SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

All my adult life, I wanted to live in my favorite city. Today, I do.

Now, having realized that dream for less than three years, I’m heading back to the suburbs.

Before you get all distraught, let me assure you that this is a good thing. The Pirate Queen landed an excellent new job earlier this month, and after years of exhausting commuting hither and yon – the last six of which saw her trekking daily between San Francisco and San Jose, which is more of a haul than you non-Bay Areans probably realize – she decided she wanted to live within a few minutes’ drive of her new office.

Given that my commute most days is the several steps from the bedroom to my studio space, I can hardly argue with that desire.

We managed to find a lovely house in the East Bay city of Walnut Creek, a mere stone’s throw from the Pirate Queen’s workplace (assuming that you throw your stones with a howitzer). We both knew that the Kasbah — as I nicknamed it, for its fortress-like frontage and ginormous palm tree — was our new home the moment we first stepped inside.

Following the usual negotiation and paperwork craziness, escrow closed on the property this morning. Our action plan is to move by mid-August, after which we’ll put our San Francisco home on the market and say a bittersweet farewell to this first chapter in our life together.

I have loved living in The City. Its vibrant energy, diverse culture, and unparalleled urban landscape make it a fascinating place to spend one’s days. It’s impossible to place a value on being able to glimpse the Pacific Ocean (a tiny slice of it, anyway) from my living room window. I will miss that view, and the joy it brings me every day. Looking on the positive side, however, as I am wont to do, there are some things I’ll eagerly embrace about our new suburban environs:

A real, full-service supermarket just blocks away. In fact, an impressive shopping complex – complete with a drugstore, a Starbucks, a dry cleaner, and several inexpensive eateries – surrounds the supermarket, all of which is within comfortable walking distance from the new house. One of my ongoing challenges in The City is that many of these types of businesses aren’t conveniently located, at least not where we live. (If you ever want to experience a rush of first-world-problem compassion, just visit the Monterey Boulevard Safeway. Then tell me you don’t feel pity for the neighborhood denizens for whom it’s the primary grocery option.)

Easy parking. I will never underappreciate the blessing of going to a local shop or restaurant secure in the knowledge that ample parking awaits. Few factors frustrate me more about big-city life than the debacle that results every time I have to circle several blocks hunting down a place for my car, or parallel park along San Francisco’s notoriously jam-packed streets. In the suburbs, there’s almost always a big parking lot near where you need to go.

Warm summer weather. Okay, when I say “warm” in regard to the East Bay beyond the Oakland hills, I really mean “hot” for two-thirds of the year. As much as I’m not a fan of blazing heat, I’ll scarcely miss the relentlessly gloomy, blustery, semi-Antarctic climate of our San Francisco hillside neighborhood. Besides, we’ll have air conditioning. And a pool.

East Bay life will also have an advantage over my former digs to the north. Venturing into San Francisco from Sonoma County requires a long, tedious drive in often stupefying traffic, plus the aforementioned parking challenge. By contrast, our Walnut Creek home is convenient to two BART stations – the trains, in fact, pass a few hundred feet from the house – from which we can whisk to and from The City at relative leisure. Heading downtown to dine or catch a play will hardly take more effort than it does for us living in SF.

Our new abode has many features to recommend it.

First, no stairs, no hills. Our San Francisco house, like many single-household residences throughout The City, is what’s termed a “soft-story” building. The primary living space is all on one level, but that level is built on top of the garage. This means that entering and leaving the house – or even going to the garage to do laundry — involves mounting a tall, steep, narrow staircase. The older my knees and back get, the less fond they are of that adventure. Conversely, the Walnut Creek property is a traditional California ranch-style house. (There’s a sunken living room, but seriously, that’s two steps.) It will be wonderful to simply walk through a door to carry the laundry basket out, or heavy bags filled with groceries in. Likewise, the entire neighborhood sits on flat terrain. The views are uninspiring, but it’s a lot more conducive to long walks.

Second, both the Pirate Queen and I will have our own individual office spaces. In our little two-bedroom in The City, the second bedroom does quadruple duty as a two-person office, guest room, pet bedroom, and dressing room (because most of my clothes reside in its closet and dresser). The new house has four bedrooms, one of which will give the Pirate Queen a dedicated home office that she doesn’t have to share with my desk, my clothes, the guest bed, or the Studio Assistant. Another bedroom will convert into my combination office and studio, which will liberate my recording equipment from the corner of the living room where it has resided for the past three years. I’ll be able to do a lot of things with my workspace that I simply didn’t have room to do here, including install a proper, fully contained recording booth.

Third, two bathrooms. The importance of this development cannot be overstated.

Fourth… did I mention the pool?

Make no mistake, the move will be a monumental adjustment. It will be even more so for the Pirate Queen, who has lived in The City for nearly 20 years, than for me, who spent the better part of three decades in North Bay suburbia. But it’s a change we’ve contemplated for some time. Last year, we actually looked at houses in the South Bay, thinking that we might move closer to the location where the Pirate Queen was then working. When her new opportunity emerged, there was no question for either of us that this was the right time to switch sides of the Bay.

I’ll miss being a San Franciscan. In the immortal words often sung by Tony Bennett, I’ll leave a bit of my heart here – a bit that I will return to visit as often as I can.

But if you’re looking for me at the Porthole Palace, look quickly.

My new crib is the Kasbah.

It rocks.