globalgrlI fancy trendsetting. Certainly not in fashion but in just being ahead of the curve, unafraid to try new things or new ways of doing something.
Way back when we all got our movies from Blockbuster I thought it was outrageous that you had to get a new Blockbuster card for every city. My partner and I have lived many places and I can still visualize my stack of Blockbuster cards. In 1997 we moved to North Carolina and I went to get yet another Blockbuster card. Problem was we had no landline which evidently one needed for the damn Blockbuster card. I told the guy then that very soon no one was going to have landlines anymore and he made me feel like I was from Mars.
Look at my previous blog posts and you will see I called the demise of Facebook so long ago that by today’s standards it is ancient history.
Then there was the time I invented the little doohickey that keeps the pizza cheese from sticking to the top of the box or the time I invented the Chinese take-out cartons without the stupid metal handle that could not go in the microwave.
Maybe I dilly-dallied around about getting down to the Patent Office but I dreamed them up first I am sure.
I think I come by this naturally. My bio father who I really did not know, I only met him a few times but one time in the mid 70’s I went to his house and he had a piece of a 2 x 4 , a little block of wood with a toggle switch on it with a wire running to the TV and every time a commercial came on, he toggled it which muted the TV. Hooray for remote control! In the end of his life he was called Ole Doc Clock because he loved classic cars and had figured out a way to put quartz clock movements in the old cars that still looked original on the face for those guys who are meticulous about their restorations. He was quite famous in that small circle of classic car purists.
His father owned a Studebaker dealership and the building was a Frank Lloyd Wright that still stands in Mena, AR as Studebaker museum. Double trendy for that guy.
Then my maternal Grandpa from Oklahoma drove an Indian Chief motorcycle all the way to CA and back in the late 1920’s.
But the real topper is my 3rd Great Grandmother. Like many people I became fascinated with genealogy and tracing my family history. I was extremely lucky in that a stamp collector bought a batch of letters from my family that were from the Civil War times and he tracked me down to give them to me. The letters are fascinating for sure but the fun part for me was that my 3rd Great Grandmother was writing from Kansas to her family in MA and in all the letters she referred to my 3rd Great Grandfather as simply Pike, his last name. I have seen letters from that period and women often called their husbands MR. or sometimes by their first name but she called him Pike and they were growing grapes for wine. How cool is that?!
With my trendsetting persona firmly entrenched in my mind (or imagination), I recently moved into a young person’s PERF heaven. Let me explain. My partner has a job that requires us to be in San Diego for 2 years. I lived in San Diego from 1979 to 1989. I was the original runaway bride before Julia Roberts made the movie. I was just out of college and had $350 saved. I told my Dad I was going to Dallas (about 3 hours away) to see a friend and I got to Dallas and just kept driving, I drove until the road ran out and that was San Diego. When I first arrived, I rented a room in downtown San Diego. It was then called an SRO (single residence occupancy). My little room with the bath down the hall was $35 a week.
It was a heady time for me filled with the best of times as I discovered myself and reveled in the city life, having grown up in the Midwest in a town of about 5000.
When we knew we would be living in San Diego I thought let’s go big and live downtown which is the happening place now. But when I lived downtown in the early 80’s it was when the suburbs were the place to be and big city downtowns were for the derelicts or near poverty people. That trend completely reversed itself.
So here we are, 2018, we moved to East Village, Idea 1, a brand new place. 600 sq. ft for $2300 a month. Long way from my $140 a month in 1979.
The lofts and apartments are billed as live/work space. Apartments are built in a U shape or 2 L’s and the interior courtyard is called the Hub. It is a large collaborative space to create and connect. There is a coffee shop as well as extra cool gourmet taco shop that anchor our building, they also are open to the street.
There is almost always something going on here, a very wide variety of events are scheduled. Overall, the feeling is one of excitement and creativity.
It probably would have been heaven for me to have been surrounded by such forward thinkers when I was younger and had no direction, felt adrift. Of course, I would never have been able to afford it even if I could do the math and figure what this place would have cost in 1979’s economy.
At any rate, I often feel out of place because I am surely the oldest person living here at 61. But once a trendsetter always a trendsetter so I found a little trick to make myself relevant. We have key cards for the elevator and people are always digging around in pockets and in bags to find them. I put mine on the back of my phone with a phone case covering it so when I get in the elevator I just put my phone up to the sensor and bingo! I have had no less than 7 people in the elevator questioningly exclaim ‘there’s an app for that?”. Then I say nope, it is just between the phone and case. No matter, they now think I am a pretty cool old broad.
When I was about to turn 60 and my 24 year old nephew called me a hipster. It was maybe the best compliment I have ever received although I was not exactly sure what it was. Many months later I brought it up with my niece who said it means someone who is an old hippie who shops at thrift stores. There went my vison of a beatnik poet from the 60’s with John Lennon glasses but my sweet sisters all jumped in to assure me that nephew meant the first description. Back on track, LOL
Besides, how many 61 year olds have a side hustle with Turo?