Resistance

As a newcomer, I refuse to succumb to the convenience of mobility: a car.

To get to the Nijiya Market, one must walk a mile north just past the intersection of highway 82 and 85. From a map, the intersection takes the familiar shape of a clover. Among a sea of gray rectangles, the winding streak of yellow highway feels almost more natural, whimsical even. 

And then I start walking, and only then do I take in the sheer size of a four-lane road. Nothing about this is whimsical. I do my best to hug the line where the sidewalk meets parking lot. The highway intersection feels like a complex tangle of roots. I lean my body into the stop sign to request a flashing yellow light, which signals to oncoming cars that a pedestrian is walking onto the overpass. The overpass is guarded by a fence only waist high, as if to say, why guard something people won’t ever walk over. So I watch cars stream past below me, like a raging river of rubber against road.

Most people I know who’ve lived in the Bay Area for a few years have retreated to the city, where it’s easier to get around and meet people. “You can’t go anywhere here without a car,” someone tells me in my first few days here. As a newcomer, I refuse to succumb to the convenience of mobility. I try to conjure excitement out of thin air – reveling in retail stores and restaurants within walking distance. I find myself feigning interest and it somehow makes me feel as if I’ve already lost this battle. A friend of mine wants me to get a bike, a compromise between the vast suburban land and my short legs. I refuse for no good reason other than the fact that I’m stubborn and a sore loser. 

On Saturday, we take the train to San Francisco. We get to the station early, and we find that we’re not alone. There are droves of people in Giants baseball shirts and hats. I feel a collective sense of anticipation as people stream into the station and the indistinct sound of chatter grows louder. 

The train is packed, and we walk from train car to train car to find a good seat. At the next stop, we get off the train in order to run to another, hopefully emptier, train car. But the doors close before we enter. We’re stranded in another suburb, emptier than the last. There is no food, only a boba shop that opens at noon. It’s 11:30am. We sit in the center of a roundabout and watch an elderly couple walk around the sidewalk. A few cars pass us by and take conspicuous glances at us. We stare right back.

There is nothing to talk about, so we simply sit and wait for the next train. There is something almost absurd about this place, like Rock Bottom from Spongebob, where emptiness feels eerily close to insanity. There is a sense of calm that feels too manufactured, too perfect. I feel what can only be described as whiplash, abandoned in a street lined with townhouses. Glued next to the train station is a highway ramp that spits cars back onto the local roads. Here, the winding yellow streak of highway shines the brightest. 

To depend on public transportation is to wait, a lot. But stubborn as ever, we wait for the next train to take us into the city where pedestrians again loom large, and so do the hills...

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Credits to my friend, Hristo who has convinced me to get a bike for 2+ years to no avail and who shared this great video about stroads, which are “sprawling and hostile to be good streets, and they are too busy and complicated to be good roads.”

Related, is an interesting podcast by Ezra Klein about why infrastructure and generally large projects fail to get built.