It's been about 5 months since I've moved and I was anticipating hating the change.
I lived in an urban, often "hoodish" neighborhoods in Oakland, for the past 10 years, with the exception of when I was living with M where we lived in a house situated in a quiet suburban neighborhood surrounded by freeways. In all my time in Oakland, I was a public transit commuter, via BART or bus, usually accompanied by a walk and work was never more than 20-30 minutes away from home. When I moved to my first apartment since my separation, I was blessed with amenities close by on foot. Eventually, my walking radius expanded to half a mile, then 2 miles, and it became part of my weekend routine. After moving from that house in the suburbs, I ended up in an apartment a block from a BART station. There my walking world expanded to 3 to 6 miles, eventually adding walking to work as part of my routine. I prided on how I knew those neighborhoods so intimately.
So I was a bit surprised that my transition to living in a commute town wasn't more tumultuous. Oh for 2 weeks, I was commuting from here to Oakland for work, and that commute entailed driving on I-80, which can be brutal. But my current commute to Walnut Creek feels as routine as those 6 mile walks I would do twice a week at my last place. I've added more miles to my car in the last 5 months, than in the last 7 years. In Oakland I dreaded driving around town, unless I absolutely needed to; Now I'm completely depended on my car just to get groceries. I drive everywhere, though I do walk downtown for the farmer's market on Saturdays on occasion. I've even explored places beyond my home, and loved it. I've come to appreciated the beauty of my daily commute, passing refineries, marshes, bridges, green hills and waterways.
Gone is the constant reminder that there are people around me, and that there are people always angling for parking. The white noise of cars on freeways or trains breaking into the station or buses beeping is also absent. Missing are conversations being yelled at across the street, and the constant boom from the base coming from crap audio systems. Correction, good audio systems but muffled through their heavily modified frames of a car. I hear crickets. I hear my next door neighbors, or children playing on the streets. There are dogs barking outside. Actually there were dogs in the urban setting; I guess that never changes. I sometimes hear gun shots, but it's like a lingering aftertaste here, not in your face reminder that I live in a scary neighborhood. I guess the most egregious thing I have to deal with is cars using the hill I live on as a ramp to speed up to 80mph.
I posit that the Central Valley girl in me, the one I thought I replaced with the hip urbanite sophisticated woman, never left me. Because this town reminds me of my hometown, except it's by the water, and it's as suburban as it gets here in the Bay Area. Initially, I was a bit afraid to let go of that urbanite persona. But I had to let it go, this is not Oakland.
Don't get me wrong. I miss Oakland. I miss living closer to my friends who live in SF and I miss living so close to A. I miss the action sometimes, the hustle and bustle, the grittiness, the fuck you attitude that came with being San Francisco's pot smoking craft beer drinking flunky cousin.
I don't miss how Oakland is changing into a haven for rich hipsters who can't afford Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Nor do I miss what is becoming a bland representation of the Oakland I once knew. Maybe that's what I'm missing, the Oakland that is still in my head, the one I fell in love with, the one with all the interesting people in it, who are now gone or struggling to hang on.
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