The Bicoastal Boy: Where Will Charlie Live When He’s Older?

Brooklyn is to Manhattan as California’s East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley) is to San Francisco: Today’s New York Times draws these comparisons:

….there is a young, earnest population that is beating a path between artsy, gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and their counterparts in the Bay Area, especially East Oakland and the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, or SoMa.

The New York Times describes some 20- and 30- something year olds who, in search of a place with a “messy urbanism”—-a urban, creative vibe of the sort found in edgier city neighborhoods before gentrification sets in—-shuttle between the East and West—the Left—coasts. Maybe this transcontinental connection is now found among “creative people” in search of “alternative art and music scenes” and “a tolerance for diversity,” but mention of the East and West coasts means something more particular to me.

We live, as oft noted here, in what is called north-central New Jersey and frequently cross the Hudson in to New York City. I’m from California and, too, northern California, and Oakland and Berkeley are where I grew up, via Oakland’s Chinatown (just past the shores of Lake Merritt) and Telegraph and Shattuck Avenues in the university town where you’ll still find People’s Park. My husband Jim is from Jersey and the state has been the best place for Charlie to go to school; we left two jobs, financial security, and a lot more when we drove away from the Midwest in 2001 and moved back here. The three of us all like to be near New York, the site of many adventures, and can hardly wait to get back into the Atlantic Ocean down the shore—and we sure like the good education Charlie has had here in Jersey.

While liking the Garden State much—it is a garden spot for us—my mind’s always directed westward to the Golden State I grew up in. I have a large extended family, most of whom lives in northern California; my cousins have children who are just a bit older than Charlie. Jim and I have often talked about possibly moving out west when Charlie is an adult, as there will be many members of my family to support and help him, and include him in the life of the family. Going back and forth between the East and West coasts is a lifestyle choice, one might say: Charlie will most likely end up living in one place or the other, and it’s more than important that he feel at home in both places. With Charlie’s school schedule, we have usually only been going out to California once a year at Christmastime. I’m hoping that we can visit briefly in the summer, to see my numerous relatives (and my 102 year old grandmother, Ngin-Ngin, in particular), to familiarize Charlie with California so that he’s a bicoastal boy, at home in two places, because we just don’t know.

(One thing I do know is that I think the New York Times’s equation of Brooklyn with the East Bay is not entirely accurate: Better to compare the East Bay—-Bezerkley and Oakland where “there is no there there” with New Jersey, a place where you’ll find the Meadowlands, a certain “messy urbanism,” and more than a bit of autism education going on.)