San Francisco Real Estate Part 3

The hallway is done. There's only one more room left to paint.

I really couldn't be happier. This protracted business of shifting into my first proper home is one that should really reach its conclusion sooner rather than later. When I open the door when I come home at night I want to see not a haphazard arrangement of partially unpacked boxes left to gape back at me as a reminder of all things not yet done; I want to kick of my shoes, grab the cat and plonk down on the sofa with a glass of wine in hand. That day is coming soon but I'm not there yet. Just one more room to go.

The noise dynamics of the place are just now being revealed. Currently the sounds of a party that's been going on across the back fence for the better part of five hours is wafting up through the cracks around my door. They're mostly women, lesbians by the looks of things, and they're fusing Mission hipster fashion sense with a healthy dose of "que onda vato" cumbia. The booze, sucked down from the piles of beer bottles that litter the area around the party-goers, has worked to throttle up the amplitude of chatter and laughter. My neighbour, Jill, let me know via a yell across the back porch last Friday night that the noise generated by Far Cry was too much to allow her to sleep. I wonder what she thinks of this.

But that's a dense urban environment for you and it's one of the aspects to life in San Francisco that I thoroughly enjoy. We're all in it together. As hackneyed and cliched as it might seem, black, white, gay, straight, whatever, we're all piled on top of each other, forced to endure the racket and stench we all generate and yet somehow we get along, minor squabbles aside. Unlike the masses farmed out in the secluded, fenced-in fortress homes of suburbia, urbanites tend to learn a kind of acceptance that comes from jamming in the ear plugs to dull the noise of the dog downstairs and not worrying about it. Generally speaking we're not afraid of the "other" - anyone dramatically different from us. Those sloppily dressed punk lesbians with their home cut hair and too-loose jeans, they're okay; in accordance with their stereotype they're usually pretty good at keeping the local bars alive and ensuring that the organic produce market gets business. And the hippy looking guy with the dreadlocks next door? He runs the daycare during the week. What's not to like about that?

So I've settled in now, I guess and the neighbourhood has had its predictable effect of making me spout a tired retread of the old "can't we all just get along" spiel. I couldn't be happier about it.