The Californian’s Dilemma
This week in The Bold Italic, we are publishing The Californian’s Dilemma, a series that goes beyond the headlines about the “California Exodus,” featuring essays from San Franciscans about why they’re choosing to stay or leave. Check back daily for new essays.
“Well, your daughter saw two dicks today,” I said to my husband as I carried our two-year-old inside after a brief stroll around the Mission District. Walks were our daily reprieve from the springtime shelter-in-place ordinances, and they had taken a turn toward the graphic. This was when I first realized that our time in San Francisco might be winding down.
Thirteen years ago, I delighted in scandalizing my pearl-clutching mother with tales of frolicking among urinators and masturbators in my brand-new city. Every “oh my goodness!” from her in thick Southern drawl was a badge of urban honor. I knew that when I started a family, I would want my child to have the things I didn’t get growing up in suburban Nashville: diverse classmates, progressive values, and a life without the background hum of Christianity.
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San Francisco has given my daughter all those things in her brief three years of life. She speaks Mandarin, thanks to her immersion preschool, and no one has ever pestered me about when I’m going to have her baptized. The cost of these amenities was embracing a small, expensive home and a certain tolerance for crime. Up until the pandemic, it was a price I was happy to pay. Yes, my baby would see the occasional street penis, but she also visited the dazzling California Academy of Sciences so often that she considered Claude the albino alligator a family pet.
With everything closed for the foreseeable future, life had become an “all dicks and no alligator” situation at a staggering cost of living.
When it comes to the suburbs, I’m like an edgy, angsty teenager, fully committed to being a hater.
Pacifica, a small beach community 10 miles south of San Francisco, was never on my radar. When it comes to the suburbs, I’m like an edgy, angsty teenager, fully committed to being a hater. We started browsing San Francisco listings over the summer, but the homes were small, overpriced, and had unacceptable kitchens with rogue-ass appliances. For the price of a cramped two-bedroom in the city, my husband found a beachy five-bedroom in Pacifica with a large backyard. At the viewing, the first we attended, my daughter took to the backyard and sprinted large figure eights, her silky blond hair airborne behind her. It struck me. She hadn’t run in months. At least she hadn’t without me screaming, “Avoid the dog pile! Keep your distance from the parkgoers!” Watching her zoom past me, giggling, I could feel my heart explode (in the touching parenting way, not the medical emergency way).
I imagined our next move would be to another urban center with a more reasonable cost of living. We considered Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles. House hunting in other cities during a pandemic proved logistically impossible. The quarantine periods on either end of such travel would amount to a month without childcare. It was ultimately unfeasible, and maybe I’m not quite done with the Bay Area yet.
I don’t know much about our new foggy town to the south other than it is home to the world’s most charming Taco Bell. I mostly look forward to enjoying some much-needed space. Virginia Woolf argued that every woman needs a room of one’s own. The screaming carpal tunnel pain in my wrist argues that every writer needs an ergonomic setup that’s not on the floor of her daughter’s nursery. I think we’re all in agreement.
An old friend came by this week to deliver moving boxes. I hadn’t seen her since I attended her 2020 Super Bowl party eight months and five lifetimes ago. We reminisced about the ghosts of our San Franciscan friends already scattered about the country.
“Where’d you end up?” I asked.
“Corte Madera! How about you guys?”
“Pacifica, for now. As an experiment.”
“We’ll all be back someday,” she said with a smile. I agreed.
We both were lying, of course, but the truth was too sad to say out loud.
Pacifica is only nine miles south, so no need to cry for me. I’ll be at the Taco Bell, happily writing in comfort, watching the fog roll in.
