(don't go back to) rockridge

I apologize for the especially long absence (and I know, of course, that the apology is necessary, because clearly your lives are hollow without a fresh dose of my blog). I have an unusually good reason for not posting: I have no internet access. But this is good news, because it means that I have my own apartment.

I got the keys to my new place this past Friday, and I did the bulk of my moving in this weekend, with the help of my ma, who drove up from Bakersfield, and the help of E, who drove down from Santa Rosa, where he is staying with family. I still have a couple of smallish bookcases and many boxes, mostly of books, left in my storage unit, which is paid through the end of the month.

My new apartment is in Rockridge, which is a neighborhood in North Oakland that is a little bit upscale and extremely close to the Oakland-Berkeley border. Rockridge, aptly enough, rocks. I love it. DWE suggested it as a possible place to look for apartments, and the first time I stepped off the BART at the Rockridge station I knew it was where I wanted to live. The main street is College Avenue (which runs north all the way to the Cal Berkeley campus, where it dead-ends), which is lined with great little restaurants and shops. My apartment is a block and a half off of college, and also a block and a half away from the BART station. In five minutes I can walk to two different taquerias, a Chinese restaurant, an oyster bar, a bar and grill, a coffee shop, a pizza joint, and an upscale food market (bakery, artisanal cheeses, etc). There are lots more restaurants a bit farther than that (probably another dozen of them in a fifteen-minute walking radius) along with about every kind of little shop you can think of (clothing, furniture, optometry, hair salon, spa, luggage, sports, bikes, etc).

The temperament of the neighborhood is pretty nicely balanced: there is no Starbucks, but there are also no flocks of dirty hippies. It's not disgustingly yuppy-ish, but it is fairly young, urban, and professional. The neighborhood is primarily houses, so it's lots of families along with the young singles. And I just love the name: Rockridge. Doesn't it sound cool? I may spend the rest of my life with "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" by R.E.M. in my head, but I can deal with that.

My apartment is in a huge Victorian house that was long ago split into eight apartments. Mine is on the first floor, but there's a semi-above ground basement, and the entire house is raised up from the street level, so there are two half-flights of stairs to take to get to my front door, which is on the side of the house. The apartment itself is more or less a very large studio. You enter into a smallish room that I'm using as a foyer/dining room. To the left is the kitchen, which has plenty of room to move around in but woefully little counter space. It does have a gas range though, which kicks ass.

Just beyond the kitchen, I'm a bit sad to say, we come to the bathroom. Yes, they are right next to each other, and you have to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. The bathroom, although it is cute and has fun indigo-blue hexagonal tiles, is probably the least appealing part of the apartment. As T would say, it is wee. Really, really wee. I haven't measured, but eyeballing it, my mom and I are pretty sure that it measures 3' X 5'. Tiny, yes, but you have to be a little impressed that they fit a toilet, a sink, and a shower in that space (and that I further fit a trash can, my bathroom caddy, and a bathmat in said space). If you are a guy, you could stand in the shower and pee in the toilet.

So that's kind of annoying, but it's also one of those things that you get used to really quickly, and it really hasn't bothered me much. There's a weird piece of furniture in the foyer/dining room that came with the apartment (it appears to be part table, part coat rack, and part mirror) that is perfect for doing hair and makeup (added bonus: lots of natural light in the foyer), and there's shelving in the bathroom for extra towels and TP and stuff, so it seems like it will work out fine.

So if you walk straight from the foyer/dining room, you get to the main room, which is about the size of the entirety of my old apartment. My loft bed goes on the far wall, my futon (with new cushion and fancy red microfiber cushion cover) goes on the near wall. The papasan chair goes next to the gorgeous bay windows, which are right across from the working fireplace (you can see now, perhaps, why I don't care so much about the bathroom). The floors are hardwood, and the ceilings are really high (even higher than in my old place, which is a big plus with the loft bed). Things are still in a state of disarray, and I need to buy a coffee table, but once everything is in place, there is going to be a ton of empty floor space, which is sort of my preference.

Anyway, that's the apartment. Pictures will follow, of course. Work is mostly good and very interesting, but that will have to wait for another post.