Others will often declare that they prefer to live where they feel most at home.
Of all the places I’ve been, I feel most at home in Oakland, California. You can act like an asshole and nobody gives a fuck because they’re used to it. Running bicyclists off the road is encouraged. The best places to be are unmarked and hidden so they’re not over-crowded. Tourists stay away because they fear they’ll get shot. Ethnic diversity is an understatement. The food and wine are awesome. You can watch baseball in a shitty stadium for two dollars on Tuesdays. You’re near enough to the navel-gazing trustafarian college town of Berkeley to rummage through their used book and CD stores, but far enough that your neighbors won’t be getting stoned and rehearsing their jam-band in the middle of the night. If you live near BART, getting to beautiful San Francisco is a breeze and you won’t have to figure out where to park once you arrive. There, you can watch baseball in a wonderful stadium if you can afford it, or wander through the Sutro Bath ruins for free.
I have no interest in living there again.
I can’t say I feel at home in Portland, Oregon at all. Everybody’s too busy being nice to worry about things like learning how to drive, but may heaven help you if you dare honk. The majority are nauseating health nuts. It’s a small town full of wanna-be country folk with no night life or music scene to speak of. The most exciting thing here is a huge, labyrinthine bookstore with one bathroom. People know way too much about micro-brews. They tell you it doesn’t snow here and then it does for a week straight. You can only buy hard liquor at a state-run, price-controlled store. The only professional sport is basketball. Perhaps worst of all, everybody’s constantly blah-blah-blahing about how great Portland is.
I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.
4 comments:
You never appreciate a place until you move away from it. Or at least that's when you realize all the things you miss the most.
You referred to P-town as a "small town". Let me clarify:
Spencer, Iowa is a small town. Iowa City is a small city. Eugene is a medium sized city. Portland is a large city and San Francisco is a major city.
Oakland is a suburb. Full of gangs and angry people. The Raiders are evil.
Also, you forgot to mention the caffeine addicted peeps of P-town. And the sex scene! You must not be a swinger yet or you would be having more fun. Wait, your mom reads these posts.....
What do you call New York City? Mexico City?
Portland acts like a small town.
Portland has better coffee than the SF Bay Area. I hate coffee shops and, I've just decided because I like to be snarky, people who go to coffee shops.
I know nothing about the swinging sex scene because my mom reads these posts.
oh and Oakland is NOT a suburb. The only way you would ever say that is if you've never been there. It has no strip malls, lawns or phony happy families. Tell an angry Raider-Nation gangbanger it's a suburb and see what happens.
Risa's right. You never appreciate a place until you move away from it. I'm close to Los Gatos now, after an absence of nearly 20 years. The community has changed profoundly in that time. I can still afford a cup of coffee there, and enjoy the mountain trails. However, there are now a couple of European car dealerships on the main strip. An Aston Martin sedan runs a mere $174K. Lemme see, should I put that one on Mastercard?
Andrew, royalties from our single track have been negligible. I've just retained OTR Studios in Belmont for a solo session in March. After last June's recording was lost due to a hard drive error, I'm bringing the program back online. There's also new material, including a piece entitled "Portrait of Yoko". Had a long, interesting discussion with the lead engineer about ongoing musician demands to "fix" problems through edits and/or inserts. I'm going to just let them roll tape; I won't be doing any inserts.
Best,
J.
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