Something I really respect about Italy is the entire peninsula is full of volcanoes and gets earthquakes, yet they build out of stone anyway. I appreciate that sort of dedicated "F-U, nature" of Italians. Also, the understand the important things of life, namely good food, wine, and women all exist to be enjoyed, not hoarded. Where I grew up we had both Italian and Portugeuse immigrants, living working, intermarrying. One of my better friends had parents from both camps, and her dad baked really excellent French bread. The bakery has since gone under, but it was the kind you wrote sonnets about and served with fresh butter or sharp cheeses. Good stuff.
You really shouldn't build with stone in Earthquake country, yet there are lots of buildings that survive the quakes for one reason or another. As I understand it, the bullet scarred walls from the Allied invasion, retaking Italy from the fascists in WW2, are still there, sometimes left as is. There's a distinctive pride in that. I wonder if we should build that seriously here? Out of stone rather than steel and concrete. Put some labor and pride into our homes and workplaces, and expect to use them for centuries rather than tear them down like tents in 10-15 years like we've been doing with most commercial real estate. There were a lovely group of craftsman bungalows along the nasty green lake in South Reno, all carefully maintained. Someone bought them, tore them down, and will replace them with new duplex condos because its easier to build new than retrofit. They can get more profits. This is a shame. The new condos weren't much for character. And the lake still stinks.
Something I find a bit confusing, is America has these enormous cities, even my own home town has gotten huge, but there's few jobs beyond the obvious retail and repair and basic medical. For actual industry? Not so much. My home town was pretty odd because it had a restaurant for every 40 people, the highest number in the world. Can you imagine? Working in the food industry was something people make full careers from there. Of course, being allergic to raw shrimp, the single most popular restaurant meat, means I can't do that myself. I get nasty hives. Can't handle crab either.
Bodega Bay, which means Bay Bay, which is NOT the same place as Bodega, which is in a valley, on Highway 12 but not actually in view of the ocean just close to it, and was the site of the Hitchcock movie The Birds.
And yes, that schoolhouse is still there.
The big upside of old, pre-car, architecture is it remains classical and useful after cars are gone, and when you parked in newer carriage houses converted into a garage in another building. The house itself is a house. The various Victorians and bungalows in the old towns across California are the ones that hold their value. Not the newer and poorly made ranch houses, which eventually turn out to have black mold and termites. The old houses might have plaster lath and ancient electrical, but most have been updated decades ago, at prior owner's expense. You may want to replace the avocado green tile and the burnt umber or ochre shag carpet and maybe fill in the conversation pit that was so stylish in the 1970s but is just a tripping hazard that reeks of patchouli oil today.
A modern or old bungalow, the typical Craftsman Bungalow built by hand, over time, by a young man who ordered the plans via a Sears-Roebuck catalog and did all the construction on weekends with hand tools for the immense sum of several thousand dollars in materials, and land that must have cost a hundred, easy. The angled square pillars are usually plywood and hollow with a normal 4x4 post inside to hold up the porch roof. The various details are all hand made, bit by bit, adding value to the home after its finished and liveable. All are basically night or weekend projects. I think even the window frames were handmade, with the glass ordered in sheets. In a Craftsman, the builder does everything. Ironically, the Art Deco material, glass blocks, are very good insulation, being R-30, since they are a vacuum inside. Walls of glass blocks provide excellent light, yet allow privacy. Same with stained glass and obscured glass (rippley kind) which lets in light yet retains privacy. On a very small lot, this is a good thing. Using your spaces to provide good light to a home is so important. I've lived in too many dark places to like them very much. I want natural light.
I think it is worth noting that there are many very beautiful Bungalows in both Oakland and LA, but not all of them are maintained due to being rentals with Section 8 criminal gang members living inside. This is a shame. Once water prices rise without subsidies to cushion them, many of these homes will end up abandoned as their residents flee for more affordable cities. Perhaps they'll move to Detroit, where you can buy a distressed home downtown for $500. You might get shot or stabbed there, but you can own it. And if enough people move from Oakland and LA to Detroit, maybe this crucial difference will enable them to make a serious change, and restore the city to greatness. It really is a fantastic location, geographically. They just need to make a living doing something other than just building cars nobody can afford anymore.
Here in California, I look at the tiny Sacramento Valley towns, the farm towns, with their abandoned railroad passenger train stations empty, businesses shuttered on actual Main Streets, beautiful bungalows needing attention, and ground water only feet down as the river flows by, and I think: this place has potential. It needs jobs. It needs industry. I hope that Jefferson brings them in, like Reno has. Allow Lacquer and you'll get furniture makers again. Deny carbon taxes and you'll get welding shops and machineshops moving in from the Bay Area, where the lunatic Greens in Berkeley have nearly killed them off, the spiteful pricks. There's more manufacturing in Woodland and Colusa and Yuba City than there is the Bay Area. And there could be a lot more. These towns would welcome a Toyota Factory, building trucks and small cars. They could sell them locally too. If there were a Subaru Forester Plant in Roseville or Loomis they'd sell all they made in the Sacramento metropolitan district and Sierra Foothills, easy. Hear that Subaru? Jeep is rare up here. Lots of Subarus everywhere. I would totally buy a WRX STI if I had the money. They're great on these roads, and we get enough snow lingering for it to make sense.
I really think there's a future in cute grid-pattern valley towns, from 100 years ago. They've got local water, which is so important, cheap. What they need is jobs. Once the price of water goes up in the Bay Area, following either the split or the collapse of the pumping subsidy, most of the big industries will bail out of the East and South Bay area. Poof! That price will also cause a housing bubble collapse, which is long overdue anyway. Most homes in the Bay Area are nearly worthless ranch houses with termites singing Kumbayah and holding hands, which is all that's keeping them upright. Don't buy a home built on an orchard. The termites eat the roots of the trees cut down and bulldozed over to build the tract homes. When they run out of roots to eat, the tunnels upwards and eat your home. This is WELL KNOWN from tract houses in Orange County. And termite eaten wood must be replaced with treated wood, which they won't eat, but if they get up into the walls and attic it is too late. You're better off with arson at that point. Considering most Bay Area tract homes are $2500/mo to rent, and $3800/mo. for a mortgage, and both parents must work to cover that outlandish cost because your average home for a middle class working couple is $600K, you can buy in Sacramento Valley for around $200K or considerably less in the really small northern towns. Better house, same size, with grid streets instead of cul-de-sacs. Riskier for the children who play in traffic, but better for public transit and bicycles. And children playing in traffic are incipient Darwin Awards, after all. Duh!
Small towns are cheaper to run than big cities. They don't require as many services, or employees running those services, because they are small and residents have reasonable expectations, rather than overt racism driving their demands for "more!" like you see in Oakland and South Sacramento and North Highlands, which are high crime areas filled with a certain minority that claims it can't be racist "just because." Uh-huh. Nice to know who to avoid living near. A shame since 35 years ago, Oakland had some of the best metal workers in the world. They're all retired and gone now. A pity.
The other big thing which makes small towns liveable is water supply, which can be managed via reservoirs and pumping stations and tanks and wells and canals and diversions. The West side of the north Sacramento Valley is in rain shadow. Rain shadow, aka Banana Belt, is the chemical reaction to water and heat, wherein the change from vapor to liquid releases heat, which when the pressure changes as it descends, is different dry than wet. This is called Adiabatic Heating, and you find it is the cause for the warm winters in Palm Springs, and the relatively lack of snow in Reno and Ashland, since the air descending from Pacific weather systems becomes too warm for much precipitation. Very important. This lack of rainfall behind, east of, the Coast Range mountains of Northern California, soon to be Jefferson state, means that its dry grassland with only creeks draining out of those hills for water supply. These creeks are where you find the towns, which are the only places with drinking water for people to live there. A plan was proposed a few decades ago to build a big reservoir on the wet side of the hills, then using an aqueduct and tunnels through the mountains, carry the water through, irrigate, and gain a huge farmland area, which would be a boon to both real estate and farm income, which is America's most important export. We feed the world. And if we stop, the world loses 2 billion people rather quickly. Remember that, world. You need us to stay alive. Famine causes war and disease outbreak. I would not be the LEAST surprised to learn that ISIL accidentally causes a massive plague outbreak of that middle eastern severe respiratory (MERS) virus I've read about.
I'd like for America to ignore the Middle East entirely, and let them kill each other. We can focus on farming and manufacturing and living in beautiful homes and maybe see about constructing things out of stone. The coat of Amalfi, which is a world heritage site, could be duplicated on the northern California coastline, even with the earthquakes. From Tiburon and around the Marin Headlands, the north end of the Golden Gate bridge, up the coast through Point Reyes Station and Bodega Bay, up to Jenner and Fort Ross, Mendocino, Fort Brag and Eureka and Crescent City. Coastal tourists stop in every town on the Oregon coast, but they go inland rather than cross into California because its ugly and sad here. And that needs to be fixed. If it was touristy, tourists would come. Hopefully, Jefferson State redevelopment experts will push investment there, once the crucial infrastructure is dealt with, and the money is rolling in. If all we did was mimic Reno, we'd still be better than Lower California. And that's so key.
Be Better in Jefferson!
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