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.
I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin County — no matter where I have lived in the country, the Bay has always been home. I’ve always been proud to tell someone where I’m from, excited when friends visit from out of town, eager to throw together an itinerary for their perfect week. However, several years ago, I quietly began to mourn, feeling like I was losing the Bay Area. Now, I write to you as a newly minted expat.
For several years, I commuted by ferry from San Rafael to SF’s Financial District for work. During those morning hours, a thermos of coffee in hand, I passed by Tiburon, Sausalito, Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline. Whatever my mood, I was always grateful to see them. I saw seals, whales, and harbor porpoises over the years and watched countless sunsets fall over Mount Tam as I returned home in the evening before sprinting to my car to avoid the parking lot congestion. I knew how fortunate I was to have been born and raised in this place.
On the flip side, I spent $16 dollars a day to commute by ferry (preferable to the hellscape of sitting in traffic), often clocking two and a half hours on my round-trip commute from door to door. I was not the kind of tech worker who made a lot of money. I came in through the back door of customer support as the third employee of a personal care startup. We worked on plastic folding tables in the blank-walled back room of a different company’s office.
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My husband spent these years as a public school teacher in Marin, and together, we constantly fretted about how to make ends meet. For both of us, our only escape from living paycheck to paycheck appeared to be climbing our respective career ladders as fast as we could, trading up for a higher salary each time. I worked my way into a recruiting coordinator role at a different startup, and my husband got a third master’s degree while working full time. When we could finally afford to move into San Francisco, we felt like we’d made it.
Even so, we were only able to make the move because we had a roommate (a childhood friend of mine) giving us a very good deal on rent in a home we would have never been able to afford in our wildest dreams. But, I told myself, I was finally back in the city where I was born after growing up in San Rafael and moving away for college. I was now just five Muni stops away from my office in the Financial District, working at a company I loved. My husband and I even commuted to work together. We would escape on the weekends to walk along Ocean Beach or go hiking in Marin. It seemed we had everything we’d worked so hard to achieve.
Despite the discounted rent, it was still more than we’d ever paid living on our own in San Rafael. Saving money was nearly impossible, even though we rarely went out and dined out as cheaply as possible about once a week. But it was fine, right? We would just keep busting our asses in our jobs, working our way up the corporate ladder, and maybe someday in 20 years, we’d be able to afford to buy something very small but ours. Every year, San Francisco seemed to become more and more hostile to artists, activists, teachers, immigrants, health care workers, and everyone who has now been deemed an essential worker. We wanted to be in a city where you didn’t need a computer science degree to keep up with the cost of living. I made nowhere close to what even an entry-level engineer would make at my company or in all of the Bay.
My husband, a Michigander, knew this pace of living was insane and unnecessary long before I did; I was slow to hear him and dragged my feet as long as I could. I couldn’t deny that we had bigger dreams. We wanted a family someday. We needed a way to build capital. Saving was difficult, though, and it felt like we were running on a treadmill: frantically hustling every day but never quite getting ahead. Despite the privileges we enjoyed, here we were again still living more or less paycheck to paycheck as we always had. We only had one or two months’ worth of a safety net. We told ourselves, “Just three more years. Then we’ll move back to Michigan or the Southwest. We always loved it out there.” But it always seemed like an empty wish.
It felt like we were running on a treadmill: frantically hustling every day but never quite getting ahead.
Then the pandemic hit. Two months in, at the end of April, we both unanimously agreed: We had to get out of the Bay Area. It was time. Suddenly everything we’d worked for was cast in a new light. We couldn’t leave our homes, and we were paying out the nose to simply stay put. As my company and many others shifted to a remote-first model, we salivated over the possibilities. It was time to go.
Our best friends live in Albuquerque, and we’d always loved our time with them exploring the mountains and desert landscapes of northern New Mexico — and it was cheap AF compared to what we were used to. Still, embarking on this new chapter felt like a huge risk. What if we hated it? What if more space and a slower pace of life didn’t feel worth it after all? We made the leap anyway.
At the end of May, after months of juggling packing, moving, logistics, and working full time, all while living under the tragic shadow of the pandemic, we drove across California and Arizona, and at about 1 a.m. on June 1, we rolled into ABQ.
Living in Albuquerque has not been without its challenges. For example, we rented an apartment sight unseen, based only on photos taken through the windows that our friends offered to snap for us. Summers here are hot. Like 90-degrees-every-day hot. Nearest Ikea? Gotta cross state lines to Arizona or Colorado. Recreational marijuana is still illegal here, and things like Equinox, juice bars, Teslas, and tech bros in Patagonia vests and Allbirds might as well be distant capitalistic fantasies. But I am okay with that.
We’ve spent about four months in our rental now, but will soon (hopefully — we are in the midst of closing) be moving into a house as new, first-time homeowners. Buying a house is a huge and terrifying process, but it was actually achievable here. In the Bay Area, it was an impossibility for us, something perpetually way out of reach. Now to even be at this stage as first-time homeowners is a huge milestone in our lives that we never thought we would see before moving to the Southwest.
New Mexico is home to about 2 million people across the entire state, compared to the greater Bay Area’s 7.75 million as of 2018. Here, it’s easy to leave the city and find a secluded, gorgeous, and people-free hike. What a far cry from taking a shuttle to Muir Woods and trying to feel the presence of nature while surrounded by noisy day-trippers.
There is a peace in New Mexico that I needed more than I thought I did. When we start to miss the Bay Area and all the conveniences we’re used to, my husband and I have a saying we repeat to each other: We came to the desert to heal. I still mourn that I, and so many others, have been priced out of the place they grew up and called home. I miss temperate summers laced with fog and the occasional $7 iced oat milk latte from Blue Bottle. But I am also falling in love with space, with people who stop and chat with you from their front yard as you walk by (from behind face masks of course), with a pace of living that doesn’t revolve around the newest, shiniest app, or getting in on the ground floor of another SaaS startup so you can make your first few millions in order to finally buy some peace away from the noise.
I think I’ve found that in Albuquerque. And while it’s no San Francisco, it’s its own creature I am learning to fall in love with. Albuquerque doesn’t demand I sell my soul to pay astronomical rent. I am not working 12-hour days just to do it all over again the next day or the next. Instead, after work, I am walking a few blocks away to grab some Korean takeout before we drive down to the Rio Grande and watch the sunset on the Sandía mountains with only a lone coyote and an owl to keep us company. We took a huge chance by leaving. But it’s in the desert that I’m finding a sense of peace and calm that I hadn’t felt in the Bay Area for a long time. I can’t put a price on that.
