negotiate when to actually start the lease (I'm hoping for the weekend of the 19th), but I think this will all work out perfectly.

Of course the downside to this is that we're moving again. soon. very soon. panic inducing soon.

The new place is in the neighborhood known as The Richmond. It's the area north of Golden Gate Park and south of the Presideo. We will be pretty far west, about 10 or 12 blocks from Ocean Beach on the pacific ocean. What this means is when the infamous San Francisco fog moves in, it covers us first. In the summer, the fog should lift late morning and return early evening or even late afternoon. I can deal with that. I can deal with being half a block from Golden Gate Park. I can deal with being walking distance to the Pacific Ocean. I can deal with being in a nice house in San Francisco. It won't suck. Not at all.

Now is the time to go crazy with moving, setting up utilities at the new place, renting a truck, and all that fun stuff. Anyone want to come help us move?

The World Explained by a Venn Diagram

This perfectly sums up the attitude of the stereotypical elitist music snob. And yes, I admit that sometimes I may be just a little bit of guilty of being one.

Control

You remember the band Joy Division, right? from the late 70's? Don't remember that far back? It's ok, I don't either.

In 1983, a friend turned me on to the band New Order, my first real taste of "alternative" music (as it was called back then - now they call it "indie rock"; today's "alternative" is bland and commercial). Shortly thereafter I learned that New Order formed out of the ashes of the band Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis hung himself. What little Joy Division I heard at that time sounded primitive and dark in comparison to New Order, so I wrote it off and put my interest in current bands.


Years later I had the chance to revisit Joy Division and found I really liked them, and have periodically gone back to their music ever since. And recently the film "Control" was released, a biopic on the life of Ian Curtis. I went to see it at the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley. It really was a beautiful film. Shot in black & white, it really captured the industrial decay that defined Manchester, England at the time. It was the perfect backdrop to Ian Curtis's dark and often tortured lyrics. The film was based on the book "Touching From a Distance" by Ian's widow, Debbie Curtis. Ian Curtis was practically doomed from the start; very intelligent and insightful but moody and depressive, he married way too young while still in his teens. As the band became more popular he battled with increasingly frequent epileptic seizures, the pressures and demands from the band and feelings of being trapped in a loveless marriage with a child. After releasing only two albums, Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen in May of 1980. He was only 23.

What's amazing is that such a short life and burst of creativity could have such a profound and lasting impact. They essentially invented "post-punk" and created the template for almost all the alternative music of the 80's and beyond. The film does a fantastic job of capturing his life and what his art was about without romanticizing it in any way. I highly recommend seeing this film if you have even the slightest interest in Joy Division, New Order or alternative music.

Sunset at Indian Rock

These days the sun sets here around 4:50pm. At that point, I'm usually done with work and have some time to kill before picking Jeffrey up from the Kidz Club after school program, so lately I've been driving to Indian Rock to watch the sunset before getting Jeffrey. This evening I brought my camera and took some shots. Unfortunately, the top of a tree is visible in most of them. But this time of year the sun sets right behind the Golden Gate Bridge, which makes for a wonderful sunset. Just a few weeks ago it was setting above the hills of Marin; soon it will be setting behind the city.

Biking in Tilden

I finally made some time to take my mountain bike out to the trails in Tilden Regional Park in the hills above Berkeley. Yesterday I began work at 6:30am so I could take a long lunch (2.5 hours) and go biking. It was perfect weather - 65 degrees and sunny.

I started out at Inspiration Point, on the east side of the park, and rode on the Meadow Canyon trail, which was a gradual descent into the valley. You can view a details trail map here. When I hit the start of the Gorge Trail, I was in the lowest part of the park. The Gorge Trail is really beautiful and lush, running beside a winding stream that connects the two lakes in the park. This was probably my favorite part of the ride. Then I began the long ascent up Curran Trail, which was fairly difficult but had some incredible views of the valley and stream below. Soon I completed the loop and it was still early and I was hungry for more. So I decided it would be a good idea to head up the Seaview Trail to the East Bay Skyline National Trail. Big mistake. It was one long steep uphill. It nearly killed me. Less than halfway up I knew it was a mistake, but I decided that since I'd come this far I had to go all the way. I finally made it to the top but I was completely exhausted and thought I might die at any moment. At least I had an amazing view of the whole bay and the valley and Mt. Diablo to the east. All from one spot. Pretty incredible. Riding the crest of this trail was very nice, but too short. Then began the descent down the Big Springs trail, which was just too steep and rocky to be much fun. I then came to the Quarry Trail which led me back to my starting point. This trail would have been a good ride, but by this time I was so tired and sore I could barely peddle. The ride was just under 8 miles, but since near half of it was steep uphills, it really kicked my ass! It was a much more intense workout than the 3.5 to 4 miles I've been running regularly.

I actually can't wait to bring my bike back out there. I'll just avoid biking on the ridiculously steep trails next time.

Friday Night in the City

I'm generally not a huge fan of stand-up comedy, but years ago I stumbled upon Marc Maron (MySpace) on some TV special and was instantly won over by his sense of humor. He's intellectual, very left-wing, dark, angry, twisted and self-deprecating... my kind of guy. I don't quite know why his humor resonates with me so much. He can come off as kind of an asshole. But a highly entertaining asshole. The kind of guy I'd love to hang out and drink with. If he still drank. He did a weekend at the Punchline Comedy Club in San Francisco and I met up with Pamela and her friend from NYC on Friday night to go see him perform. He did not disappoint. I was one ear-to-ear grin the whole time. I even got to chat with him briefly after the show. Good fun!

After that, we hung out at Pamela's place in SF for a bit before she went off to some DJ thing and I went to the Rickshaw Stop (a small club in SF) to hear The American Music Club, a great indie rock band led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Mark Eitzel.


Eitzel recently moved from San Francisco to LA and subsequently put together a whole new version of the band with only the other guitarist remaining. The show was the first on a long tour, and one of only two shows in the US. It was quite good, but the band hadn't had a chance to learn much old material, so 90% of the setlist was new material from their upcoming album. I would have liked to hear a few more old tunes, but it was great to finally hear them live at all.