San Francisco – Tess Perko's Blog

Five Things I Love about Living in the San Francisco Bay Area

It’s expensive to live here. Probably the most expensive place in the United States. I, however, bought my home years ago, and I’m not planning on moving. There’s so much to love about the San Francisco Bay Area, why would I? Here are five things I appreciate about this place.

Outdoor Life

Tess and Bob in the San Jose Rose Garden

I’m a flower person, so I need to live where flowers are prolific. In the Bay Area, flowers bloom all year because of the mild temperatures: for example, camellias in the winter; daffodils, irises, and tulips in the spring; roses all summer; and chrysanthemums during the fall.

All year, Bay Arians can play outside in the thousands of parks and trails. Golden Gate Park, over 1,000 acres, is the first urban park I ever visited. My dad took us to the Japanese Tea Garden; we ordered tea and cookies to eat while surrounded by lush foliage and quiet streams.

The Iron Horse Trail in the East Bay follows the former Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way from Concord to Pleasanton for 32 miles. I use this trail for easy biking or flat walking. It also meanders near some towns, so I can stop in Danville for a latte or in Alamo for breakfast with my friends.

One of my favorite places to hike is on Mount Diablo. The whole mountain is covered with trails, lakes, and wildlife. One October, I hiked with a group to find tarantulas. From June to October, the males migrate to find a female to mate with. We found several. I even let one crawl across my hand.

Incredible Food

I don’t know of anywhere else in the world where I can enjoy fresh food used in cuisines from every continent.

San Francisco is next door to the vast California farm belt so our stores are filled year-round with seasonal fruits and vegetables. We also enjoy local fish such as oysters from Tomales Bay and Dungeness crab from the Pacific. And for people who like steak, California grows that, too.

In the Bay Area, I can eat foods from many continents and stay home. Tony’s Pizza Napoletana on Stockton Street in San Francisco has won awards for its memorable Italian and Sicilian pizza. My favorite is the Gigante Sicilian style pizza that features salami, linguica, pepperoni, and a host of veggies.

I love Mexican food, and the Bay Area is home to thousands of Mexican taquerias and restaurants. I order mahi mahi burritos at Taqueria Azteca in Dublin which is merely a kitchen with a few tables inside a linoleum-lined dining room. But the food is SOOO delicious.

Diversity

Many cities in the United States have diverse populations these days, but I think that the Bay Area has the best integrated diverse population. For example, last month, San Francisco hosted the Gay Pride Parade. My daughter and I walked through the parade festival on our way to a theater. On television, Bay Area channels feature advertisements with heterosexual AND gay couples. Our news programs have Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, and Black newscasters.

And diversity isn’t only about race. I love my home because we have people from all walks of life—electricians, high tech workers, waitresses, students—and all ages—from babies to seniors.

I never feel weird interacting with a different culture from mine or a different age group. I believe that is unique.

Weather

We have a saying in the Bay Area: if you don’t like the weather, drive ten miles. Yes, San Francisco Bay Area has micro-climates. One day, it can be 60 degrees in San Francisco, 80 degrees in Mountain View, and 90 degrees in Walnut Creek.

But the point is, the weather is almost always great. We rarely wear down jackets here because it just doesn’t get that cold. What I wear most days is a T-shirt and a sweater, if I need it. Wearing light clothes and flip flops makes me feel “free.”

Golden Gate Bridge

One thing I never get tired of seeing is the Golden Gate Bridge which spans from San Francisco to the Marin headlands at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay. It’s not really “golden,” but its vermillion paint, named “International Orange,” contrasts so beautifully with the green and gold landscape and the mineral blue water of the Bay that the effect is stunning.

I’ve walked across the bridge several times, and, one time—long before I was married, someone proposed to me in the middle of the span.

Recently, at the Presidio Park, my daughter and I sat in Adirondack chairs to gaze at the bridge under a cloudless blue sky. It was heaven on the Bay.

Turning Ordinary Events into Writing

I used to think that my life was too ordinary for fostering ideas for writing. But finally, I realized that the best story-telling is about human nature itself. That’s when I started looking for writing ideas everywhere and every day.

In this blog post, I share five ordinary life events that I turned into stories or posts.

The Pancake Contest

When I was five years old, I competed against my brother Don in a pancake contest. The contest happened at home at breakfast time. My mother made as many pancakes as we could eat. My brother lost the contest and I won by one pancake.

Fifty years later, I turned this ordinary childhood event into a funny story with descriptions of my brother groaning in pain and of me raising my arms in victory.

A Picture of a Road Bike

One day at 5 p.m., my son sent me a picture of the handlebars of his new trail bike. By 6 p.m., it was dark outside, and I started to wonder if he was biking out in the hills in darkness. Luckily, he wasn’t.

I wondered what it would be like if a bicyclist did get caught in the middle of the hills in the dark. I wrote a story about a girl who starts her bike ride at dusk and gets distracted when she finds a tarantula. She ends up in a valley at nightfall and has to find her way back to the deserted parking lot while the night wildlife threatens her safety.

Taking a Stuffed Bear to a Cemetery

A week after my mother died, my brother texted me and my siblings to tell me that he took a stuffed bear with him to visit her grave. The bear was created from clothes that my mother once wore.

I invented a story about this visit, which I titled Rain. The story describes a man driving a truck to the cemetery to see his mother as it rains. When he arrives, the rain stops. He thinks about how his siblings have connected via text messages since his mother died. He puts the bear next to her tombstone and says a prayer. As he drives away, the rain starts again.

A Hike in San Francisco

A few years ago, I joined a Meetup group that hosted walks all over San Francisco. One walk started at the Embarcadero and crossed the city from east to west for seven miles until we reached Land’s End. Another hike circled the exclusive neighborhoods of Twin Peaks and climbed up to the Sutro Tower, one of the highest points in the city.

When I was writing my novel Whistle, I used these hiking experiences in one chapter to help my protagonist escape the sorrow of her home after her mother dies. She walks along the ocean to Golden Gate Park.

Filbert Street Steps and Graffiti

When my friend came to town, I met her in San Francisco to climb the Filbert Street Steps. This staircase covers three ascending blocks from Sansome Street to Coit Tower and includes well over two hundred steps. On my way to the city in Oakland, I saw some graffiti on an overpass that said “Resist Authority.”

I turned the staircase and graffiti experiences into a short commentary about how I like to read graffiti so I can hear what the needs of people are. This post received a lot of attention on my blog. It seems like many people identified with it.

Now, I have a fertile writing attitude. My whole life is a garden of ideas, waiting for my creativity to take them from a personal experience into the world.

Character Study: Bel

Photo by MontyLov on Unsplash

I was still tired from my business trip to New York. Two weeks in the city. Homelessness on every block and a bitter wind.

I didn’t expect such cold weather, so I had only taken my raincoat which wasn’t warm enough. I froze walking the two blocks from my hotel to the publisher. By the time I reached the editor’s office, my nose and fingers were numb and red. Miserable.

But my trip had been a successful one. The publisher had given me a contract for my novel and requested that I write two more books in the next three years for them. Bel Balfour was finally on the map as an author.

My flight home got in around 7 last night, so Daryl had picked me up at the San Francisco Airport, and we drove into the city for dinner. I was in the mood for a steak, and John’s Grill makes great ones. It’s a few blocks off Union Square, an old-style restaurant with dark wood and photographs of celebrities and politicians lining the walls. At Christmas, every nook and cranny are hung with garlands of pine and hanging bunches of red ornaments.

Daryl ordered a pinot noir from Anderson Valley to celebrate my new contract. The bright red vintage glistened in the light from tiny spot lights in the ceiling. The wine was delicious with the goat cheese and toast appetizer.

For my entre, I ordered a filet mignon, which came with a mound of mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. The filet was delectable. I can’t make steak that good at home. Restaurants just have better grills.

Daryl ordered grilled salmon stuffed with crab. It was accompanied by rice pilaf and grilled asparagus. He must have loved it since his plate was clean after about only fifteen minutes.

Daryl mentioned that our daughter, Katie, had been hired by a company that was headquartered in Oakland. Her last company had laid her off two months ago, even though they said she was doing an outstanding job. This new company promoted “green” practices within the business industry. Katie would be working in brand marketing, and she’d be going to a conference in Chicago in February.

“Does she like it?” I asked.

“I think so,” said Daryl. “She’s only been working there for a week, though.”

“Will she be able to work at home or have to go into the office?” I asked.

“She can work at home,” Daryl said, “but she wants to go into the office as well. It is a dog-friendly company, so she can take Sandy with her. Also, the garage is secured with a locked gate, so her car won’t be broken into while she’s working.”

Daryl and I had been married for thirty years. Katie was our only child. I had wanted another one, but I never got pregnant again. Katie was 27 years old, not married, so grandchildren were not on the way. I tried not to bug her about it.

It was Saturday. Daryl had left at 8 a.m. to play golf with his three regulars. The house was quiet, and I had already stripped the king-size bed of its sheets and pillowcases and laundered them. I bent down to the dryer to pull them out, smelling the lavender sachet that I had tossed in with them. Holding the warm bedding in my arms, I paced through the family room, up the stairs into the master bedroom. I dropped the bedding on top of the window seat at the far end of the room near the armoire. Then, I untangled the sheets to find the fitted one.

As I bent over and tucked one end of the sheet over a corner at the bottom of the mattress, I noticed something red sticking out from under the bed. I knelt down on the carpet to take a better look. The only thing that I ever put under our bed was my shoe storage box. I didn’t like clutter and even vacuumed regularly under the bed with the vacuum extension.

A pair of panties?

They weren’t mine. I had given up wearing lacy panties years ago because they were too itchy.

But whose were these? Why were they there?

Daryl?

Daryl!