Moving to the Mission District

The other day I moved about ten blocks north into an apartment of my very own. I just wanted to recount a conversation I had with someone on the bus on the day of my move.

We got chatting because he was changing his shoes, and apologised for the smell. “On the number fourteen?” I asked. “Who’d notice?”

He laughed and we got chatting in a general way. He asked what brought me out that night, and I said I was going back to my old place to pick up a few final things. He asked about my new place, and whether it was cheaper than the old one. I laughed pretty hard at that; rents round here are far from cheap these days.

“Yeah,” he said, “I was born in San Francisco. My first apartment, when I was eighteen, was in the Mission. It was six hundred dollars a month, two bedrooms. Now all these white folks have moved in and put the rents up.”

“That’d be me, I guess.” I tried to sound apologetic.

“Oh, no! You’re cool, I can tell that. I meant those dot-com assholes.”

Luckily my stop was next.

Here, have a picture from my new neighbourhood:

Mural in Balmy Alley, off 24th street. Photo taken by me, August 2007.