Well, the experiment is finally over, though our “Year of Living Abroad” didn’t even last a year. We moved back to SF two weeks ago, weary, like urban anemics, for the invigorating air of a city, even a small one. Maybe it speaks poorly of us, or maybe there is something in our DNA that requires the criss-cross of bus lines in the sky, the sour stench and extra terrestrial lingua franca of the street crazies, the smell of burnt coffee from countless cafes, and the endless parade of people, everywhere: the cellular makeup of a city. Whatever it is, we missed it, terribly.
We just never got the East Bay. There is no shortage of charming little enclaves with names like Elmwood, Piedmont, Kensington or Temescal; names that sound, with no small irony, like suburban developments. Yet, I don’t think a neighborhood defined by a three to four block stretch of a busy street has much soul or character, especially when it all but closes down by 7:00 or 8:00 at night. Yes, there are nice little streets and some lovely independent shops and restaurants in the East Bay, but everything is disconnected by great miles of road and swaths of homes.
Oakland itself is such a weird place, all sprawling and discombobulated, from the bay to the wooded hills. Pockets of extreme wealth and pockets of turbulent poverty. Pristine homes and ramshackle neglect. Manicured front yards and makeshift urban farms. I often felt like a tourist without a map, trying to connect it all. I think it says something that my favorite open space there is an old cemetery: Oakland was once thriving but seems to be just barely breathing at this point. “There is no there there” as it’s been said and repeated ad nauseum. There is tremendous potential there, and perhaps that’s true of the East Bay as a whole, but I’m just not ready to live in suburbia.
Anyway, I’m glad to be back. Here’s a travelogue of sorts from the last 9 months of living abroad:
The Best
Amazing sunsets. Of course, living in the flatlands as most people do, the only time I got to see them was on BART or on the vertiginous trails and lookout points around Tilden. And it’s really those features in the distance – SF’s skyline and Mt. Tam - that make it.
Urban Biking. For its myriad faults and self-righteousness, Berkeley’s forward thinking bike policy makes for an amazing network of bike-friendly roads. Does it also make for aggravated, insensitive drivers on the more trafficked roads? You bet. Pedestrians, watch your toes. Oakland’s bike routes, while not nearly as seamless or hazard-free, offer a landscape unlike any other. Pedaling from North Oakland through West Oakland to Jack London Square is like watching a reel of Le Voyage Dans La Lune on the set of Brazil.
Springtime. People like to rhapsodize about the better weather in the East Bay but the difference is pretty marginal. The biggest benefit of living there, for me, was watching the foliage change with the seasons. Yuppies sure love to landscape their yards and come March there is a riot of green shoots and flower blossoms. We moved in the dark of January and the transformation was shocking, waking up to literally find flowers budding overnight. I had forgotten, and missed, the natural theater of spring. Walking to BART felt like walking down the yellow brick road…a barren suburban road where people scurry from car to house, but still. Pretty.
Oakland’s Ghetto Deco. I was familiar with the exquisite Paramount and Fox theaters, but looking at the beautiful tiled facades and ornate cornices of the old I Magnin’s, Breuner’s, and Sears buildings, as well as Flora and even the smaller structures in between (wait, that’s a wig shop in that gorgeous space?!), I felt like an archeologist uncovering a forgotten bustling city underneath the grime and mundane boxy office towers.
The Worst
BART. We were so naive. We thought we were trading a primitive, sloth-like MUNI for a more efficient transit system unencumbered by street traffic. Not so. It’s more like we traded plastic seats for cloth ones (all the better to hide mysterious stains, smells and booger collections. See next.)
People on BART. So appalling, it deserves its own mention. Most of the passengers sleep or pretend to sleep so they don’t have to get up for pregnant women and the elderly. It happens every single day. BART doesn’t provide the same electric and amusing brand of psychotics as does MUNI, but the pathology is merely shifted onto the everyday passenger who treat the seats or aisles like their private powder room. Is it the long commute that makes people crazy? Also, what is it about BART that beckons nose-picking? It feels like at times like I’m watching a first grade class loafing in Men’s Warehouse and Dress Barn attire.
Medieval sword fights. Dungeons and Dragons? The knights who say “Ni!”? I have no idea what these dorks playing with swords and shields in the Rockridge station parking lot are all about, but this kind of shit is soooo East Bay.
Markets. I really don’t understand where or how people shop for food over here. Everything closes early or closes on the weekend. The undeservedly famed Berkeley Bowl is a vortex of angry moms, trustafarian burnouts and mediocre food. And that’s just the parking lot. In other words, a classic East Bay clusterfuck. Monterey Market, while slightly calmer and offering some decent produce, is more warehouse than market and like most places in the East Bay, should require you to sign a release form before you enter the parking lot as a pedestrian or bicyclist. Market Hall is an overpriced bonanza for the banal. The Pasta Shop is fine, for fresh pasta particularly, but the average corner store in SF is better than Market Hall Produce Market which offers basics like milk at more than twice the cost you’ll find elsewhere.
Driving. The East Bay is a series of communities connected, if in no other way, than by roads. Literal mazes of freeways, major thoroughfares, and endless residential streets winding every which way. Most EBers I know are more apt to drive anywhere and I can sympathize – the geography and lack of efficient transit seem to demand it – but it’s hard to connect to anyone from inside your car and I think the region as a whole suffers from the effects of too many cars and not enough vibrant public spaces.
Though it is spartan, even strangely adorned with vehicular impedimenta, I find this space very beautiful. It’s the drill court at the Armory, an incongruous building at 14th and Mission in a city that seems to celebrate such architectural discord.
The moorish castle-inspired building was originally built as a National Guard facility in 1914. It was empty for years, and always seemed like a bizarre fenestrated asteroid dropped on the neighborhood. Eventually, kink.com moved in and while I’m not privy to the exact goings-on, the word is it’s kinky. Nothing wrong with creative re-use. The best part is that they’ve leased the drill court back to an organization responsible for developing the space into a community center. SPUR is leading a tour of the Armory on September 30th and other than crawling in a window, this is a rare opportunity to view this space until it’s fully developed.
Of the many amazing but forlorn buildings deserving renovation, the Hibernia Bank building on Jones and McAllister streets has always struck me as exceptional. It is a beacon for the mid-Market area, perfectly representing its squalor and stagnation, but also its tremendous potential for inspired urban renewal. The stretch on Market St from 5th to Van Ness is desperate for revitalization, and ripe for it too, with many striking facades and shuttered theaters.
The old Strand theater, with the federal building looming behind it, defines the very discord of modern and historic that makes the urban landscape so appealing to me. The restoration of the nearby Book Concern building into incredibly tiny condos (250 sf?!) is not to my taste, but it does at least represent a step in bringing new life to the area.
The old Mint on 5th and Mission could be a good example of appropriate restoration and reuse of historic spaces. The space is currently empty, but owned by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society who envision a new cultural institution including a museum and visitor center. Meanwhile, Mint Plaza has literally sprouted up around the building to give the landmark new context in its urban setting. As I’ve mentioned before, this was just another pee-smelling alley a few years ago. Now it’s a pee-smelling alley with plants and pedestrian amenities and restaurants. In other words, a postage stamp size San Francisco!
Modern architecture can create inviting spaces in many forms, but there’s something really inspiring about these grand old spaces. The style and accessories of their eras are charming, but part of the appeal for me is the very juxtaposition of the old and new in this city. I hope that, to borrow an unfortunate phrase of my fellow mellow citizens, we can keep San Francisco’s architecture weird.
I came across this older piece in the Smithsonian Magazine (Jan, 2002) that looks like it could be representative of any point in the last 30 years. It’s a simple pictorial essay showing the the food an average family from a particular region eats in a week. The simplicity of the concept bears semblance to a Golden Book-style title on food and culture: See the African family with heaps of whole grains, the Japanese family with a colorful variety of fish and vegetables, and the American family with…
Good lord! What is all that?
To contrast with the turkish family’s spread above, almost everything displayed in the american household is packaged and processed, recognizable less as food than as commercial products from supermarket shelves. Arguably, the only items here that don’t contain industrial derivatives of corn or soy are those grown in the ground or on a tree (see if you can spot them, kids!) but most of these were likely shipped halfway across the world to get to that kitchen. At least the corn syrup and dextrose are domestic, right?
The visual disparity in the diets of different families is clear enough for a children’s book, but the implication seems lost on the majority of Americans. We are not eating food, we are eating food products. The unbelievable variety of colorful boxes one can find at the supermarket gives the consumer the illusion of choice, and belies a trend towards a handful of mammoth agribusinesses controlling our food system.
So what’s wrong with this picture?
In a word, everything. The industrialization of our food system is completely changing what we eat, how we eat, the safety of our food and our very health. Can you spot the items above that have had major recalls in the last couple years? Off the top of my head: frozen pizza, peanut butter, oatmeal and unfathomable tons of ground beef, most recently 825,769 pounds of it. Even the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup may be tainted with mercury. Our reliance on a food supply operated by giant corporate food providers is not sustainable, and it’s increasingly dangerous, especially without appropriate oversight.
As taxpayers, Americans support the growth of giant agribusiness directly and indirectly through subsidies. Large-scale corn production benefits from tax subsidies. Though none of it is grown for immediate consumption – it’s been engineered to be an ideal industrial product, not a food – corn by-products eventually go to an astonishing number of the foods seen above. Corn is in the soda, the bagels, the cereals, the juices, jam, peanut butter, cookies, pizza, and as a major feed ingredient for conventionally raised animals, it’s also in the meat. Corn by-products even make up some of the packaging.
All this cheap subsidized corn provides incredible profit potential for agribusiness; it can, in turn, make for cheap food, but not healthy food. As illustrated in the documentary Food Inc. we’ve reached a point in this country where it costs less for a family to eat fast food hamburgers than to buy a head of broccoli at the supermarket. Even when consumers seek healthy alternatives, they may not be affordable so they’re left with cheap foods of negligible nutritive value. One in three people born after 2000 in the US will develop diabetes. It’s clear the only group benefitting from our modern industrial food system are the corporations.
The picture of American dinner table is not a pretty one. We need to change it now.
