Getting ready to get on an airplane, this article kind of hit home as I had my $22 hotel omelette (it was shitteh) and $5 bland AF coffee. The artcle was particularly apropos as today I am departing my native soil of the Bay Area after a whirlwind three day work related visit.
My experience yesterday wandering the streets I came of age on, in Tiburon, and having lunch with some of my team mates at Sam’s Anchor Cafe (which I first ate in when my age was counted in single digits) echoes much of the article. The forced opulence, and the edless, over the top, upscale niceties evident everywhere I looked gave me pause when I considered that the 3 bed 2 bath custom home my parents designed and had built there for $39k in 1963 dollars will easily fetch north of $2.5m if the current owner wants to move it.
Cops and firefighters from San Francisco, tradespeople, retail store owners, a lawyer here and there, middle managers like my dad… that was who lived in Tiburon. It was the burbs. My frosh baseball coach in high school referred to often it as a white ghetto, and in a way he wasn’t lying.
Now days, the middle class need not even think about living there, let alone dream of it. Are we better, as a society, for the relentless squeezing out of the middle class? I think not.
But, because I want to get home more sooner than later, I will dutifully sandwich my 6 foot 4 inch, 275 pound cinder block ass into a 16 inch wide, 9 across, coach seat with a couple hundred temporary friends. We will depart in a couple of hours eagerly awaiting our choice between a one ounce bag of snack mix or a chocolate crisp that can be gone in a single bite. I will say farewell to the Bay Area, perhaps for the last time.
We are all diminshed.
The View From Out West 