A Girl...

Small-Townies

As we dangle the virtual carrot of homeownership before ourselves (even moreso now the that dudes with the apocalyptic car stereos have turned our sidewalk into an assembly line at which to outfit the rest of the neighborhood's vehicles with like stereos), our growing list of What We Want grows increasingly in need of a title change--to What We Don't Want. We don't want loud stereos that set off car alarms up and down the street ten times a day. We don't want dogs that bark all night and all morning and all day. We don't want that guy who is never ready when his carpool ride shows up at 7:30 a.m. and thus must be honked for, testily, until 7:38. We don't want to be near apartment buildings. We don't want a corner lot. We don't want fighting, in any language. I'm reminded again of trying to pick out a color for my car--I didn't want red or green or blue or white or champage or gray or purple or yellow or turquoise, and so on. I didn't really want black either, to be honest, but they haven't yet started making models in Invisible, so I had to settle. It would be easier, of course, if we just knew exactly what we wanted, but sometimes the process of getting to that place involves chipping away, like Michelangelo at marble, the undesired corners and letting the negative space speak for itself.

Last night Simon remembered at the last minute that a friend of his was playing with his band at a street festival in the nearby community of Point Richmond. The area is out on a spit of land past the oil refineries, right on the bay. All the buildings in the "historic downtown" area have official-looking bronze plaques memorializing their importance (we went into a pub that had also served as a police station and a funeral parlor), and the community swimming pool is labeled with a roman-script frieze that reads "Richmond Municipal Natatorium." Sounds like my kind of town.

Unlike your typical "art and wine festival" (e.g., the one we happened upon in Clayton), this wasn't a well-choreographed carnival of booths selling toy airplanes made of Coke cans and naughty lawn ornaments. Instead, the businesses up and down the two main streets set out food and drink on folding tables outside their storefronts and gave it all away for free. We had a Thai sampler plate, falafel, giant chocolate-chip cookies, and various wines and other goodies. We entered a raffle to win a miniature wooden make-believe castle, we jammed to the bands (including one made up of tweens doing hilarious covers of only the most earnest rock songs), and Simon got a hat from the fire department.

To say the crowd was diverse would be an understatement, for there wasn't just a mix of ethnicities but a mix of ages and styles and (maybe) political viewpoints and religious affiliations and earned incomes. Everyone was relaxed and friendly and yet no one was so chummy that we felt like intruders. Toddlers were dancing in the street while their older siblings ran in circles so fast their balloons trailed horizontally behind them, and it was hard to tell who belonged to whom because everyone was watching out for everyone else. Lest you suspect me of hyperbole, let me assure you that we did not all join hands 'round the clock tower and raise our voices in a chorus of idyllic Whobilation. It was just nice to be a part of something like that for the evening and imagine what it would be like to one day live somewhere that felt so small and close. After all, we can't very well move to Stars Hollow now, can we?

Pictures here.