Speed dating with apartments.

Ain’t change grand?  Or is it love?  Either way, the sarcasm applies to how I feel about this week.  Dan and I flew to the Bay Area this week to find our new home in only five days time.  In theory, it sounded easy peasy.  In reality, not so much.  We started looking in East Bay (uh…for those of you geographically challenged, that’s east of San Francisco, across the bay), which had lots of options for people who hate dogs and loving paying to do your own laundry because hardly anywhere allowed pets or came with a washer and dryer.  Side note: I find it interesting that landlords will allow you to have a child in your apartment, but not a 40lb furry friend.  I suspect the kid would be louder and do more damage.  They’d probably end up peeing on the floor too. 

We narrowed our search to Downtown Oakland and the Lake Merritt area.  Both have lots to do and offer easy public transport into the city.  By the way, did anyone lose their ghetto?  If so, you may try looking for it in Oakland.  They have a few there.

A funny thing about living in the Bay Area, people who live in San Fran say, “Oh you HAVE to live in the city, no one ever goes out to East Bay.” People who live in East Bay say, “It’s so not worth living in the city, everyone’s flocking to East Bay.”  Oy.  We thought for about a minute to switch our home hunting efforts to the city.  After all, San Francisco is very pet friendly, there’s tons of shops, restaurants, parks…and it’s a good thing because the apartments are so small you don’t have room to actually live there.

By the end of the week we settled on a loft in Downtown Oakland (pics below).  It was the purtiest one we found, with the most amenities and space for the cash-money.  Plus there’s about 573 coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and a train station (that goes into the city) within walking distance.   Take that snobby San Fran dwellers!

You're doing what?!

In the summer of 2005 I moved from my rural home in eastern Kansas to the city of Orlando, Florida.  What did I know about Orlando? I knew it was hot, that it rained once a day and that it offered a wide variety of vacation options for you and your family.  I went there looking to broaden my horizons, experience new things and to see how people live outside the farm.  What I found was a bunch of white dudes from the northeast driving around in their big expensive cars, throwing parties in their big expensive houses and showing off their super skinny, expensive wives.  Alas, Orlando was not all bad.  I also found Park Ave CDs, Brian’s Restaurant, the Winter Park Farmer’s Market, and Jess Egan (the only known offspring of June Cleaver and Martha Stewart).  But then, Orlando, you went too far.  You built one too many strip malls.  You franchised one too many Starbucks.  You almost had me back when you opened two H&M locations, but then you put them at opposite ends of the city and nowhere near my house.  Orlando, I gave you five years of my life; you gave me some good times, some good friends, and probably skin cancer from all the sunburns, but that remains to be seen.

And so, I am venturing out again to find a new place to call home and to see how people live outside of strip malls.  My new home will be in the land of the Bay Area in California.  Or more specifically the East Bay/Oakland area, which is across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco.  (I'm poor and the price per square footage on rental units is much less there compared to San Francisco.)

Return here each week as I chronicle the epic move from coast to coast (LITERALLY!) and all my new experiences as a Californian!