From: wallich@iti.org (Kenneth Wallich)
Newsgroups: ca.general
Subject: Re: Leaving California
Keywords: quiting,california
Date: 27 Aug 92 18:00:28 GMT
Distribution: ca

harryd@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:

>Before you give up on California, consider Santa Cruz County.

Live there already, thanks.  I would love for flatlanders to start
moving over here in mass though, 'cause then maybe I could sell my
house for what it appraised at last year and go away.  I've lived the
the Bay Area my whole life, and if it weren't for living in the
mountains down there, I doubt I would have lasted this long.  Of
course, having everyone buying and selling homes wouldn't hurt your
livelyhood either :-).

The people are certainly nicer than they are in the valley, at least
in general, so I'd agree that it is a step in the right direction for
people who don't mind paying 2-3x what they might pay in other places
for a home.  The fact that SillyValley is only an hour away means you
can afford it, whereas in Colorado, you'd only have the local area to
rely on for jobs, which would certainly be more difficult.

[...]
>As far a employment, we have just a few companies just as Borland and SCO.

Well, some people like to work *and* have social lives too.  From my
interviews down that way, I found that the pressure to produce and
work really long hours was higher *outside* the valley.  Just my
personal experience, of course, and for many, Borland may be the ideal
place to work. I've not heard from any happy SCO campers, so not
having anything good to say, I'll just keep quiet about them.  I just
decided that if I was going to devote 11-12 hours a day to my work,
I'd rather have some of that driving my bike through the mountains
while commuting.

>Many folks commute "over the hill" to Silicon Valley.

Well, that's the rub.  If I didn't have to commute "over the hill",
I'd never leave.  Leaving the mountains, and driving into the brown
"ecodome", and knowing that your choice to live in the boonies
contributes a lot to this wonder of modern technological society is
pretty hard on some of us.  Hard in a different way from living in a
townhouse in Sunnyvale, which I did for several years, but still hard.

Not to mention that 17 (well, if you insist) combined with the
mindless drivers who drive it scares the shit out of me twice a day,
and I'm not usually one to be timid in traffic.  Even when I was
driving through the Shasta area, on roads that were often twistier
than 17, the locals drove more consistantly than they do down here.
Of course, the roads up there are wider, have shoulders, and are
better maintained, but that didn't have anything to do with it, I'm
sure.

Anyway, I'm getting altitude sickness from being up on this soapbox.
Basically, some people love it around here despite the crowds, they
should stay here.  Some are waiting for the crowds to go away, they
may want to stay here.  Some watched the crowds come, pave over some
of the most fertile farmland with one of the longest growing seasons
in North America, and now realize it won't matter even if everyone
does leave, they probably should consider relocating.  If one of the
people who wants to stay will buy my house next year, I'll be happy to
reduce the population of the state shortly afterwards.  I don't really
mind the fact that pretty much everyone I know and have worked with
came from out of state, and that if I now leave the state, I'll be
hated just because I came from California.  Really I don't.  This is
where the jobs were, this is where people came to.  It would have been
better had they all gone to Texas where they could expand till the
cows come home, and would still have built large enough freeways to
handle the load, but that mecca just didn't pan out.

So, come to the mountains.  It's really nice up there.  We could
really use the housing boom (and a lot of us still haven't had really
big water problems).

--
Ken Wallich
wallich@ncd.com  
ken@wallich.com
Newsgroups: ca.general