leave this town

Its my home but I don’t know it any longer.
The things I do know I don’t want to remember.

I’m so sick and tired of being here. This state is poor, any help is hard to come across. People here are more prone to fail than succeed because of the lack of opportunity. I dislike the people here, They’re rude, full of s*, and religiously fanatical. I am a bird trapped in a cage. I must break free. Low paying jobs, high unemployment rates, and it’s all just horrid. I want a better future and me being here wouldn’t bring me much.

cant wait to leave Sacramento. rent an apartment with friends, and make my way to the beautiful life of southern california.

must leave this hole called Orangevale.

Signed a lease on an apartment in Montclair. I’ll be moving on Nov. 3. Bye bye, Ramsey.

I’m out- I finally managed it, after 6 years. No more Muncie. Ever. If I can help it.

Love the new town!

This city is getting to me. It’s a huge metro-sludge with consumerism being the predominant culture. I want to live in a place where there is a sense of community, and that has decent public transportation. My investigative sights are currently centered on Portland, OR. Any other suggestions?

I got a job in Indianapolis, and now it’s just time to move. I’ve put in an application, and I’m going to call tomorrow to ask about apartment availability.

Orson Scott Card – Walking Neighborhoods and Oil—Past the Peak.

I thought it was just me that, coming from Europe, had a hard time understanding why Americans opted for a car-dependent society, especially in California, and among all places, in the Silicon Valley, where the brightest minds are supposed to be concentrated.

The second article explains very well why: large house lots became the status symbol du jour. This encouraged long commutes (but those owning the lots hired personal chauffeurs), suburban sprawl, horizontal development, pedestrian-hostile streets, big-box retail, horrible rush-hour traffic alternating with desolating local streets, and the isolation of people into cars or homes at the expense of social interaction in public spaces.

The first article proposes measures for combating this trend and reverting to a denser and more interconnected urban environment, with reliable public transportation, decreased car usage, smaller-scale local retail in the form of neighborhood stores, pedestrian and bicycle friendly streets, and vertical development (residential living on the floors above commercial spaces).

1. “The little shops in the mall pay far higher rent, per square foot, than the big anchors. That’s because, presumably, the big anchor stores draw the customers that also feed the small shops.”
2. “Right now, in most locations zoning laws force developers to create neighborhoods with houses of about the same size and cost, on roughly the same size lot, while forbidding any retail within walking distance. Meanwhile, those same laws generally forbid the construction of new neighborhoods that mix income levels, house sizes, and densities. [...] We must reward box stores with huge empty parking lots for placing small-shop buildings on their street fronts, with residential spaces upstairs. Right now our laws forbid any such thing. Why do we citizens tolerate those laws?”

Short version: check out the places in my Google Map
Lively places in the SF Bay Area.

Long version:
I’ve complained in otherposts that the Bay Area often feels like a deserted, desolated, uninhabited place (maybe that’s because I’m a night owl and never hit rush hour traffic…).

Now seriously, the Bay Area is a bit messed up when it comes to architecture and housing. The apartment buildings here are built of wood, and are at most 3-story high. Everyone else lives in houses. This leads to a low population density and to everything being so spread out that you need to drive a few miles to buy a proverbial loaf of bread. Here’s a bit from http://caldrive.com/intro.html:

California’s a car culture. You won’t survive for long without a car in California—California was designed for cars. Californian urban and suburban planning nearly always assumes that every person owns a car, and nearly all tourist facilities, shopping centers, and workplaces are built with the assumption that everyone at least has access to a car.

So I hopped in my vehicle and drove around the Bay Area, scouting for places that are not deserted, places where you can find an eatery or coffee shop open after 10pm, places where you don’t feel like in a ghost town. Since there’s no such thing as “urban agglomeration” except in San Francisco, there consequently are very few “downtowns” where something actually happens:

• Great America Mall, Milpitas – this mall tends to be populated with teenie boppers and other low-lifes
• Westfield Valley Fair – now that’s a cool mall
• Stanford Shopping Center – another nice mall
• ... you can find the other malls easily on the map below. They’re big gray shapes with internal roads.

• Santana Row – Teh place to be in Silicon Valley
• University Avenue – for the Stanford crowd. You can even find an eatery there that has “Neil Armstrong” and “Carl Sagan” written on a wall!
• Castro St. in Mountain View
• generally, streets called “Broadway”. Often, they are lined with decorated trees and have a decent amount of dining, shopping and probably events as well.

This week, Google released My Maps, hooray! The perfect place for the places above. Enjoy!

In June, I will have lived here for two years. That doesn’t include the fact that I lived here the first 18 years of my life. I’m waiting on my future roommate to finish his book and then we’re heading down to Jersey City. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’m becoming a townie. It’s scary.