Why would anyone want to buy here?
A husband at loose ends for the day has an excellent adventure, ponders the meaning of life and its inevitable alternative, and in his spare time assesses the long-term viability of local real estate.
Today knowledge and skills...have become the key ingredient in the late twentieth century's location of economic activity. Silicon Valley and [Boston's] Route 128 are where they are simply because that is where the brainpower is. They have nothing else going for them.
Lester Thurow, The Future of Capitalism
Yeah, this area is nice enough, I guess. But buy here? No way! It's overpriced and over-hyped. Me, I'm waiting until people wise up and prices drop by half.
Anonymous local market-timer
9:00 AM: Clean up yard so it looks nice for wife's friends coming over for day-long frolic.
10:30 AM: Leave home well before wife's friends arrive. Run errands, buy lunch for road with 2-for-1 Quiznos coupon carefully hoarded for just such an occasion, two small subs assembled and rung up in slow motion by dissipated staff apparently feeling effects of night-long frolic.
11:30 AM: Head to beach for first time in long time; wife like fine wine, doesn't travel well. Almost run off 280 getting on it by determined woman in SL 500 delivering urgently needed medical supplies to front lines. Note that she takes Woodside exit. Reach 92 and head west, crossing Crystal Springs Reservoir. Am reminded how beautiful it is. Also notice how low it is.
11:35 AM: Sky overcast, rain in forecast. Stop-and-go traffic most of way, not promising start to day-long frolic. Stifle latent Type A tendencies, remind self it doesn't matter when I get to beach, the getting there's the thing. Get so blissed I press wrong button on car phone and muff important call about client's escrow, but fortunately it goes to voicemail. Scenery raw and wild up near Skyline, mellowing to farms and road-side stands in the valley down to Half Moon Bay. Drive past pony ride, see old man with head down leading pony with small girl atop. Girl looks unsure, man has resigned look of beast of burden, expression of pony not noted.
Noon: Stop in Half Moon Bay to retrieve voicemail. Park a few blocks off main drag in old-timey neighborhood of quaint homes and occasional barn. My first time in this neighborhood in many years of driving to coast. Wonder what homes here sell for.
12:10 PM: Drive south along Highway 1, gawking at tacky new homes. South San Jose without the sunshine.
12:15 PM: Once through town get behind old pickup truck pulling trailer piled with firewood. Rig is accident waiting to happen, tires bulging, trailer swaying luridly around curves. Slow pace not a problem until Speed Racer glues self to my tail. Adrenaline knocks on door, go-go Bay Area personality stands up and demands I leave Speed in dust, while emerging mellow coastal personality just happy for excuse to poke along one of world's most beautiful roads. Remember anti-speeding vignette I saw on TV years ago on an indolent Saturday afternoon, everyone, cops and speeders alike, driving '54 Fords. Might be first time I heard Chopin's funeral march.
12:25 PM: Pull into first public beach I see, San Gregorio, making sure Speed, still on my tail, has to slow w-a-y down. Can hear him grinding his teeth as he rockets off. Beach and I go way back—stories we could tell. Not busy for a week-end, weather keeping riff-raff out. Park, get out and walk up bluff, find that regular riding of exercise bike goes only so far in real world. Either that or bluff has gotten steeper. Overcast gives beach a somber, majestic beauty.
12:40 PM: Eat lunch in car while gazing at beach and listening to ocean roar. Guy with grey hair parks next to me in flashy Benz and sits there. Another Boomer going back to the well.
12:55 PM: Get out second time and walk up beach, watching surfers and fishermen and remembering the caves deeply eroded into the bluffs. Think about going back to the car but instead walk in the other direction, to where San Gregorio Creek meets the Pacific. Marvel as always at the small seasonal creek challenging the vast eternal ocean, the creek rippling across the beach, gulls working its clear shallow waters for lunch. Walk up the creek as far as I can, not far, stand by the water's edge and suddenly remember being in scenes like this hundreds of times as a kid. Gaze up at the towering steel bridge spanning the creek and recall the one Kerouac walks under early in Big Sur. Was it like this? Might be, looks about the right age, and then I see 2/22/55 stenciled on one of the piers. Pass a solitary angler not anxious to make eye contact, decked out in pristine waders, tinkering with his new-looking gear and think, not for the first time, that fishing makes a great excuse for doing nothing. Return to car. Grey-hair still sitting there, head pointed in same direction, watching same ocean.
1:20 PM: Get out of the car again and walk up the bluff I walked up before, but further this time. Legs turn to lead at the same spot but I press on regardless Local man found dead of heart attack at popular beach. The trail winds tantalizingly out of sight around a low conifer with exotic flowers that look like candles stuck in candle-holders, and suddenly I feel the excitement I felt as a kid wondering what lie around the next bend. Not much this time—the trail ends abruptly at a rusty chain link fence. As I stand there taking in the pastoral scene on the other side and wondering who's lucky or rich enough to own it, I remember meeting other fences forty-plus years ago in the piney woods, the other side always tempting because forbidden. Woods centuries old, there when the first white men met the Seminoles. Woods paved over a few years after I left to build Disney World.
Return to my car spooked by all these unplanned trips down memory lane. Cripes, is this what goes through your mind when you die? Think about my neighbor, suffering from dementia, dying with all the dignity he can muster, who's sure he has a train to catch. The people around him, unacquainted with metaphor, smile and shake their heads, not knowing he offers them a truth beyond reason and beyond earthly value: the train has always been there, and now he can see it, and someday we will too. Look over and see grey-hair still glued to his seat, head still pointed at the ocean, not seeing the train but maybe sensing it. Why come here? Why not just watch a beach DVD on his remarkably life-like home theatre?
1:45 PM: Leave San Gregorio Beach, heading north. Think about taking Tunitas Creek Road, an old favorite that meanders through farms, ranches and redwoods, but take 84 instead. 84 has more traffic, and I wouldn't mind some company. Start out poking along, just another Sunday driver soaking up the calm beauty of the lower coastal foothills, small tidy farms planted with whatever they plant, crop identification never my strong suit. Drive by a small herd of cattle separated from the road by a fence that looks like it wouldn't stop a charging Chihuahua, speculate that hitting a cow at high speed might be a life-changing event, then flash on the scene I drove up on, late one afternoon in Los Altos Hills maybe thirty-five years ago: a Studebaker stuffed squarely into a huge oak next to the road as if the driver had aimed for it. I remember how serene and natural the scene looked, as if every roadside oak needed a crumpled Stude for artistic balance and every Stude looked its best in stasis against a large tree. I slow to see if anyone's inside, then stop as a wiry older man, obviously a rancher, drawn-looking and standing well away from the car, walks over. "A horse got loose and he tried to avoid it. He's still in there. I called the Sheriff." I park, get out and walk toward the silent car, not knowing why. Even now I recall the stillness, as if life was holding its breath. As I near the car I see the driver's seat crushed and shoved back, and I turn around.
1:50 PM: I drive through downtown San Gregorio, blink and miss it. A shiny Saab convertible appears in my mirror. I continue motoring sedately.
1:51 PM: The Saab is impatient, so I pick up the pace. The road is smooth and mostly deserted. I haven't driven through here in years, and never in this car, but I feel comfortable right away, quickly getting into a rhythm. The Saab picks up the pace too. I lose it in the next corner, then slow down so I can get in some quick sight-seeing. I spot a small farmhouse and wonder what it'd sell for. What's an acre cost here? The Saab re-appears. I gear down for the next corner, a slow one, drop into third, lean on the throttle and marvel at how planted the car feels exiting the turn. There's nothing hardcore going on here, in case my wife reads this—the car offers good clean fun at safe-and-sane speeds. Honest, dear.
1:55 PM: I pull over, the Saab probably not even knowing it got my adrenaline going, and go back to worrying about premature tire wear. By now we're in the redwoods near Sheriff's Honor Camp. I wonder how one declines the honor of an invitation to Honor Camp.
2:10 PM I reach Skylonda but still have time to kill, so instead of going home through Woodside I go south along Skyline. I pass homes with for-sale signs and wonder how prices have held up here during the slowdown. Funny, I always thought this area was out in the boonies, but now it seems close in.
2:15 PM I pull over at a look-out, not to look out but because I see an entrance to Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve. At the gate I read the recommended etiquette upon meeting a mountain lion: look more large and in charge than you feel. The Preserve is deserted. The view is hills in colors from a California landscape artist's palette, tawny green and adobe brown, rolling westward down to the ocean. The light is a thick hazy blue you can reach out and touch. My car's outside thermometer says it's only a few degrees colder here than at the beach but it feels like Alaska, a near-gale off the ocean howling in my ears. No wonder so few homes are built this side of Skyline. After several minutes of frigid solitude I pass a solid-looking man, not anxious to make eye contact, who's maybe a VC but maybe a soulful VC. I wonder if I look like a real estate agent but maybe a soulful real estate agent. Maybe I just look like a real estate agent. I go back to the car to thaw out and admire the Bay Area spread out beneath me and watch the people coming and going around me. Some stay in their cars, gazing passively, while others get out and gesture broadly, invigorated by the view and crisp air. There's lots to gesture about: the bay, the magnificent bridges, the rolling hills, the familiar landmarks of the urban flatlands, the panorama of an incredibly rich lifestyle that's priced accordingly.
4:00 PM I get home in time to see my wife off to the San Francisco Ballet. It's the world premiere of a modern choreography of Swan Lake, and she's going with our neighbor, a ballet regular. My wife's never been and this morning she told me she felt like a kid on Christmas day. I marvel that I can enjoy nature, she the arts, in one day, in one area, with so little effort.
The next day she tells me, "I don't know for sure, but this must be the best place in the world to live!" I realize how jaded most of us have gotten about living here, heads down as we lead the pony around the ring, absorbed in sidestepping the muck, focused on putting one foot in front of the other, competing with the never-ending stream of highly-paid elite for scarce resources like housing, always wondering whether the effort is worth it, always hearing others question whether Silicon Valley can stay a busy paradise.
All questions I can't answer. All I know is I'm hanging on here as long as I can.