When I left Los Angeles at 21 and moved to San Francisco I swore I'd never move back. I hated the cars, the smog, the sprawl, the dissipation and phoniness of everyone I knew there. I was part of the LA sixties music scene and a sadder scene there never was. All my friends could talk about was getting famous and rich. People I knew in the music business went from poverty to affluence practically overnight and the excesses that came with the money frightened me. As a fringe player I left without being missed. By comparison to LA, San Francisco was a small town with clearly defined ethnic neighborhoods living cheek to jowel. Old Italian men would play bocce in Northbeach and the back alleys of Chinatown were as close to mainland China as you could get. You could ride the cable car for a quarter and rent an apartment in the Castro for a hundred dollars. I played in clubs all over town at night and for change in Ghirardelli Square during the day. San Francisco in 1970 was a lull in the transition from the acid high of the Love Revolution to the cocaine fueled Disco Mania. I was a few years too young and a few years too late to know San Francisco in the glory days of the Haight-Ashbury. I lived there through the early days of AIDS, the murders of Moscone and Milk and the death of San Francisco's greatest chronicler, Herb Cain.
In 1979 my husband and I bought a house in Oakland. San Francisco was already beyond our means and Oakland was still affordable. For 26 years we raised our sons there, built our business there and never regretted the move. We rode out the earthquake of '89 and the influx of displaced San Francisco dot-comers in the 90's. Like a cold coming on, I could feel the change in the bay area almost overnight. There were suddenly too many cars, too many people, the old neighborhoods were chi-chified and all anyone could talk about was making money in the stock market and the price of real estate. It was beginning to feel like LA.
In 2006 we made our break with California and moved briefly to Prague then to Colorado. In 2007 a death in the family took us back to LA. There are more people and cars than ever. In Studio City where we spend a good deal of time, everyone is either an actor, aspiring actor, reading or writing a script or just generally trying to look like an important person in the Industry. LA hasn't changed much but I have. Somehow LA feels almost like home again. I like it here now. The people I see in LA are interesting. In restaurants and coffee shops I overhear them talking about art or music or films. People in general are friendly and relaxed (except behind the wheel of a car) and it's green and flowering all year long here. I'm beginning to remember all the good times I had as a girl when I lived in the Los Feliz neighborhood. I remember the lemony smell of magnolia trees on our street on summer mornings and the ice blue, clear winter nights by a fire at the beach.
Yeah, I like LA again.
