*** RYAN TATE: Shocking secrets--revealed! ***
ryantate.com

Home



Reporter

Articles

Resume

Professional bio

Media appearences



Personal

Pictures

Weblog archive

Essays

Links



Contact info
ryantate@ryantate.com

RSS feed

PGP key

415.640.6119 mobile

415.288.4968 office

510.548.4576 home

Home address and map

My building

AIM: ryantatedotcom



Recent San Francisco Business Times stories

Table set at Ferry Building (Jun. 6)

S.F. out to rattle chains (May. 30)

S.F. plan sets goal of 10,000 homes (Jun. 27)

Stanford's new senior class (Jun. 13)

Is San Francisco's housing crisis over? (Jun. 20)

Stanford Shopping Center on block (May. 23)

Insurers locking up condos (May. 23)

Developer makes bold housing play (May. 16)

Williams-Sonoma revs web (May. 9)

Residential Real Estate Deals of the Year (May. 9)

More ...



Recent personal essays

Private property (Oct. 8)



Blogs I read

Anne and her Cheese Diaries

Guy

Norman

Owen

Erin

David Warsh

Dave Winer

JimRomenesko

Philip Greenspun

Joel Spolsky



Monday, July 14, 2003


Tonight I'm starting a new compilation tape for my own use in the car. I'm thinking of calling it, "Eight Years At The Same Phone Number."

That's partly a nod to the fact that, many nights at Hotel Utah and the Blue Lamp and Rite Spot Cafe and various other venues notwithstanding, my musical tastes haven't changed all that much since 1995; most of the stuff since then is just garnish.

But mostly it's a muttering acknowledgement that, well, I've had the same phone number for eight years. And that I've been in the same apartment for seven years, one block from the UC Berkeley campus, and one block from Telegraph Avenue. This geographic stagnation is easily confused with personal stagnation, and some days I'm not entirely sure that it shouldn't be.

One weekend day recently, I was taking out the trash and ran into a younger man, a New Yorker by the look and sound of him, who had recently moved into my complex. "Hey, you don't live here do you?," he asked.

"Yes, actually, I do."

"Oh! Did you just move in?!"

"Oh. No."

"Really?!" Still overenthusiastic. "Where do you live?"

"32."

"Oh, OK. So you must know Penny and Stempy and Tipsy on your floor?"

"Actually, no. Don't sound familiar. Ya."

"Huh. ... So ... how long have you lived here?"

"Mmmmm .... Six or seven years."

"Six or seven ... YEARS??!! YEARS!!! Wooaahhohoho! Wowwww. Are you STILL a student?"

"Uh, no. I graduated a couple of years ago."

"Huuhhhhhhhhh .... OK .... Wow ..."

"OK. I'll see you around."

"All right, dude, take it easy man! Wow, six YEARS ..."

This conversation did not feel nice. Most days now, I lament, at some point and in some manner, the fact I still live so close to the university I graduated from three years ago. The same university I spent essentially six years at as an undergraduate. The same campus that claimed even claimed three of five college summers, and through which I walked every morning on my way to an internship in the fourth. (The one summer away was spent as a staff member at Camp Stevens.)

Sometimes, it just feels like I've been here too long. Other times, the students annoy me, and I feel like a grumpy old man. Like when they spill out of Kip's, the bar that is essentially next door to me and a historic favorite of students with fake IDs or who just turned 21, and who do not know how to hold their liquor, and who tend to yell and fight and puke near my front stoop when are shoved out the door after last call, about 2 a.m.

Also, there's not much of interest within short walking distance as far as food goes. Two-dollar pizza and msg-laden noodles and greasy hot dogs and bad vegetarian food and cheap, poorly executed psuedo-ethnic food do not appeal to me much any more. The nearby "market" carries only Wonder bread -- no whole wheat, no rye -- and often no basic items like chicken stock, bacon and canola oil, even though it's about three times the size of a typical 7-11. This is because they make their money selling beer and cookies and cigarettes to -- guess who? -- students!

Why haven't I chucked it all and moved to San Francisco, where I work and where rents have been tumbling for more than two years, or to Oakland, where two of my friends live in a glorious Victorian with big rooms, high ceilings, low rent and bars on the windows?

The thing is, I have a decent place. Its one of the city's older buildings. To give you an idea of how old, my kitchen has a metal pantry that clicks shut because it used to be an ice box. The pantry underneath has rough wood slats where the ice used to go. The electrical wiring was all grafted on after the fact, outside the walls, as was the telephone wiring. There is a wall panel that, for some strange reason, rotates outward from the walk-in closet into the liing room, all the way around, perhaps because there was once a hide-a-bed on it.

The ceilings are nice and high, the floors are hard wood. There are plenty of big windows, a view out toward Telegraph, and back toward the Campinile on campus. I have a bedroom, a living room, a reasonable kitchen.

Plus, Berkeley is rent controlled, so the $750 I pay monthly for these 600 or so square feet is only about $70 per moth higher than when I moved in. Getting a one-bedroom place in San Francisco, of similar size and character, in a decent neighborhood, would be at least twice that much, even though rents have fallen quite a bit. I would save at most 15 minutes in commute time, since BART, which is only a 10 minute walk from here, can get me into the city in less than 25 minutes.

And while my neighborhood sucks, my city is still great. Just consider the food. We have the Cheese Board Collective, which alone makes Berkeley a worthwhile city. We have a robust farmer's market. We have the original Peet's. We have Chez Pannisse, Cesar, Rivoli, Downtown, Cafe Rouge and on and on and on with the restaurants. We have great book stores--Cody's, Moe's, Black Oak.We have Berkeley Bowl, Ver Bergge meats, Monterey Market.

Such is the quality of products that tonight I was able to eat Fromage d'Affinois, a sterling if common French brie, and Pt. Reyes bleu on Pan Au Levin from Berkeley baker Acme Bread, whose bread Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten calls "the best in America."

Even relatively simple pleasures, like neighboring frozen dessert shop Yogurt Park or the new, first-in-America gelato shop downtown, help drag some of my friends out for visits (the Yogurt and gelato tend to be more of interest to female friends, go figure).

Sigh. Perhaps some day soon, saving $750 per month in rent won't mean so much to me. Or there will be a job offer in Los Angeles, New York or London that I just can't refuse. But I'm not holding my breath. I've still got all these Berkeley parking tickets to pay off! Arghhhhh ...



More updates