QotD: I Get Around
How many places have you lived in your life?
I lived across the street from LAX until halfway through kindergarten, when the airport had mowed down every house for blocks around, and the bulldozers were immediately threatening our little ranch house.
We then moved to Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley. That valley. The mission style building in the photo was designed and built by silent film star Francis Lederer to house his wife's horse. During the 70s, he and some friends converted it to a gallery of Mexican-American art. My mother worked in that gallery and hung out with the Lederers and their friends a little bit. A pug dog named Cantinflas (after a character played by the Mexican comedian Mario Moreno Reyes) was always around snuffling in the heat.
In order to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible, I went to college in Hanover, New Hampshire and loved winter a lot. Small town living was a love-hate experience.
Dartmouth started making me itchy so I spent my sophomore spring studying abroad in Moscow. I lived on the 15th floor of the university that Stalin built and listened to the Cure a lot.
I wanted to move to San Francisco right after graduation, but due to circumstances and some slack on my part, I ended up in Mountain View for a couple of years. Suburban luxury apartment complexes are weird. I remember when paying $1300 a month for a 2 BD seemed insane.
I've lived in San Francisco for over a decade now. It's expensive and provincial, and often urinicious, but I knew I was home ever since I strained my budget to rent my first apartment on Castro St. I've moved several times, never far from the Mission/Upper Market area. And I still get a thrill whenever I cross that big red bridge.
