Going full SCV - Move Weekend

Yep that's right. Apple Street in Newhall, from whence the idea of SCVTalk sprang one night in 2006 as I was walking my dog, is no longer my home. I'm becoming full-on suburbanite this weekend, ditching the high density lifestyle I admired, wrote about, and lived for more than a decade.

There's a little bit of the SCV in all of us, and this weekend, I embrace what she is about fully and without reservation. Let me explain.

Just a stone's throw from Lyons and so close to the 91355 and the Master Plan that I could feel the Lauffer Distortion Field, resent the smugness, be offended by its street preachers, and become the first victim in a nationwide drive-by pudding crime spree, my SoLy condo was my first real home. I purchased it in 2003 with my wife, just eight month sinto marriage and four years out of college. Over the last ten years, we've sunk at least $50k into making it better...wood floors, copper repipe, custom showers with real Italian tiles, pot lights and so much more. We showed more love to that home than anyone did since it was built in 1981, and we'll miss it.

I would say that Apple Street was the ideal place for us as DINKs, but now we're parents. And like all parents, we've acquired a bunch of stuff. Baby stuff. The clean & modern lines of the condo, plus its earthy texture & pallet is now broken up and permanently ruined by colorful plastic toys, gadgets, and can't-do-without baby tools (God bless the inventor of the odor-trapping diaper can thing!) all over the place.

It's like I went to sleep one night in a modern and classy urban loft, but woke up the next morning to find that a clown had vomited all over my house, leaving a mess for me to clean up.

So we're moving to a real, suburban, single family home, to raise a family. Going full SCV as it were. And this place is a palace really. I used to pride myself on living simply, discarding things I didn't need and being content in 1,151 sq. ft.; my new home feels like the western skies...so open and endless at 1,600 sq. ft. plus a two car attached garage, and a private back yard. What a luxury!

And the best part of this move -which I should really be working on right now as I type this- is that I'm still in Newhall. Sure we considered Valencia but Newhall, as Weste says, is the cultural bedrock of the SCV, and so I can still check that box.

Or can I? My new home is in the Calgrove neighborhood. Not the tract-home side of the street either, the older side, just north of Calgrove. After working at the new home for a week, thinking about its place in the SCV, and wondering how Calgrove fits into Newhall and into the SCV, I've realized that there's something unique about this place.

My home was built in 1966. It's single story. The cell phone reception sucks and I'm really going to miss 4G LTE. But then it hit me: Calgrove is a great place to live if you're a self-loathing SCV resident, as I sometimes (not always!) am. If you ever have any doubt...even the slightest...that the SCV is the place you should raise your family in, then Calgrove is the place for you.

Consider: It's the only place in the SCV that can say it's closer to LA than Santa Clarita. As the crow flies, it's technically closer to the City of Los Angeles (3.1 miles) boundary than it is to Santa Clarita City Hall (3.4m). Even by car, it will take a non-committal SCVer longer to get to Santa Clarita City Hall (5.3 miles) than to the border of liberal Los Angeles (4.7miles), and from whence, the sea and a real cosmopolitan lifestyle, with all the plusses and minuses that entails.

The neighborhood on the north side of Calgrove is interesting too. Unlike the rest of Newhall, Calgrove is hilly.Like the rest of Newhall, there's no HOA that I know of for the neighborhood north of Calgrove. So you get this really interesting mix of home styles...at the bottom of my hill, there's a two story spread out Colonial. My house is more like a bungalow. Other houses look like they were designed from a Thomas Kincade sketch. Some are run-down, others have been added on to. It's a great mix!

Another thing I realized: Calgrovers like me have no stop lights to pass through -really none!- to get on I-5. This means we'll be able to get out of town faster than the rest of the SCV during the next quake or road carnage explosion that takes down a freeway bridge or fire superstorm that sweeps through town. To be an SCVer is to be a disaster preparedness expert, and us Calgrovers will have a huge head start over the rest of you when the Newhall Pass is a wreck of twisted steel and broken concrete, as it will surely be again.

And finally, living in Calgrove gives one an air of superiority over the rest of the SCV, almost like living in Sand Canyon or Placerita Canyon. Why? We're one of the few, the precious few, communities in the SCV that has a gate on a public road to keep the rest of you out. I have now what the folks up Bouquet Canyon Road & David Way could only dream about: a frigging fortified gate to keep the villainy out, to force the unwashed and un-initiated back onto Lyons, where they belong.

You might have thought the Placerita Power Posse was the only clever, alliteration-inclined NIMBY group in the SCV protected by a gate. Well, you were wrong! Cause we Calgrovers have the Calgrove Corridor Coalition, and I'm here to tell you we'll make sure the Smiser mule ranch lays fallow and vacant until Jesus returns.

So that's my weekend. And that's why there's no Daily Brief today. And preparing for this move is why I've been so late on the Daily Brief in recent weeks. Look for a new perspective & return to normal scheduling from your blogger come Monday morning as I transition to the third phase of my life in the SCV: raising a kid in a real, detached, single family, car-dependent home.