One of my closest friends is Mike O., Esq.
He’s an Orange County, California native (he refers to it as “growing up behind the Orange Curtain”) who now lives in the Bay Area, specifically Marin County, the nifty little enclave just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. He’s also a California original – in the best sense.
He’s started a very cool little blog about his experiences trying to find “old Marin” and get himself acquainted with his new hometown. He’s got 14 posts up there so far (he started it last month) and there’s some neat things he’s seen and observed. I liken his experience to mine when I decided to move to Over-the-Rhine nearly three years ago and my subsequent experience living in this struggling, urban neighborhood. Marin’s a little different from Over-the-Rhine, but both are worth exploring and writing about.
Before moving to Marin, Mike, who has an undergraduate degree from Occidental College (the same school that Barack Obama and former presidential candidate Jack Kemp attended) and a law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, lived in two San Francisco neighborhoods.
When he moved in 2002, he first lived in the Haight, just blocks from the famous corner of Haight & Ashbury. I then lived in Sacramento and helped him move into his Oak Street apartment – a full $1,000 a month for a postage stamp-sized gem. I loved that place, plus visiting him there.
Then, in 2005 he moved to the Presidio, sharing rent with, uh, like eight other people in a former officer’s home that, I believe, cost around $4,500 a month – in rent. He lived in the basement, just feet from a furnace and two gas water heaters. I personally hated the place and was glad he only stayed a year. Just visiting for 10 days back in 2005 was enough for me – and I was only there about 4 or 5 nights.
I haven’t been to his new place yet – hope to make it out this year – but from the sound of his blog, I think it’s going to be great. Marin, after all, is the home of my most favorite hostel in the whole wide world. And the whole area is like a postcard.
By the way, Mike is a teacher these days at the Presidio Hill School, a private grade school. Though he graduated from one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, passed the bar and stood to have a career as a very wealthy and successful attorney, he chose to teach children. I admire him greatly for that.
We met in 1997 – nearly a full ten years ago now, hard to believe – when we were both camp counselors at Kennolyn Camp in Soquel, Calif. near Santa Cruz. He has a natural gift with children – something he said he learned he had while working at Kennolyn – and chose, despite his family’s behest to do otherwise, to continue sharing that gift once he finsihed law school by becoming a teacher.
This July he will be coming to Cincinnati – his first trip back since nearly missing being home with his family at Christmas after the surprise giant snow storm in 2004, causing him to swear off ever returning here again – and I can’t wait. He’s got a whole list of things he wants to do and people he wants to meet when he gets here. Let’s just hope there’s no snow (just kidding, Mike).
There’s a lot of people I can call on who know somebody who know somebody. Yeah, I’m proud of that. And this week, thanks to my dear friend Maggie Downs, I now can call Jessica Biel, Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet and that cute little girl from “
It’s been a while, but I’ve uploaded more photos to my Web site. Recently added items include photos of 
o competitive, impersonal and often cutthroat, it’s rare anyone meets someone like Al. It seemed no matter when I popped by campus or phoned him, he was always ready to talk a little shop. He encouraged me to keep plugging away, even when circumstances and my own will seemed determined to get the best of me. After devastating developments in my own professional life last March, I found my way to the chair across from his inside his UC office. He was his usual supportive self, offering to make calls and quickly jotted down a long list of editors he knew that I should call to look for a new job. This was a minor setback, he assured me. It helped give me the strength to go on a bit more, to keep trying, to remain confident in my abilities as a journalist.