Body odor
Vomit
Garbage
Pot
Cigarette smoke
Besides the fact that these all happen to be offensive
odors, and that I have had actual nightmares about walking barefoot downtown
(google People's Park) we are obsessed with Berkeley. Remember how I was always the annoying girl
who thought that Southern California is the best place ever to live and nothing
could ever compare? I still am, but I’m
just stretching the geographical boundaries a little up the coast. People always ask us if Berkeley is this
crazy liberal place full of crazy liberal people and I always say “yes, yes it
is.” Berkeley is everything its reputation
leads you to believe but there’s just so much more. Yes, people here are insane. Not day goes by that I don’t see at least two
people yelling at walls or conversing with invisible and divine beings floating above
them. This city is full of intellectuals of the 1% and homeless variety and for
the most part, they are pretty liberal. (A breath of fresh air in my opinion…still
undecided in who I’m going to vote for this November, but happy to see that at
least people in my ward aren’t going to vote for Mitt Romney just because he’s
LDS.) People here are nuts about food
and “local organic” but it’s not pretentions—it's just how they are here. And there are bikers everywhere!
Not the kinds that ride for Jesus or have sweet tats on their biceps,
(though I’m sure many of them might…) but the kind that are all hunched down in
skin tight spandex or whatever RIDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LANE. It’s extremely irritating. And kind of ironic that we find it so
annoying since we just got a bike…but still.
It’s cool though that a lot of people ride their bikes to work, take
them on BART, etc. I’m just paranoid I’m
going to hit one or open my car door parked on the side of the road and someone’s
going to smash right into it. ANYWAYS. The longer I’m here the more I wish we could
stay forever. Seriously I never want to
leave. I love that we can see the Golden
Gate Bridge every day across the bay. I love that we live by the water. I love that there is not one single fast food
place in the actual city of Berkeley except for one McDonald’s downtown. (Don’t get me wrong...I LOVE CHEESEBURGERS
AND FRENCH FRIES. That’s just one less
food temptation.) I love the university radio station. KALX. French, Caribbean, Post-Punk, Jazz, Blue
Grass, Mid-Century folk and country…everything is like a surprise, you never
know what you’re going to get. The list seriously goes on and on. And I will most likely blog about this list
again…probably soon. BUT here’s the
thing. Living here is INSNELY
expensive. For two people with no kids
and two jobs, it’s totally fine. And
yes, sometimes I wish we could live like this forever. But someday there will be little Danielles
and Jordans running around and remember my dream about walking barefoot? Kids always run around barefoot and if you do
that here, you might step in a needle that was used for illegal activity or
something equally as repulsive. The
average price for a 4 bedroom home is a little under $1 million and who knows
if that includes a parking spot. Did I
mention the crazy people? The pan handlers
with signs that say words I don’t want my kids learning ever, or asking for
services that my lead to premature discussions of where babies come from. Point is, I’m not sure how long we’ll be
here. At least a few more years, and
then when we retire, but we’ve both decided that this is not the place we want
to raise our kids. Who knows, maybe we’ll
get the impression to stay which WOULD BE AWESOME. But I often have the feeling that we won’t be
here forever—that it’s going to be the place where we lived our first few years
married together, where we had our first kid…I’m already getting
nostalgic. But I guess that’s my
point. I want to remember everything
about this amazing, beautiful, crazy city that we love so much. And people always say that smells are the
most powerful memory triggers.
**This post may make the city sound like a repulsive, dirty,
place. It is and it’s not. It’s just a city and there are more beautiful
things about it than there are gross…these things have just been on my mind for
a couple of weeks.
