Victorians

The twin towns where I live have a hill between them. This was a gold mining town until 1937 when the mine finally closed, so it attracted some interesting people. It is the original setting of Paint Your Wagon (the musical, not the movie which was filmed near Bend Oregon), and Friday the 13th was filmed up the hill from the library where I volunteer shelving books and fixing audiobook discs and DVDs. Most of the money was stable enough that after various fires burnt down the tent cities, then the rough cabins, then eventually the houses, they rebuilt with brick, stone, and the finer materials available to show of their success, which at the turn of the 20th century meant a mix of Victorians and Craftsman houses. Both towns are full of them, everywhere. Since this was also before them fancy horseless carriages, not all of these homes had carriage houses, though many do out back. This means the front of a Victorian House is a house, not a gaping garage door. One of the things I agree with James Howard Kunstler about is that a house fronted with a garage is ugly from the street. That's like putting the dumpster for a restaurant in front because its more convenient for the garbage truck. Ugh.

This being gold mining territory, there are barely sealed off mine openings all over the place, including in town. The hills are very steep, and the miners walked to work, often carrying tin lunch pails with pasties inside. This is where the mine deliberately recruited miners from Cornwall because its the same kind of territory: hardrock granite with gold bearing pegmatites. And the mines are deep. Two miles, 12,000 feet down. With water draining out of the local streams and rivers and flooding the mines, so they were constantly pumping water to keep access to the lower reaches. For the time, this was a very high tech operation, and the money associated with gold mining was very good. Thus miners and mine owners could afford very nice houses in both towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City. After Franklin Delano Rooseveldt seized all the gold then doubled the price to pay off Federal Debts but ignore private debts and inflation and the ruined economy, then encouraged men at gunpoint to work on public works projects at pennies per day like actual slaves, sometimes to death, war was a relief. And after the war was over the mines were still closed, but the towns were still here, and those who went off to war came back with skills in radio and the new Television, and a yen to build switching systems which later became the modern ultra high tech picture in picture windows you see in the evening news and football games. That's all from Grass Valley Group electronics. Yet again, money to own and update those fancy Victorian houses with the highly ornate wood details, the steep streets with no real parking, and the resulting very close knit community on the hillside.

GVG electronics is closed down, the last dreg bought out by Ze Germinz, and the local competitors aching for multilingual Chinese translators for minimum wage, strangely unable to find those. Funny, right? Without electronics, which largely collapsed with the Dot.com mess back in 2000, there isn't much going on for jobs here, and if not for the people retiring, this would be a ghost town. But Bay Area Baby Boomers are retiring here, because there's so little violence (it is 96% white), its very small so you really can know everybody (combined population of both towns in 12,000), and all the retirees are pretty wealthy, or wealthy enough to be comfortable. Those who live here can afford to choose between the big house on the hill, the nice house in the suburban neighborhood, and the charming Old Victorian in town with no parking. If you choose the Victorian you can't have 5-6 cars. You can have one in the carriage house, one on the street, and might consider a scooter to get around town on the weekend because the tourists use all the parking.

Yes, there are tourists. Lots of them. This old gold mining town, Nevada City in particular, is so compact and steep and well maintained and weird that its worth visiting. Weekends are full of motorcyclists partying and heading up 49 as this is the last real town of any size with significant lodgings before you vanish into the heavily forested road north climbing for a couple hours before reaching Downieville and the Sierra Buttes near Yuba Pass. From there, a motorcyclist can go East and South to Truckee or East to Reno or north to Grayeagle and West down the Feather River Canyon on 70, or up to Lake Almanor, McCloud and Mount Shasta and up to Ashland or down to Redding, Red Bluff, Hwy 99 and the Sutter Buttes. Lovely roads for a weekend ride. We're also relatively close to Tahoe. A city slicker from the Bay Area can ride up to Nevada City on a Friday afternoon, get a beer and a meal, stay the night, take 20 east and on and off 40 through Old Donner Pass, which is very pretty, down to Truckee and then take 85 south to your chosen loop of Lake Tahoe, which is stunning. More than you've heard. Its so amazing it looks fake. So yes, this is a good stop for a tourist who wants to cool off and de-stress from the craphole that is the Bay Area. If the Bay Area opts to convert their highways and bridges into toll roads to pay for their hilarious mistakes and blunders, its entirely possible there will be similar fees for roads here someday. Or perhaps not. Folks here are a lot more independent and don't like govt telling them what to do. Any pot grower will privately admit that regulation will ruin their profits. So does legalization. But its coming.

It is common to see bicyclists who like their hill climbs on the roads here at the end of the week and the weekends. Thankfully, cars are used to it so crashes are quite rare. We even have those "take the lane" signs for cyclists in certain narrow sections, and they do, and cars don't run over them. You have to be very fit to ride here, but you can ride here safely. So we get a lot of bicycle tourists. Their parking needs are a place for their carrier vehicle with the rack, then they get around, including to restaurants near the B&B (with a $4K carbon fiber race bike of course $300/night is fine!). Then again, I rarely see them outside the restaurants so perhaps they walk to those. Still, a great place to ride.

I see young people, old people, divorced working women, old men, and college students on scooters fairly often now. Great place for it. With the twisty roads and lack of parking, they're a great way to get around. You still do your grocery run in the car, and that means you still need a car, but that's once a week kind of thing.

I think that eventually the housing bubble will burst fully and home prices will eventually reflect the ability to pay a mortgage. Since most wages here are Minimum, which is $9/hr., that means a house needs to be about 1/3 the take home pay of two adults making only Minimum Wage, essentially a married couple. Marriage is a man and a woman living together and raising children. Other partnerships offer a lot more free income, and thus can afford a nicer house. There's a few polygamous group marriages I've spotted, and multifamily multi-generation homes also around. They tend not to be very stable, however, and you need stable finances for a mortgage. The Victorians are going for the local premium price due to location in town and most are restored at this point, with insulated electric wires and new plumbing to replace the old rotten leaking pipes full of sediment and rust. Soft flooring is usually a sign of rot, and more work needing to be done. Same with doors that swing open or shut, meaning the building is tilting. You get that in old houses. But they are very pretty, and driving through neighborhoods of Victorians is a joy to the eyes. We just don't do craftsmanship and detail work anymore, and we should. When all jobs are minimum wage, and we're headed there, you may as well do a good job to protect your employment. Because at minimum wage, you're infinitely replaceable. It is ironic that work quality must rise when pay is the lowest.