NOvato NO More!! (Part 2)

NO in NOvato

What can you expect when the first syllable in your town’s name is NO? This is one negative town if ever I did see one. Following are my observations and my opinions of this white-bread oven.

San Marin is one bland neighborhood. That architecture I call ‘Nouveau California’ is really sterile and sanitized, just like the manicured lawns. There’s just no funk , no grit here. It’s hot like hell. I would like to know what happened to all the trees. I’ve driven down Novato Boulevard so many times in the past 3 & ½ years and have seen the world’s worst drivers here! Worse than Massachusetts or LA! Novato Boulevard from Diablo/DeLong to Simmons/Wilson is the world’s biggest shit magnet! People constantly blow off red lights as if the right-turn-on-red-light law gave the right of way to the one making the turn on the red light. I have been cut off too many times to count by these jerks who do not understand the part about coming to a full stop first, and making the turn only if there are no other cars coming. I have seen cars in parked in handicapped parking spots with no visible sign of the driver having a disability ( dp license plate or placard.) When I used to take the bus to work in San Rafael, I was almost hit countless times while crossing streets in designated crosswalks, with the ‘walk’ sign by assholes who even blew their horns at me! What part of ‘pedestrian has the right of way’ don’t you understand?! Especially when said ped is in a cross walk and crossing with the light! Some drunken asshole on a Harley actually hit a man and his daughter last week while they were crossing in a crosswalk at an intersection with a stop sign. Speaking of Harley’s, certain Saturday’s there seems to be about 3 bazillion of them passing by on San Marin Drive, the same street where aforementioned Harley riding asshole hit the man and his daughter.

I get the impression that a lot of folks here want to be living in Mill Valley or Tiburon or Ross and just can’t afford it, meaning they had to ‘settle’ for Novato in order to be able to say that they live in Marin. Marinite wannabees can’t afford MV, so they move to San Marin instead. After all, this really is one cut throat, one-upsmanship, snooty, keepin’ up with the Jones’s kind of county, full of snot faced, spoiled rotten teenagers driving around in daddy’s car. These gangsta wannabee teenagers that listen to urban gangsta rap think that it makes them ‘bro’s in da hood’, but the only ‘hood’ these d-bags ever see is the one on daddy’s Benz. If they’re not ‘riche’, nouveau or otherwise, then they’re old school redneck ranchers (and their kin) who can’t stand ‘dem environmeddlers.’ (‘Dem environmeddlers’ are a whole ‘nother post, and I’m sure you can already guess where I’ll be going with that.) It seems as if 90% of the right wing nuts that live in Marin County must live in Novato. And then of course, there’s the Latino population. Outside of a propensity to breed like rabbits (again, another post), I really have no problem with them, at least the ones who are here legally (yup, ‘nother post.)

Every city and town have their individual quirks, and Novato is no exception. The medium sized shopping center where I frequently go to do my grocery shopping is the most fucked up parking lot I have ever driven in. It is just set up so weird, it’s really hard to navigate compared to others of a similar size. The traffic patterns on the streets are such that when leaving by the exit closest to the direction of my home, I have to immediately cross a lane of traffic as soon as I pull out. The main arteries of this city make it difficult at times to get from one part of the town to another. The nearest video rental store that isn’t a Blockbuster (another post), and even that store is about 4 miles away. A dispensary of legal medical cannabis opened up in Novato this year and the city is suing to shut it down. (You guessed it…) There's even a web site called... "Novato Sucks."

I want to get back to driving around here. I have driven Highway 101 frequently in the past several years. I have driven it from LA to as far north as Laytonville, with most of my mileage logged on the stretch in between San Rafael and Santa Rosa. Mostly Marinites I would imagine, the drivers on this stretch are almost as bad as the ones on Novato Boulevard, just faster. Frequent aggressive driving, tailgating, unsafe lane changes are all behaviors witnessed by this driver. At least three times, I have been passed on my right side, the car being driven in the breakdown lane going at least a good 15 mph faster than I was! The first time I was driving home after work and was passed on my right near Olompali State Park. Another time it happened during the morning commute on 101 North just past the dump. And just today, I was passed on my right by a car travelling in the breakdown lane as I was exiting at Rowland Avenue! I don’t find it surprising that at the center of this stretch of 101 is… NOvato.

Do you think I’m going to miss living in NOvato?

NOvato NO More!! (Preface & Part 1)

Preface

In my sidebar intro, I noted that this blog may be a bit of a diary at times. As my time in this town now comes to an end, I wanted to write of what I witnessed and what I experienced in these 6+ years in this hick town I call a white-bread oven. I started typing, but rather than write of what I originally intended, I wrote of personal experiences directly related to living here during this time. I named that post Part 1. Part 2 will follow soon with my observations of the life of others in NOvato.

Part 1

I never wanted to live in this place. An unfortunate set of circumstances led me here. Robin Cohn, owner of City Hall Records had been fucking with my life and my head for well over a year. Less than 1 month after I had started at CHR, probably less than a week, I had decided that this place was definitely not for me. I decided that as soon as I take the two vacations that I had planned for in 2001, I would start looking for a different job. About a month after I returned from my second vacation, we were rocked on 9/11. I had not been paying any attention to the increasingly difficult job market when the bottom completely dropped out on that fateful day. I continued to look for work and apply for jobs but to no avail. When I was informed that another housemate was moving out, a good one at that, and that there would be another rent increase, I decided to move to Sonoma County. It was too expensive to live in Marin any longer. I wanted to quit CHR, but everyone said “Don’t do it, Dave. Don’t quit your job until you have another one.” So I stayed. I put most of everything I owned into storage and rented a bedroom. Petaluma was close enough (barely) to commute to San Rafael, and I would be able to look for work in Sonoma County and then find a place of my own. After 6 months of commuting from Petaluma to San Rafael (a heinous motherfucking commute if ever there was one), and not finding any work there, I decided to move back to Marin, bite the bullet and realize that I was stuck for a while. The job had become barely tolerable since I was no longer the manager of the A/P Department, and Debbye had become an interesting distraction. I had found a great house in Fairfax and housemates and was about a day away from signing a lease when Grace at CHR informed me that I was going to be laid off soon, but she couldn’t tell me when. This was messed up. You don’t tell someone that he’s ‘going to be laid off’. You pull him into the office in the morning, hand him a check, say thank you for your services and that they’re no longer needed. There was no way I could sign a lease knowing that I was about to be laid off. The plans to move into that great house in Fairfax were scuttled, but I still didn’t want to be living in Petaluma without a job and being that far away from Sierra in the East Bay.

I was still employed when I found the only affordable rental I could- a studio apartment in Novato the size of a shoebox. I took it and then was laid off. Sleeping later since I didn’t have to get up for work, I was rudely awoken by the landlord’s kid who sounded as if he was playing basketball on the hardwood floor in the living room directly above me. It’s not my place to be telling anyone how to raise their kid, but sheeze! C’mon! I’m paying a good chunk of your mortgage every month! This was a very confusing time for me. During the period of unemployment after CHR, I paid my car with my credit card, as I was not going to lose my car. Sierra was in the East Bay and it would have taken me hours to get there by bus. My credit card had become my safety net as I watched my credit card balance continue to rise. I pretty much had stopped going to big concerts and local shows and was cutting back on all my expenses. I even rode the bus to work for a long time before I couldn’t deal with busses any more. My social life had become null and void after I left Fairfax. Fortunately my new job despite not being the smoothest accounting department in the world (yet still much better than CHR) was a breath of fresh air compared to that shitty hell of a previous job. Fortunately I had a jazz band to play in every weekend, which was pretty much the extent of my social life.

I was working, I had a car, I was in a band, I had a home, small, yes, but still a home, or at least a roof over my head. Despite all this, Novato meant nothing to me. I didn’t do anything in Novato, I always left this place whenever I did anything except for maybe a run to the grocery store. I lived in that shoebox from November of 2002 to November of 2004. During that time I met Carrie the C-Witch, wishing in hindsight that I never did. There was a fling with Grace that became a platonic relationship. Same thing with Teresa, except there was no ‘fling.’ (This was becoming a recurring theme in my life.) Diana had split from her second husband (thus vindicating me from any cause of our marriage’s demise) and was living in a nasty section of Richmond. I became determined to get Sierra out of there, so much so that I was willing to live with Diana in a housemate situation in Marin. (Diana, Sierra, and Marina would have been the housemates in Fairfax before Cohn at CHR really turned up the heat with his mind fuck games.) Since I had been living in Novato, I gradually became more aware of my surroundings, not to be confused with becoming more comfortable with my surroundings. I was becoming desperate to get Sierra out of Richmond! Since I was still working in Marin (San Rafael), I stayed in Novato as it was the least expensive place within a reasonable commute distance. I found a three bedroom condo in Novato for $1400. I was going to move in with Di, Sierra and Marina, when Diana (who was now also working in San Rafael) said she wanted to move into that condo with Gary (Green) instead. Yes! Sierra was out of Richmond, and I didn’t have to move in with my ex! Sierra wasn’t too happy about leaving Pinole schools, and I know first-hand the devastating effects this can have on a kid at that age, but she adjusted seemingly well, eventually.

So it was. I was working at a better job, Sierra was out of Richmond, and I had a good local platonic friend (at the time, pre-evil.) I also managed to hook up with Tom DiBell and Roadhouse for several shows on their ‘farewell tour’ in 2003 and 2004. lol.

My knee locked up so badly in the summer of 2004 that I had to go to the emergency room to unlock it. Knee surgery followed in October of 2004, a fine time for a Red Sox fan to be home every day watching television (grin.) Despite the appearance of some stability, I was becoming distraught over my mounting debt. I wrestled with the thought of moving back to RI for the better part of a year, if not longer. Despite the Sox stunning the pro sports world by winning the American League Pennant after being down three games to none, to the Yankees no less, and coming back to win four straight games, and then winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years beating St. Louis in four games, I was very confused about many things, including this lengthening list of women who wanted to be friends with me, but ‘just friends.’ After the Sox made history, Carrie started dragging me around to look at rentals. I still had RI on my mind, but was slowly coming to the conclusion that no matter how many times Sierra and I flew cross country to see each other, and no matter that she could come to RI for the whole summer, there was just no way I could live that far apart from her. If Carrie (about to morph into C-Witch) hadn’t found that unbelievably affordable house in Novato, I would have moved to Petaluma, as it was becoming clear that my employer at the time was going to move there from San Rafael in 2005. So I signed a lease with that @\/#+. I’ll not rehash the events of the next 14 months, but suffice it to say, I wish to hell that Diana would have sent Sierra to live with me a year earlier than she did. I would have never moved in with that %!+@# and a world of hurt would have been avoided.

Phil Ward is the Novatian landlord of that house would not evict the lease breaking witch, so I was forced to move yet again in order to find housing for me and Sierra. No matter how much better the situation may become, moving is always a traumatic experience, one that I have experienced far too many times in my 51 trips around the sun. I got lucky yet one more time and found a condo in the San Marin area of Novato that was below market, and owned by a man who played in The Jerry Garcia Band for three years. It was not walking distance for Sierra, so I would drive her to school (in the opposite direction of work) and then go to work. Diana was off in her own drama and was not a whole lot of help, parentally or financially during this time. Sierra had opportunities every week to get into trouble after school, as I never got home before 6 PM. Being a single dad of a precocious teenage daughter with little help from her mom was not easy. Add another woman to that aforementioned list, and a mysterious neurological affliction, and the depression continued. Living with that C-Witch had pushed me to the brink of the abyss. The events of 2006- extremely difficult year at work, that one more woman, the heat wave from hell, living under the specter of bankruptcy declared in 2005 after that no good son of a bush forced my hand with his bankruptcy reform legislation- did nothing but hasten my declining health, a decline that started in the summer of 2006. Since I was working in 2006 and 2007, the temperatures inside of this place didn’t bother me so much. It was difficult getting to sleep some nights, but at least I was out of the house for five days a week. I got to park my car in the garage at work, so that helped dealing with the heat. When it became clear that I would be staying home 7 days a week in 2008, I had to go out and buy a portable air conditioning unit, as the swamp cooler alone was just not cutting it any more.

Even before this neurological quandary began, my thoughts turned again to moving to Petaluma once Sierra graduated from high school. She graduates next week. My plans were to go to RI for three weeks or so, then come back and lay low in Novato until the rainy season returned, as this is a better time of the year for renters to be looking. Even these plans were altered by outside forces. Ozzie needs to move back in here so I have to be out by June 30th. I would much rather be looking for a new place in September or October than May and June, but my hand has been forced. Hopefully, I will be approved for this nice rental unit I found up near the Russian River.

These are the bulk of the events that happened to me personally. In my next post, I will write of what I saw around me in this white-bread oven.