But then there are the freeways. Hollywood. More avocados and almonds and palm trees than one water table can sustainably support. The San Andreas Fault. Wildfires. California will die, one way or another, maybe sooner than other places, definitely sooner than we expect, but meanwhile it keeps on telling its story and people believe, because people are storytellers (Pan narrans), and inextricable from that is a belief in said stories.
Last week we rented a campervan (literally a minivan, with a mattress in the back instead of seats) and drove from San Francisco to Big Sur to Sequoia to Death Valley to Los Angeles. It was a great trip, the sun shone, it was high orange and low tourist season, and basically the whole thing was like an extended ride on Soarin' (version 1). It was a great trip also in the way that many great trips are: great as trips, but not at all the sort of thing you'd want to do indefinitely.
In other words, I don't want to move to California. (It's a common enough migration amongst New Yorkers that it feels important to declare, one way or the other.) Well, okay, maybe if someone hands me a vineyard. But otherwise it would have to be a city, and in CA that basically means SF or LA.
I'll pass.
LA is easy to hate. At the same time, if you shut off enough parts of your brain, easy to love. Beaches, perfect weather, delicious food, lemons and pink peppercorns growing all over the place, Art Deco architecture, and did I mention the weather? Find yourself a nice pocket of the city and make it yours and sure, I can see the appeal. Until of course you want to leave that pocket, or even walk from one side of it to another. Because this is Not Done. There is no walking. I could live in LA only if I could convince myself that being in a car, on a freeway, everyday, was a reasonable way to spend a life. So. What's the point of perfect weather if you're just going to spend it all in traffic? LA calls itself a city, but everything about its design defeats the entire purpose of city life.
Alright then, what about SF? Plenty of SoCal haters out there, but NoCal -- that's alright, right? That's where the smart people go?
Honestly, I'd rather live in LA. At least LA is honest about its schizophrenia.
When I was in college, I knew a guy who said he'd gone to San Francisco to die. This is late 90s-early 00s, so he'd moved from New England to work at some internet-related company. He had every intention of cashing in and then blowing his brains out. And obviously there's a lot that's wrong with this (and anyway neither event happened), but I don't think, about his central point, that he was wrong exactly. SF is a place to die.
Some of the city is beautiful. High in the hills, it smells better than any city has a right to -- the eucalyptus, the pines, the ocean. The views across the Bay, fog or no fog, are glorious. But there is a rottenness there too. The smell of urine. The homelessness. The bridge that is too much of an icon to put a goddam suicide fence on. SF pretends it's a hippy enclave, a paradise for free-thinking, boundary-pushing intelligent civilization... But seriously, who can afford that? The reality underneath is corrupt, haunted. It is not a good place to live.
Which is not to say that NY is perfect. No more is London. I don't have an answer, just shades of better and worse. Feel free to let me know if you think there's a solution. Requirements: surfing; no car; biking; good food; health insurance. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto?
RECIPE: Irish Soda Bread, because that's the next holiday on the calendar.
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