Last month I moved out of the studio I rented for two years, out of the area where I lived for ten. The southwest corner of downtown Sacramento known as Southside Park was my chosen neighborhood for many reasons — its tree-lined streets were quiet yet still on the metropolitan grid, its rich cultural history was still palpable (if diminishing), and it was host to the city’s most epic farmers market — but the main reason was delivered by one initial big bang of a moment.
When I moved back to Sacramento from L.A. about ten years ago, I was floundering around and temporarily living with my mom. I remember calling my friend from a strip mall parking lot and lamenting my bleak new surroundings. The years following the Great Recession were not kind to Sacramento; so many businesses had died and been reanimated as a thrift store.
But I adjusted — started an apprenticeship at a news outlet-marketing agency hybrid. To get there that fall of 2012, I drove west along a stretch of 50 that skirted the base of downtown Sacramento. The city is notoriously flat, so when treated to a rare aerial view, one soaks it in. From my clunky cherry-red Mustang I would glance to my right at the canopy of flame-hued foliage and the palm tree-studded grid of short city blocks.
Just before the 5 junction was a view of Southside Park, which I’d somehow never noticed from that vantage point. The park was a giant rectangle with one shimmering focal point — a bright yellow willow tree on the pond’s shore I couldn’t take my eyes off of. I can’t pinpoint if it was a childhood story or a memory of a friend’s parents’ backyard, but the majesty of willow trees — their protection, weepy countenance, and anthropomorphic mane — captured my imagination during that uncertain time. It’s sappy as hell, but I think the enchantment it stirred within me made me faithful to the neighborhood for a decade.
A few months later, a friend told me an acquaintance of mine was looking for a roommate for the two bedroom apartment she was renting in the Southside Park neighborhood. The room’s rent was remarkably cheap at $400 per month. After doing a little more research on the neighborhood, I found it had everything I wanted: a craft coffee shop, art gallery, independent bookstore, and the historic dive bar/venue with the best dance night in town where I’d made memories years earlier using a fake ID. I moved in on a day when the willow’s bare branches were budding with spring.
That first apartment was dingy from the outside, a gray block of a building in need of a powerwash. The interior of our second story unit, though, was bright and airy with hardwood floors and white walls, checking off all the boxes of our very short list of requirements as twenty somethings. The fourplex was owned by a legendary skateboarder, who was good-natured and sweet and blasted reggae whenever he came by to make repairs. I watched a Vice documentary on him while I lived in that apartment. It was surreal that the middle aged guy who limped through the building to fix the washing machine was the same young man whose smile lit up the frame as he skated toward the camera.
The building was adjacent to a grassy lot. Though an eyesore, it provided a clear view to the park, served as a location for yard sales, and became a quasi-backyard for the dog I’d share with the boyfriend who replaced my roommate halfway through my seven-year tenure there. When we broke up three years later, we took the dog to Southside Park one last time, calling him from opposite ends of the field so he’d run back and forth between us underneath the towering trees and stars. We ran alongside him too, sprinting around the park until I heaved and cried, a chapter over.
The boyfriend and dog moved out. I stayed and made the place my own over the next few years — a mish mash of Target decor and vintage pieces. One morning in the apartment I wrote a journal entry where I attempted to capture the exact soundscape of the area:
May 20, 2018
A call and response between two birds, chirping the same long chirps, but sounding like two intonations on different planes. A different bird jabbers on in the distance like a backing track. The trees rustle in a persistent breeze, almost of the coastal variety in that it’s audible against the ear, even though we’re in the valley. A car accelerates maybe a quarter mile away and disappears, giving way to the cooing of far-off doves. Some woman’s shouts, “I don’t knoww!” The neighbors’ muffled voices stir downstairs. There’s a percussive sound, unplaceable, but maybe produced by a house — a sink draining or an A/C drumming up the energy to get going. A train honks in the distance, and then a siren. An airplane drones overhead somewhere to the left. Now classical music? Definitely strings.
Around that time I quit my job in preparation to relocate to a new city for another relationship. A mere three months after the move, I moved back to Sacramento, the relationship completely soured. It had already turned before I moved, but I’d really wanted it to work. I was grateful, if a little embarrassed, to boomerang back to my mom’s house.
In January 2020, another serendipitous opening in Southside Park took me back to the neighborhood, to a pretty studio apartment stacked above a garage where I could blossom again. It was directly across from the park with a view of the willow tree. I wrote about the studio in a series called Single Women and Their Spaces for The Fold magazine.
Like everywhere else, Southside Park changed throughout the pandemic. The parking spots that faced the park, once empty after the state workers left for the day, became permanently occupied by people living in their cars. It was heartbreaking, but I was glad people at least had somewhere to land and just be. The bustling Sunday farmers market shut down to make way for a freeway construction project and a city-subsidized area of encampments for the unhoused. Both the independent bookstore and the historic dive bar were sold, and the craft coffeeshop announced its closure (or maybe just relocation) to make way for high-rise lofts.
It looked and felt different, but I didn’t want to leave. When I met Andrew, I was scraping myself back together at my mom’s house post-breakup. I was so broke at first that I couldn’t afford to visit him in San Francisco. Once I was back on my feet in the Southside studio, I didn’t want to let it go. I hadn’t lived there with anyone; it wasn’t tinged with any memories but my own. And its beauty — bright and modern with stylish updates — was so rare as far as moderately priced apartments go. It was regularly power washed, to boot. Through its French doors I could gaze at picnickers, and from its balcony I could listen to the park’s mariachi and lowrider music festivals with a margarita in hand.
I think I’ll miss the anonymous characters the most, a nameless but familiar cast. Like clockwork every day around 2 p.m., a sporty old hippie with a long, white ponytail and all-black hiking outfit would trudge past my window, walking the park’s perimeter on a mission get his steps. A young guy often shuffled through the park with his bushy Australian Shepherd, always wearing some form of house clothes and white dude flip flops. Two old Arab men would go on walks together, the older one a few paces behind the younger one. There was something sweet about being game enough to go on the walk, but comfortable enough to lag behind. The one-offs ones amused me, too, like the eccentric lady I once saw roller skate through the park’s serpentine sidewalks during the early days of the pandemic, doing tricks for no one but herself. And for me, as it turns out, as I watched with delight from the window.
What committed me to the neighborhood more than any of those romanticized details was its fringe quality. And that’s because I’ve always felt fringe. You know — alternative and kind of underrated. These are ridiculous thoughts to admit, like I’m special, but less embarrassing because I think many of us feel this way. It had been plenty gentrified, sure, but in a first-stage kind of way. The neighborhood still felt like mine, even though I couldn’t claim any literal ownership. I was always a renter. Still, I felt I had a stake in the area by way of investment of time and a currency of memories.
I live across town now, but still on the grid — close enough to drive to my favorite Southside restaurant on my lunch break, but not close enough to check in on the neighborhood’s characters or circle its blocks for the millionth time. My new neighborhood is full of young families, craftsman houses, lush front yard gardens, young couples and their dogs. What I lost in wonderfully weird, je ne sais quois vibes I’ve gained in a peaceful sort of safety.
There are so many unspoken forces governing our decisions to live or stay somewhere, identify with someone or someplace. A lot of times the reason is just a feeling, one that strikes like a big bang, or grows within you over the seasons. Most of the time, it’s both.
Thanks for reading,
Written with passion and sensitivity. Generally, it is the place of our childhood that leaves a lifetime mark. Here you helped us discover that a place lingers in our mind and tinges our soul long after. Make pleasant memories in your new home.
Nice, Vanessa! Beautiful words and images. Moving and changing homes are inevitable, finding the beauty in each, is something else. You did both! Cheers, Rivka