Santa Barbara, One Year Later
So now it's been about a year since Tara and I have relocated to Santa Barbara. I moved out here to start a new job, which was a hectic time for us, living in a filthy basement infested with spiders, no kitchen. Eventually we found a nice apartment in a great location very close to downtown and main street, and just over a mile from the beach. During the past year, I left the job that I came out here for and started a new one.
While I've written a few entries on here that blab on about my opinions about human psychology and the nature of software development, I'm guessing that very few people reading this really give a flying fig about such matters. People are likely much more interested in hearing me comment, at long last, on the "Jim McGaw Condition". That is, you might be wondering: how are things? How has my life been?
A lot of people have asked me things like, "How's the easy life?" While my first inclination is to mention that I still have to work forty hours a week at a job, still have to pay all the bills that I used to pay, etc., I quickly remember that I just spent the past winter not dealing with any snow. I didn't have to wake up, drag my tired ass out to the car to scrap inches of snow off of it in freezing cold weather, and then drive to a job I really couldn't stand at ten miles an hour while trying to keep my car from sliding into other cars or off the road entirely.
This has been, to say the very least, extremely nice. It was seventy degrees out here, almost all winter, with a few days where it kind of rained. The beach is a mile from us one way, and the mountains are a couple miles from us the other way. It's still very strange waking up in a place where you go out and the mountains are just always right there in plain sight. I spent so long living on the flat plains of Michigan that I relished visiting my family in Tucson, where you were just surrounded by all kinds of different mountains. I still haven't gotten completely used to waking up, walking outside, and just seeing them there all the time. There's something so therapeutic about it.
Santa Barbara itself is gorgeous. I grew up in Troy, Michigan, where there were tons of ludicrous ordinances that were in place to keep people who were really OCD happy. For example, in Troy you weren't allowed to hang a clothesline in your backyard to hang up laundry to dry, simply because someone might not like the sight of it. Your lawn had to be kept up to certain extent, in that you needed grass and it had to be kept cut to a certain minimum height, or else you got fined out the ass. They made some sense, but like most laws, they did little to actually improve the state of anything.
There are ordinances here, too, but they are different, they make sense, and they all work together to make the city of Santa Barbara an absolutely wonderful place to live and visit. It feels much different than any other city you've ever been to. Building architecture has to conform to a certain look and feel, and buildings can only be so many stories tall. While I'm sure that these ordinances bug the living crap out of any developer who's trying to build within the city, I don't care. Screw them and their complaints. The result is a city that has a very small-town feel (even though there are 90,000+ people here), with a bunch of small houses and office buildings that pepper the land from the water up into the mountains, many of them with a distinct "Spanish" feel. Unlike Detroit, there isn't any problem with sprawl here, simply because there's an Ocean to the south and mountains to the north. The city just can't sprawl, no matter how many city council members are "lobbied to" for land-use permits.
I doubt I'll be able to stay here for very much longer. The cost of housing in Santa Barbara is absolutely crazy. We're renting, and that works for right now because we're not eating in our savings, but it would be impossible for me to hold down a normal job and be able to afford a house here. There are lots of people here who bought their houses over ten years ago, back when (and I still can't believe this was ever true) the cost of housing wasn't that outrageous. The cost of houses back in the 90's used to be accessible to working people. Now, the people who bought houses back then on sitting on unrealized capital gains of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Very nice boom for them, but it means that when we're ready to get a bigger place and a dog, we need to either get a condo (yikes) or move outta here.
We've talked about it, and chances are good that we're going to end up back in Ann Arbor. I think that Detroit and I are done for. The only possible reason I might move back to the Detroit area is if my parents one day need me there on an ongoing basis to take care of them for some reason. But I have no interest in returning to that city, simply because it's a generally bad area that's very much in economic decay, and I do NOT see that changing anytime soon. There has been talk of the Michigan economy rebounding as a whole in the next five years. That may happen, but I think Detroit is pretty well screwed for the long haul. There's a ton of old infrastructure there that the tax base can't possibly fix, even if the entire area consolidated and suburban area tax revenue was distributed evenly throughout the area (right, right, my Republican friends are saying that's socialism, which is evil, blah blah...keep in mind I'm being hypothetical and not advocating anything), there's no way that the situation is going to improve without a massive change in the laws and regulations regarding accountability of elected officials and land use planning (a slim possibility), or a change in human nature (no fucking way). In short, the people that can leave will, and those that cannot will continue to have the economic life sucked out of them.
I like Ann Arbor better anyway, even if Pfizer did just take a proverbial dump on the city by moving their business elsewhere. Screw those pill pushers and their tax revenue. Ann Arbor will still come out ahead and I look forward to returning there someday.
That's all I'm going to say for now. As a final note, I'll mention that both of the jobs I've had while I've been out here have been great. Both web development, for the most part, and I've really enjoyed the people and environment of both, even though there are pros and cons of each. Santa Barbara has been very great, despite the occasional gang-related stabbing that happens only a few blocks from us every now and then, and all of you reading this should plan on coming to visit whenever you get the chance.
By the way, I'll be in Michigan the weekend of August 16th. (I think that's the correct date) Mark your calendars.
Cheers!
While I've written a few entries on here that blab on about my opinions about human psychology and the nature of software development, I'm guessing that very few people reading this really give a flying fig about such matters. People are likely much more interested in hearing me comment, at long last, on the "Jim McGaw Condition". That is, you might be wondering: how are things? How has my life been?
A lot of people have asked me things like, "How's the easy life?" While my first inclination is to mention that I still have to work forty hours a week at a job, still have to pay all the bills that I used to pay, etc., I quickly remember that I just spent the past winter not dealing with any snow. I didn't have to wake up, drag my tired ass out to the car to scrap inches of snow off of it in freezing cold weather, and then drive to a job I really couldn't stand at ten miles an hour while trying to keep my car from sliding into other cars or off the road entirely.
This has been, to say the very least, extremely nice. It was seventy degrees out here, almost all winter, with a few days where it kind of rained. The beach is a mile from us one way, and the mountains are a couple miles from us the other way. It's still very strange waking up in a place where you go out and the mountains are just always right there in plain sight. I spent so long living on the flat plains of Michigan that I relished visiting my family in Tucson, where you were just surrounded by all kinds of different mountains. I still haven't gotten completely used to waking up, walking outside, and just seeing them there all the time. There's something so therapeutic about it.
Santa Barbara itself is gorgeous. I grew up in Troy, Michigan, where there were tons of ludicrous ordinances that were in place to keep people who were really OCD happy. For example, in Troy you weren't allowed to hang a clothesline in your backyard to hang up laundry to dry, simply because someone might not like the sight of it. Your lawn had to be kept up to certain extent, in that you needed grass and it had to be kept cut to a certain minimum height, or else you got fined out the ass. They made some sense, but like most laws, they did little to actually improve the state of anything.
There are ordinances here, too, but they are different, they make sense, and they all work together to make the city of Santa Barbara an absolutely wonderful place to live and visit. It feels much different than any other city you've ever been to. Building architecture has to conform to a certain look and feel, and buildings can only be so many stories tall. While I'm sure that these ordinances bug the living crap out of any developer who's trying to build within the city, I don't care. Screw them and their complaints. The result is a city that has a very small-town feel (even though there are 90,000+ people here), with a bunch of small houses and office buildings that pepper the land from the water up into the mountains, many of them with a distinct "Spanish" feel. Unlike Detroit, there isn't any problem with sprawl here, simply because there's an Ocean to the south and mountains to the north. The city just can't sprawl, no matter how many city council members are "lobbied to" for land-use permits.
I doubt I'll be able to stay here for very much longer. The cost of housing in Santa Barbara is absolutely crazy. We're renting, and that works for right now because we're not eating in our savings, but it would be impossible for me to hold down a normal job and be able to afford a house here. There are lots of people here who bought their houses over ten years ago, back when (and I still can't believe this was ever true) the cost of housing wasn't that outrageous. The cost of houses back in the 90's used to be accessible to working people. Now, the people who bought houses back then on sitting on unrealized capital gains of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Very nice boom for them, but it means that when we're ready to get a bigger place and a dog, we need to either get a condo (yikes) or move outta here.
We've talked about it, and chances are good that we're going to end up back in Ann Arbor. I think that Detroit and I are done for. The only possible reason I might move back to the Detroit area is if my parents one day need me there on an ongoing basis to take care of them for some reason. But I have no interest in returning to that city, simply because it's a generally bad area that's very much in economic decay, and I do NOT see that changing anytime soon. There has been talk of the Michigan economy rebounding as a whole in the next five years. That may happen, but I think Detroit is pretty well screwed for the long haul. There's a ton of old infrastructure there that the tax base can't possibly fix, even if the entire area consolidated and suburban area tax revenue was distributed evenly throughout the area (right, right, my Republican friends are saying that's socialism, which is evil, blah blah...keep in mind I'm being hypothetical and not advocating anything), there's no way that the situation is going to improve without a massive change in the laws and regulations regarding accountability of elected officials and land use planning (a slim possibility), or a change in human nature (no fucking way). In short, the people that can leave will, and those that cannot will continue to have the economic life sucked out of them.
I like Ann Arbor better anyway, even if Pfizer did just take a proverbial dump on the city by moving their business elsewhere. Screw those pill pushers and their tax revenue. Ann Arbor will still come out ahead and I look forward to returning there someday.
That's all I'm going to say for now. As a final note, I'll mention that both of the jobs I've had while I've been out here have been great. Both web development, for the most part, and I've really enjoyed the people and environment of both, even though there are pros and cons of each. Santa Barbara has been very great, despite the occasional gang-related stabbing that happens only a few blocks from us every now and then, and all of you reading this should plan on coming to visit whenever you get the chance.
By the way, I'll be in Michigan the weekend of August 16th. (I think that's the correct date) Mark your calendars.
Cheers!