Ahhhh Home....?

So, I know they say You Can't Go Home Again. And I understand why. But I'm still a bit taken aback. We are in the Bay Area, on the peninsula where I grew up. I drove up and down El Camino Real regularly for four years. These were my old stomping grounds. And, yeah, I expected it to change, I did. I knew the big open spaces would be filled in now, and I knew that some of the stores I loved (like The Warehouse) would be gone, and that there would be new ones. I even knew that they had enclosed Hillsdale Mall. But I was still surprised by the way El Camino looks.

Lots of cars...even more than on a Friday night Cruise. (Ok, I guess it has been a *few* years.) Restaurants, large and small, businesses of all sorts. The head shop that was next door to The Warehouse was even still in business, surprisingly. What I didn't expect was that it would all look so....seedy.

When I know that the houses where we used to live are going for literally ten times what my parents were paying when I lived in High School, I figured that the increase in values meant an increase in tone for everything. I am so surprised that it all seems less middle class, more junky than when I was young.

For one thing, we were poor...ok, not poor, really, but that level that everybody in America forgets: Working Class. We lived in the suburbs all my life, but we never had the money that everybody around us seemed to have. Our cars were older, our clothes were more often than not from thrift shops or remainder stores (before those were the "standard" American way to shop.) But now, the streets look really... ..well..
...urban. It's like San Francisco itself has spread south, and brought with it the lack of upkeep, the overcrowding of a city with limited space, the worn look of something old and not cared for well.

Maybe it always looked this way; I may have just idealized it. I don't remember. It sure all seemed shiny and bright back then. And most of what I'm seeing has been built long after I left, so it should be even newer than the things that are still here that I do remember.

And it can't just be the recession. That's only a year old. This worn-out look has a feel of being built over years. Maybe California has been in bad shape for a long time, and I just didn't know. It's odd.

So, you can't go home again. And, maybe you don't even want to try.