Background

California has been our home state for as long as there has been an "us," and longer. I've lived in California, off and on, for half my life, interspersed with some years in Oregon's Willamette Valley and three high-school years in Las Vegas. V has never lived anywhere else, growing up in Sacramento and pursuing her collection of degrees in SoCal over the last ten years. We're pretty clearly Californian.

Californian or not, I've always wanted to live in a city where public transit works, and with the possible exception of San Francisco, Californian cities are only usable if you drive your own car everywhere. By contrast, I've visited Europe a few times, and I always love riding the subways and buses. Cities with sufficient density to make public transit work also, as a side-effect, have rich enough history that exploring them on foot (and via public transit) has always been a richly rewarding experience for me. My desire to immerse myself in a new place has really only increased in recent years as my love of photography has grown.

All of which is background for our next adventure: in about a month (August 4th, if all goes according to plan), V and I will get on a plane and relocate to New York City. I can't think of a bigger (plausible) adventure, especially considering that I've never even been to NYC aside from one brief layover at JFK (which, incidentally, resulted in my laptop being stolen, so hopefully I've got the "crime victim" experience taken care of already.)

We hope to use this space to share our experiences in the city, focusing on the things that have appealed to us as Californians and highlighting new styles, tastes, and sights. As foodies, photographers, and urban explorers, those are sure to be things we feature.

And the adventure begins soon. Tomorrow night we take a red-eye out to NYC to explore for a few days, trying to clear the first big hurdle: finding an apartment. While there is a lot of advice available in finding a place to live in New York, basically the only thing that we've found to be consistent is this: neighborhoods can change completely from block to block, and even with all of the amazing information available online these days, there is no substitute for putting feet on the ground and experiencing it. So we've got to head out early to try to narrow down our options for where to live. More on that (and the things that we'll be leaving behind) soon.