California Here I Come Again

California Here I Come Again

20 Belvedere

In September of 1978 I arrived at 20 Belvedere Street in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco. I was in my little Toyota pickup truck packed full with all my belongings. 20 Belvedere was where my good friend Larry lived and I was set to stay with him and his roommates Robert and Debbie until I got on my feet and found a place to live. 20 Belvedere was a three story Victorian type building, the kind you commonly see in San Francisco and Larry and his roommates were renting the 2^nd floor. It was just a couple of houses off Haight Street and 3 blocks from Golden Gate Park.

When I first arrived in SF the city seemed so busy and fast paced compared to what I had become used to in Oregon plus I was a little depressed about having to leave Eugene. However, it didn't take me long to adjust, after all, I had spent my first 18+ years in an even faster paced setting, New York and I am not really one to dwell in depression. I had to take my dog Nyshia back east to stay with my parents until I got settled and found a dog friendly place to live. My first order of business was to find a job* followed by a place to rent for me and Nyshia.

• I wrote about finding my first Computer Job in another story posted back in February 15, 2018 entitled “ Graduating and Finding My 1^st Computer Programming Job”. So if you are interested you can read about that adventure there. Link: https://warrinwithani.blogspot.com/2018/02/graduating-and-finding-my-1st-computer.html

I found a job with a small hi-tech company called General Business Systems (GBS) within a few weeks. Next I began looking for a place for me and Nyshia. Two friends from Eugene, Mark and Louanne also relocated to San Francisco so we decided to find a place together. We couldn't find a place that was open to pets so we ended up settling on a house in the Sunset District at 1978 34^th Avenue. It had a fenced in yard and the landlord was at least sympathetic about pets indicating she might consider a small dog if everything went well. That seemed to be my best bet. I was banking on Nyshia making her usual good impression when the time came.

Louanne and Mark had both been former roommates of mine in Oregon and both had ties to the Bay Area. Louanne, I used to call her Louie, was one of the Barrington Gang but she grew up in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. Mark had briefly been my roommate on Alder Street and his parents lived in the East Bay and in fact, that was where he was staying at that time.

When I graduated from the University of Oregon I had lots of friends in Eugene but most of them were not actually attending the University. They'd either dropped out, graduated, or had never been a student of the University. The Eugene area was going through a down period and a number of people I knew were leaving town to find employment elsewhere. It wasn't just me. Six of my Eugene friends ended up moving to San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland that fall. By the time I arrived my friend Sara had already moved to Berkeley. Sara was one of Cyd's roommates in Pleasant Hill, the place Cyd moved to after she and I split up. Sara also had worked at the bike shop with me. She was one of the mechanics, the only woman bike mechanic in town. Sara and I hooked up for awhile. She had a sort of boyfriend but evidently it wasn't too serious as we hung out together a bit. I was never sure if Sara was interested in anything more than a casual relationship and the truth was I was not too sure how I felt but after a couple of months we pretty much stopped seeing each other. Leslie, a woman I briefly dated in Eugene, also moved down to either Berkeley or Oakland and we got together to play some racquetball. Two other Eugene friends, Roxy and Valerie would soon move to San Francisco too.

My first couple of weeks in SF I focused on searching for a job. I had limited funds and like Blanche from “Street Car Named Desire” I had to depend on the kindness of others. Larry had lived in San Francisco for years. Since I had visited Larry numerous times, I already knew some of his friends. Larry knew a lot of people. Louanne also knew people in the area since she had grown up here. So, it wasn't a situation where I moved to a new place not knowing anyone and having to start all over meeting people. I'd done that a number of times before but this wasn't one of those. It was nice to have a social infrastructure that I could at least try to blend into. Between Larry, Louanne, and the people I knew from Oregon, I had social opportunities.

I spent much of my free time hanging out with my friend Larry. I met Larry in the Air Force. Larry's always been very good at keeping up with people something I was not so good at. We were pretty close friends in the Air Force and that friendship continued after we both were discharged. By the time I moved into his place we'd been visiting each other regularly for more than six years.

I found in San Francisco there seemed to be plenty of opportunities to meet women. A common lament I was hearing from the women I was meeting was how there were so few date-able men. Many women confided in me that all the good men were gay.  I don't know how true all the above was but I was willing to volunteer to help out where I could. I found there were women who found me acceptable enough to go out with. Not sure if that meant they thought I was one of the few date-able men despite being a heterosexual, or if they thought I seemed like a gay guy. Maybe they thought they should date me before I realized I was gay. Regardless the conditions seemed to be favorable. Coming from Eugene where I was not having a lot of luck dating women this appeared to be promising.

I was now 29 with a good paying job and all in all, it seemed to be a good time for someone like me to be living in San Francisco.