Another Year in the West

While I am sorry that I haven't updated since September (or was it August?), I obviously wasn't sorry enough during these past few months to prevent such a dry spell.

Things have changed since I finished my first year in AmeriCorps. I moved from rural west Marin County to the Mission District in San Francisco and started a new job.

Moving was a huge pain. With the housing market crash, more people are renting, driving prices in this already saturated and extremely expensive market higher. I probably emailed around 40-50 people on craigslist concerning room-for-rent postings between mid-August and late-September and received 5 replies. I only saw 4 places, and the place I ended up at was the only one I could honestly picture myself living in. And thankfully, the guys who already live here thought the same of me.

I equate the Mission most closely with Humboldt Park in Chicago - it's about 50% latino, there are some REALLY sketchy parts, and people who don't live or hang out here are afraid of it. Maybe a little more Logan Square - about a third of the Mission is crawling with hipsters. Unlike Marin, where there were lots of hippie/organic -eateries all over the place, there's a taqueria on nearly every corner in the Mission.

My roommates are fantastic - I cannot imagine a better living situation. I live with 3 guys and 1 girl, Robert, Skitch, England, and Morgan. Robert and Skitch are brothers (and it's Robert's birthday today). England is from the Philippines and Morgan is from Philly. Morgan and I moved in around the same time - we met the day I moved in.

Robert, me, Morgan, and Kurt (Robert's friend and bandmate)

I interviewed for my second term of AmeriCorps last month and now that it's November, I'm just waiting to find out if I got the position or not. Right now I'm working at a restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf (though it doesn't get much of a tourist crowd) - I'm planning on making this secondary income when AmeriCorps (hopefully) starts in January. In the meantime, I ride my bike/BART (sort of like metra or maybe the purple line) to work everyday, about 1.5 miles there, and when I ride all the way home it's about 4.5 miles. So I get some kind of workout.

So, in addition to living and working at Houston's, I also usually cater about once a week, though not at all in November, and I still go back to Marin about once a week to do office work at Sea Turtle Restoration Project, SPAWN's sister organization. That leaves me one day a week off (though somehow I managed to get 3 days off in a row this weekend - absolutely amazing) to run errands, have fun, etc.

Things I love about my new situation:
-Along with the garbage and recycling bins, SF has compost bins
-I live with people my own age
-I drive ~1x per week - I'm no longer chained to my car
-I can get anywhere I want on a bike. Except Marin or Berkeley, they're too far for me
-I make a lot more money than AmeriCorps, though it's not really making me grow professionally

Things I'm not so keen on:
-No more pets that aren't really my own
-Less fresh air
-No funny ridiculous kids
-No work gossip with Mitch (the dad I lived with)
-It's dirtier and loud. Really loud. People tend to stand on our corner and gossip a lot... usually in Spanish, which makes it easy to drown out, but when it's in English it's annoying.
-I don't know Spanish.

Anyway, so that's what's happening here. I just baked a cake for Robert's birthday and I don't think it's terribly good, but I'm going to blame the cheap aluminum cake pans.