Nighttime in Rockridge Country

It’s dark out here in Rockridge Country. I walked home from the Bart one night after we’d just moved to Oakland. It was 9:10 pm. I walked down a street–I don’t know, Lawton? I’d heard about frequent muggings of Rockridge commuters, but having just left night-buzzing San Francisco, I wasn’t thinking it was late, or that it would be that dark.

The only sound was that of my breath, and the legs of my corduroys rubbing together as I walked. Two reminders, I told myself, that it was good we now lived further away from Tartine. And I could still walk! I’d had two beers and then taken Bart and damned if I wouldn’t walk, just to prove I could. But I was unnerved by being alone on the street. The road itself was black; no headlights, no one else traveling at what seemed to me to be a perfectly fine hour to be coming home or going out. Didn’t they believe in streetlights? What kind of country was I in, in which night was actually…dark?!?

That’s Rockridge Country, ma’am. Oaktown, Cali-forn-i-a.

The Subarus and Hondas parked in crushed-eco-gravel driveways glittered in the–what was that?–ah yes: moonlight. The perfect brown bungalows were dark, dozing off. Soft lights gleamed here and there from windows carved out of the bark of the square-ish Craftman homes. In the dim light I spotted $300 tricycles and brightly-colored sport sets strewn about the front yards. I was confused. In San Francisco, we had no front yards, so it wasn’t even an option to leave a trike out all night to get thugged by a drunk hipster, bum, or neighbor. Never mind the contrast of all these riches against the reality of Oakland’s 18% poverty rate. So who lived inside those darn cute houses?

Families. I thought. Dear God, it’s really true! That’s why everyone’s going to bed or already asleep! It horrified me because I wanted to be better than the tame and lame parents I imagined inside the cozy houses I hurried past. Never mind that I myself was excited to be in bed by 10:45. I wanted to be cool enough, superhuman and rich enough, to have stayed in San Francisco. Even though SF was no longer working for me, for us, for Alejandro.

Of course, what I really wanted was to feel comfortable in this weird new land: to understand it. To be enveloped, rather than ostracized, by the neighborhood’s warmth and richness. It is idyllic, it is isolating–for now–and it’s also just beautiful. My own little patch of country, eight blocks from Bart. That’s about as country as I get.

But I’ll keep this desk lamp burning, to remind the one weary traveler who passes by our new house that he or she is not the only one awake in Rockridge tonight.


What resonates?