Found an Apartment in SF

Yesterday we signed the lease on our new place. It’s official, we are San Franciscans. We shall need to start wearing flowers in our hair.

Moving in on December 1st. Agggh, coming up so fast (like this entire move)! I am sure, however, that my aunt and uncle will be glad to be rid of us. They have been amazing and very gracious hosts. We’ve had so much fun staying with them, but it will be nice to finally have more than three outfits and stop living out of a suitcase.

The new place is 1 block north of the Haight/Ashbury, on Buena Vista Park. The park was a big reason I liked it, to have a place to play/run with Linus during the mornings. Buena Vista Park is off leash, can you believe it! That’s nuts… and would never fly in NYC. The Haight/Ashbury has tons of restaurants and cafes and whatnot, so it should be fun checking all of them out.

The neighborhood seemed to be a good compromise location-wise for our respective commutes. I’ll have a 10 minute walk to UCSF School of Medicine and Earl has a 20-minute muni ride to his office. We both, however, have to walk up/down two blocks of ENORMOUSLY STEEP HILL!!! Guess the name “Buena Vista” is valid. We do have a really nice view of both the park and the city from our windows, however, so I guess that hike will be worth it. Not to mention the toning! My friend Don recently informed us that Buena Vista Park “is like a truck stop for gays” (which the wiki entry verifies), so perhaps Earl will reap more attention from a toned toochis than I.

Here are some photos of our new pad. Once we’re moved in and unpacked, I’ll take some more. It’s a 1br with an office. We had been *maybe* hoping/looking for a 2br, however this place was adorable and within our budget, so we took it. Alas, all of you visitors will have to stay on the couch. But at least you’ll have the fireplace to warm you up!

Living Room with working (!!!) fireplace

There are lots of old, antique-y details such as original molding from 1910 and all of the original door-handles, etc. It was the only place I looked at that had loads of character, felt sort of “grown up” and home-y at the same time. I spent two days seeing apartment after apartment, and I felt like lots of them either were these swank luxury co-op types or just really basic dorm-rooms. This was the only apartment I walked into and it felt like a “home.” Something about big, planned buildings (you know the type- with the gym and the common areas, long long hallways, etc) makes me recoil. I liked how this building only has 6 units, and everyone seems friendly (and has dogs!). Something about a smaller building… a bit of a warmer essence.

Dining Room

The building has garage parking included and also a large backyard with a koy pond, BBQ and garden. Those are some perks you don’t get in Manhattan!

Building

I am so, so excited to move in. To be honest, with all this traveling, I am craving feeling settled. I think it will be good for the animals, too. It can’t be healthy for Linus to have been waking up in a different hotel room every day for three and a half weeks. For a while there I wondered if he thought we just lived in the Jeep permanently, and his new life consisted of being inside the kennel for long drives!