I wrote a blog earlier this year about re-discovering the eastern half of the East Bay after years of not venturing out that way. I just made my second trip there this year last Friday, to do a little bit of after-Thanksgiving shopping with a friend. Of all the places I could have gone shopping that day, I figured Walnut Creek would be the most convenient, since it offered a good mix of a shopping mall and boutiques. What I hadn't thought about in a while, largely because I hardly ever head east of the Caldecott Tunnel, was just how much of a difference that tunnel can make, almost as if it were a country border. I took BART, and during the ride, definitely sensed a change of environment once I'd crossed over to "the other side." Usually, when I'm riding towards San Francisco or Oakland, I witness industrialism, freeways, endless rows of houses/apartments (some nicer than others), sometimes feeling lucky that I don't live in a low-income neighborhood and that I grew up in the comfort of a middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley. Once I had crossed the valley, everything seemed so... suburban. The scene was definitely a lot tonier, but pretty much all I saw were houses, trees, some shops, the Orinda theater, but that was about it. I also spotted the Iraq war memorial in Lafayette, right by the BART station, but aside from that, the area didn't seem to have much to offer. It's the Bay Area's equivalent of Connecticut - where you would find mothers who lunch during weekday afternoons, first-rate schools, a world away from the problems that plauge the likes of Oakland, Richmond, and San Francisco.I wondered what it would have been like to grow up out there - and my friend Stacey was like, I don't. We grew up in Berkeley and Oakland - which would be considered ghetto-ish to some people, depending on which parts of the cities they know, where residents must deal with realities like homelessness and public schools that are substandard, prompting families who can afford it wouldn't hesitate to either move to another town with better schools or shell out thousands of dollars a year to send their kids to private ones. I'm currently working in a temp job at the Berkeley United School District, most possibly paying my dues for not attending their schools after second grade, when my parents took me out of the school system. I can see why parents, no matter how progressive, will not even consider sending their kids to those schools - but how could that be in a city as liberal as Berkeley? 

Despite the problems that our cities face, Stacey and I agreed that we grew up on the "better" side of the East Bay. We were exposed to diversity, culture, and understood first-hand the reality of the problems everyone heard about on the news. It didn't seem distant to us at all. To the people hiding away in Danville (not to trash that town, I have a very nice and well-informed friend who grew up there) or wherever, the crime in Oakland can seem as far away and difficult to comprehend as the violence in Darfur or Burma. 

In a way, heading out to Walnut Creek brought back memories of my college days in La Jolla, San Diego's equivalent of Beverly Hills. La Jolla ("the jewel") was definitely a world away from El Cajon, National City and Chula Vista. I had wondered what it would have been like to grow up there as well - in a beautiful bright & airy house by the beach, maybe - and in the end I was glad I grew up where I did. I didn't appreciate Berkeley, Oakland or San Francisco when I was growing up there, always itching to get away and wanting to see what other places were all about. Now that I have come back as an adult and re-discovering the area, I definitely see why so many people from all over the world flock here and think of it as a great place, and why others would never leave. Unlike some of my relatives, I still don't know where I would want to settle, but if I ended up being stuck here for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be devastated.