California
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2004
- Messages
- 16,651
- Location
- An hour north of San Francisco
- Tractor
- Yanmar YM240 Yanmar YM186D
They're still coming. But instead, to inland California.
Daughter did the student teaching for her degree, in suburban Sacramento. She said the diversity was beyond anything you could imagine, something like 32 different languages spoken in the various children's homes. Lots of Russians and Ukrainians, other Eastern Europeans, people from every region of Asia, Afghan refugees, little girls in full headscarf conservative getup. Bikers and Americans of every color there to pick up their kids after school. And every one of those families had arrived looking to improve their lives. Lots of entrepreneurs, startups, in simple things like roofing. For the Eastern Europeans, running Volvo etc shops specializing in European cars.
The yuppie DINK techie crowd that had descended on the Bay Area wasn't represented in this school. Those who had moved from your Bay Area had found their peers in the newly developing culture of downtown Sacramento and now work remote from there. Paying far less rent and living close to new coffee shops and exotic restaurants (staffed by folks from that other neighborhood), in many cases businesses that had followed where their customers had gone.
We had an interesting, scary experience last weekend in the East Bay. Departed Fremont northbound in heavy, insane traffic. Two! instances of BMW's driving doorhandle to doorhandle with me, crowding me, as their way of showing they wanted me to move aside so they could get to the next offramp from the fast lane. Many many skidmarks seen going diagonal to crash hard into the concrete center divider - I've never seen that anywhere else. Several 75 mph to 5 mph sudden stops. Maybe that accounts for the skidmarks.
Got up by the Coloseum and wife wanted a restroom break after all her nervous 'co-piloting'. She pointed out a McDonalds. You know where this is going! The offramp went to a block of homeless encampments - right in the street, that we had to thread our way through, before we got to the Home Depot / McDonalds compound.
I don't mind the traffic up by Berkeley - but I hadn't been south of there for a while.
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