We Now Return to Our Regular Programming...

Hey folks! Here I am. Sorry to disappear like that. Shortly after all those angsty posts from late August, I had to -- as you know -- pack my life up and ship out to CA. (Well, not entirely -- my furniture and a good number of my belongings are still back in NYC with Chef K.) Now I am here in SF and have plunged right into school.

I hope to fill you in more later, but suffice it to say, I'm pretty happy so far -- happy with my beautiful new 'hood (Potrero Hill) and spacious apartment (two whole rooms just for me! what a change!), and the new challenges of a new school.

School, of course, has taken over, like I knew it would, but stay tuned for more posts, albeit less frequent ones. There's much to talk about -- the food here in SF, the design community, exploring the city, and so on.

As a teaser, I give you these two shots of my neighborhood, one during the day and one at night. I love the panoramic views of the city you get here -- and apparently so do art directors; they shoot commercials here all the time. Maybe the coolest thing is that we can watch the fog roll into the rest of the city, while staying sunny ourselves. Works for a SoCal girl like me.

Well, it's off to bed. Big Monday tomorrow. More soon. :)

The Big Announcement... Addendum

I was just thinking that perhaps I should provide some background on the move. What is happening is that I've decided to transfer from my design program at Pratt to one at California College of the Arts. There are a number of reasons for this decision, some of which concern a practical desire to broaden the kind of design education I'm getting (and frankly, dissatisfaction with Pratt), and some of which concern a personal desire to go back to California, my home state. For an entire year, I've been weighing these two impulses, and even now, after I've made the decision, I'm seesawing wildly between cautious excitement and complete panic.

At the moment, the panic is winning out, unfortunately. I feel a pit in my stomach as the reality of moving day gets closer and closer. Not only am I full of angst about leaving New York, a city I love yet somehow felt was the right time to leave, but I am worried about Chef K, who is supposed to follow me once he gets a job in SF but hasn't found anything yet. And I am worried about leaving my friends at Pratt, an unbelievably special group of people that I was blessed to meet, and honestly feel like I'm tempting fate now to leave. On top of it all, I'm worried that I'm deep-sixing my career, going to some college everyone gets confused with CalArts, or Academy of the Arts, or Art Institute, and going for a second bachelor's to boot. What am I doing?? Am I crazy?

At the bottom of it, I guess that I never wanted to wonder "what if," that I believe there is a bigger world out there in design than what I've experienced so far. Hopefully, if I always hang on to what's in my heart and always ask if I'm staying true to myself, things will turn out OK. I've always told other people that -- and now I need to tell myself. The truth is, though, that I'm terrified.

San Francisco, Part 1: SF Architecture

So, in light of my impending move, I flew out to SF this past weekend to try to find an apartment. Naturally, the real estate whore in me couldn't help but delight in tramping from house to house comparing layouts, kitchen renos, views, laundry amenities and so forth. Like a house tour -- except for free! But considerably more stressful. And nerve-wracking and exhausting. Ha.

Anyway, since the city is completely new to me, I was rather daunted by -- and then rather enjoyed -- plotting out bus routes and getting to know one neighborhood after another. The blog Overstated once posted this cheeky guide to SF-NY neighborhood equivalencies, and I was eager to see if any of them were right. In all, I had the opportunity to visit Potrero Hill, the Mission, SOMA, Hayes Valley and Nob Hill. Not too shabby for 2.5 days.

After nearly a decade living in New York, the most notable thing about all these neighborhoods was, of course, the architecture. Instead of being built of brick, brownstone and limestone (Manhattan, Brooklyn) or siding (Queens, parts of Brooklyn), most houses in SF are painted, and in a million different pastel shades at that. Most are also Victorian in style, although very different from the Victorian brownstones you see in New York -- for one thing, there is always a garage on the ground floor (or as we would say in New York, the "garden floor"). The Italianate and Neoclassical styles seem to largely be absent from the areas I visited -- but I should probably consult a textbook and/or get to know the city better before making that kind of assertion.

In the end, whaddaya know? I just signed a lease on an apartment in Potrero Hill, a neighborhood that's conveniently close to my new school, California College of the Arts -- and that, according to Overstated, is the equivalent of guess which neighborhood?? That's right, Brooklyn Heights. I had to laugh out loud when I reread the list after my trip. Yeah, Potrero Hill is like Brooklyn Heights. But without the tourists or the traffic. And on a big hill. Maybe more equivalent to a little town on Long Island. Again, on a big hill.

About those other neighborhood equivalencies -- here's what I would say based on one short trip. Please don't hesitate to correct me.

The Mission = Williamsburg, without a doubt. Ugh. (Sorry Billyburgers.)

SOMA = LIC waterfront, mixed with Financial District.

Hayes Valley = Cobble Hill (although Kaii called it "precious" from the pictures... is Cobble Hill "precious"?)

Nob Hill = ?? This one stumps me. Help me out, folks!

The Big Announcement...

So, a few posts ago, I alluded to a big announcement. I've been putting it off for a while, but now I suppose I should just get it over with.

I'm moving to San Francisco!!

To understand what huge import this has for me, you have to know what New York means to me. It's always been the city of my dreams, the city I never questioned I would move to, the city of my childhood -- when Christmases meant walking down Fifth Avenue, going to Rockefeller Center to see the tree, shopping at Bloomingdales and making the yearly pilgrimage to MoMA -- as well as the city of my young adulthood.

I've lived here for nine years now, not counting two summers during college -- and in four of the five boroughs to boot. I can vividly remember all my homes, and all the memories connected to them, both good and bad. First, my grandparents' house in the Bronx, just below Riverdale. The long subway ride on the 1, the smell of Italian anise cookies being baked in the Stella's Cookies factory by the 238th St stop, the walk home, past Riverdale Diner and McDonald's. The old house full of stuff. Just stuff. The black vinyl couch from the 60s, the screaming argyle wallpaper by the stairs, coupons, magazines and old mail. The Goddess of Mercy statuette in the study and the smell of incense burning in front of it. The sticky kitchen, and my grandmother, always sitting at the worn enamel-topped table, reading the paper or listening to 1010 WINS. Even when I told her not to wait up for me, and I'd been out all night with some boy.

I remember the day she died. It was shortly after July 4, and I came back from a day wandering around SoHo window-shopping and listening to pounding trance on my CD player. My uncle met me at the gate and told me quietly what had happened. This was the summer before I graduated. I came back to the house afterward, staying there through a hot summer (sometimes sleeping in the basement on a camping cot) and 9/11, a day when a friend's phone call woke me and I turned on the TV in shock. All was quiet in the Bronx, except for a faint smell of burning and more cars than usual parked in the streets.

In November 2001, I moved to Queens, a quiet neighborhood for a quiet phase in my life. I was so frugal in those days -- just a baggie of Crispix for breakfast, a cup of soup for lunch, maybe some homemade lentil stew and an apple for dinner. I went to the Dominican or Korean grocery stores on the weekend and once in a while for all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at Jackson Diner. Once, when friends were in town and we were riding the 7 back to the apartment at 3 am, I took my house keys out in anticipation and promptly dropped them in a crack between the subway seats. I had to ask a night watchman on his way home from work, carrying his dry cleaning, to use one of his coat hangers to fish them out (and convince him I wasn't crazy).

A year after, my wonderful roommate Soni announced he was buying a place of his own, so I tried out that quintessential city fixture -- Craiglist -- to find a new place. And I did, on Broadway and 150th St. Suffice it to say, loud roommate sex, unannounced long-term house guests, and one helluva neurotic cat pushed me out in just one year. For the next three, I lived about two blocks away with two of my best friends from college, Angelica and Eliot. What years those were -- years when I woke up and got to know New York in a different way than before, when each block became ingrained with memories of friends, dates, brunches, dinners, blurry nights and funny incidents. I made some close friends -- the so-called "Js," or four other girls with names all starting in J (except Marisa!) -- and we sure painted the town red. One Halloween we dressed up as the Spice Girls; for another, we hailed a limousine when we couldn't find a taxi and drove through Times Square with our heads poking out of the sun roof.

Home, however, was another matter -- Eliot and I later agreed that when we finally moved, it was like a cloud lifted from our heads. We were so miserable we didn't even know it. Aggressive kids hassled me on the streets; crackhead arrests, street fights and the sound of gunshots in the night were never a surprise; and toward the end, water flowed down the walls, and ConEd rushed over to tell us that our gas and electricity lines were crossed and the whole building should probably be condemned. Yay for home!

Finally I took the plunge and bought an apartment in Brooklyn, a borough I had never really visited and never thought about. Consequently it was a surprise when I tucked a map into my bag and emerged from the F train into Cobble Hill. I was stunned. This was my dream neighborhood, and I had never even known it existed. Although I didn't get that first apartment on Amity Street, nor the next one on Remsen, I knew from the moment I stepped in the door on Orange that I was home.

These last five years have been fabulous. A dream come true. From my little nest in the upper Heights, I feel like I have the world at my fingertips. Hundreds of times I've walked around the corner and down Henry Street to the bodega-that-has-everything, the meat shop, the sushi place, the mom-and-pop video store, the wine shop. Beyond that, the street slopes down and I have a choice of turning onto Montague, or farther, heading to Cobble Hill. On a really nice day, Chef K and I walk all the way to Carroll Gardens, preferably to Frankie's Spuntino, one of the few restaurants he approves of, to have their fresh pasta (the spaghetti with fava beans and that old warhorse, the cavatelli with sausage and browned sage butter, are to die for). Summer nights mean a drink outside at Abilene, or maybe going to Smith Street and visiting Cubana Cafe, Bar Great Harry or Clover Club. By day, we might indulge in some trout or scallops and shrimp from Fish Tales, or cheese from Stinky Brooklyn, or even bike down to Fairway. The official Saturday ritual, of course, is waking up and ordering breakfast from Park Plaza, watching a movie, and then heading to the Borough Hall farmer's market. So many memories.

I didn't particularly mean to write a long essay. The short version, I suppose, is that I will miss New York very much. It's the best city in the world. And I hope I like San Francisco even half as much.

On Materialism, and the Meaning of Home

A few weeks ago, I had the bittersweet experience of helping one of my best friends, Priya, and her husband move out of their apartment. Well, by help, I mean I watched the truck and organized some of the boxes inside. While I sat there on a slightly foggy, muggy weekday morning, attempting to read some long-neglected design book (being too cheap to buy anything new and too lazy to borrow anything), I had the opportunity to reflect on what it really means to pack up your life's belongings and transport them to a new place. In Priya and Josh's case, they were driving everything they owned up to Priya's family's house near Boston before embarking on a grand, one-year round-the-world tour.

Load after load, familiar belongings paraded into the truck. There were the paintings, all neatly wrapped in bubble wrap; there was the couch, deconstructed, with upholstery nails sticking out like thorns; there was the Saarinen womb chair in nubby red boucle, the one I had petitioned them to get, lovingly shrouded in plastic. One by one these objects were leaving Priya and Josh's beautiful two-story loft, and I imagined the space empty and forlorn -- or perhaps, once again free, free to receive the imprimatur of a new couple.

It made me quite sad. I was sad, first and foremost, because these dearest of friends were leaving. But in another way, I was sad that all the things that made their home theirs had been taken apart and surrendered to the brown anonymity of boxes, to languish in some basement. I thought about my own apartment, so beloved, and what it will feel like when I inevitably move back to California one day. Could I bear it? What a home means cannot possibly be quantified, not even by the moving consultant who comes by to say everything you own will fit into 42 book boxes, two wardrobe, three dish, plus five rolls of packing tape.

Perhaps you've been wondering why I called this blog what I did. Well, it's because I'm an unabashed and unapologetic materialist. The objects we surround ourselves with are the very building blocks of our life, totems of our memories and of our history. Without them, who are we?