The Grass is Always Greener

I didn't realize how much I missed grass until I went to Berkeley for the first time the other day.

When I got out of the car, it smelled like plants and trees and living things, instead of that weird funky sewer-like city smell that wafts through the streets of San Francisco.

They have grass there...allow me to pause for dramatic effect - They have grass!! Instead of extra-wide sidewalks smeared with crap and littered with trash, they have a normal sidewalk and a strip of grass before the road starts.

They had trees that were not encased in iron cages and labeled part of the "Urban Forest."

It was like paradise. I immediately wanted to drop everything and move to Berkeley, just so I could have grass. Of course this would mean I would probably never come back to the city for "fun." It would mean I would get swallowed up into Berkeley's suburban (waste?)land and only commute to San Francisco for work. This would probably make me sadder if I had more friends in San Francisco that I would (probably) never see again. But, as it is, I don't, so it's not that big of a deal.

And then there was an earthquake.

Okay, it wasn't earth-shattering. But it was a 4.0 and to a New Englander, that's basically catastrophe. I took one look at the origin of the quake - Berkeley - and immediately began to re-think my burning desire to move there.

Still - it would be nice to live in a building that homeless people and gutterpunks didn't routinely pee on every Saturday night.

Sometimes I really miss suburbia.