Where I Was From

Please stop calling me crazy for moving someplace as grand as Chicago

Last night I was invited to a dinner party at the home of someone I’ve been on a couple of dates with. I wasn’t quite ready to meet all his friends at once, but accepted out of curiosity, since he was cooking vegan food and was itching to prove to me that said food can be completely edible when done right. He was completely right on that account – I was pleased to see that lasagna and tiramisu can be completely amazing with zero dairy in them. I don’t really have a useful place to store this knowledge, but there it is, just the same. I also managed to sucker myself into daring that I could be a vegetarian for the rest of the month (with the exception of Soup Night next week, but not the holidays…ohhh, boy), but that was the fault of my big mouth, and I don’t blame him for being smug about that.

What really caught my attention at the dinner party was the fact that here were fifteen or so Midwestern folks who couldn’t stop talking about San Francisco for the several hours the party lasted. San Francisco as the greatest place on earth. “Why the HELL did you leave San Francisco?” ad infinitum. “The restaurants are so much better there,” they said over an amazing dinner a local person had just spent all afternoon cooking them with ingredients bought at Trader Joe’s, a store that can obviously be found right here in Illinois, as well as in their illustrious Promised Land. Trader Joe’s is the same there. Let me get back to you about West Coast sushi, but after living all over the country, I have to say that in general, life is pretty much the same in all metropolises.

Words I could have applied to the cities themselves. When it comes down to it, despite the beautiful landscape and the mild climate, when you live in San Francisco, you are still living in a city. You still have to work a job like any other and wait for the train (just TRY finding parking anywhere in that city besides grocery store lots. Want a space near your apartment? $150 a month. Sorry, no street parking, even at home). There are still dull people in San Francisco. Sometimes even the ultra-sophisticates the city is famous for are complete dullards – just dullards who are extremely well-dressed, and whose monologues are about music and performance art and their dietary habits. They are easier on the eyes than Midwestern dullards, who are forced to dress down because of our unforgiving winters, and for a while it’s difficult to tell that boring talk of creative ventures isn’t actually more exciting than boring talk about practical things like work and what’s in the news.

I can stare at the websites for Bay Area concert venues and miss them until I look at the bands’ own websites, where they inevitably list a tour stop here in Chicago. I can bitch about the cold, but honestly, when it’s foggy and the wind makes even 50 degrees feel pretty damn unpleasant, I wouldn’t be taking those constant jaunts through Golden Gate Park, anyway. You adjust to different climates with surprising speed. My parents have both spent a lot of time living in Minnesota and cross-country skiing, but living in Los Angeles has acclimatized them so they are now miserable at any temperature below about 55. I would be lying pretty hard if I said it’s not a huge imposition to stay mainly indoors for four months out of the year, but I do like having the four seasons. I hate wearing layers, but the snow can be breathtaking as a visual, even when it’s literally breathtaking in that a sharp inhale makes your head and lungs ache. The ocean is majestic, but so is the architecture in Chicago. Strangers greet each other on the street here, but in San Francisco, the only strangers that approach you are derelicts demanding your change – and they appear quite literally every few yards that you walk. The rent is as steep there as it is in New York, and forget the comforts you expect here, like wood floors, windows, dishwashers, and porches. There is a lot less of that, out there. The “yard” behind my last place was just a spot where the landlord kept the building’s garbage.

Earthquakes always seem to come up in these conversations, but I feel like I should mention them just to say that I usually don’t think about them unless I’m quake-proofing a new apartment, something most people I knew out there never even bothered to do. They’re terrifying, but what city doesn’t burn down once or twice? What of hurricanes, tornadoes, riots, terrorist attacks, and recessions? Every city is susceptible to something. Even Paris goes through some shit once in a while.

None of this should be taken to mean that I don’t love San Francisco. I do plan to return to California fairly soon. I live 2,000 miles away from my family right now, and I am not the kind of person who can stay so far away for life. But that’s what it is to me: home. Not heaven. Not a dream of escaping reality. It’s where my family is, and where I’m from, and for that reason – and that reason alone – it is, to me, unique in all the cities of the world. That’s really the only reason a big city can be different from all the others.

Labels: California, Chicago, memoir, travel

posted by Leah @ 12:13 PM