what IS so good about walking in the neighborhood?

I moved to this area a dozen years ago. For 11 years I lived in one house, and now I live about nine or ten blocks from there. Although my new place feels very different in significant respects, I can still shop in the same stores, I still use the same public transit systems to get to work, and it still feels much like the same neighborhood. This is a good thing, because I love it here.

I started walking to the BART station on a regular basis six or seven years ago, after my car was totaled in an accident. At that time I lived on a street that saw a fair amount of vehicular traffic during commute hours, but it was still definitely a street people lived on: mostly single-family homes or duplexes, mostly of about the same vintage (the 50s and 60s, according to one of the old-timers, who lived catty-corner from where I was), mostly with small, well-tended yards. It was about a mile from the house to the BART, a straight shot crossing side streets and cul-de-sacs laid out perpendicular to the street I lived on. In the morning, there were other people out and about on foot: parents walking their kids to the elementary school, older kids heading on their own to middle-school or high-school, a fair few runners, and a scant number of business-clad grown-ups walking to the train. This is a bedroom community in a sprawling urban area, so most folk with a day job opened their doors, got into their cars, and drove off somewhere.

When I started walking to the train in the morning, I found it changed the whole neighborhood for me: everything looked more interesting from my vantage-point as a walker. Am I a bit of a voyeur? Absolutely. I do like the glimpses into people's lives that are visible at the walking pace: I get to see the bearded fellow who comes down the walkway in pajamas and robe to pick up the newspaper, and then stops to pick a peony from his garden to take back inside; I glimpse a family scene at the breakfast table through the opened curtains; I watch the elderly, apron-clad woman sweep the apparently spotless garage floor.

I still walk to the BART quite a lot from the new place, although because I now live on a hill at a different angle from the BART station, it isn't quite as simple as the old walk was. But the same things intrigue me, and when I have spent the 20 minutes or so getting from my home to the BART station, I feel I have surveyed a bit of this domain, and gleaned all manner of information (none of it particularly useful) about the small world I live in.

So it shouldn't surprise people to hear that, when I have leisure time and want a bit of exercise, I don't necessarily feel I have to go to the gym: I just head outdoors for a ramble. That means I get to find out what the people over on Lexington have planted recently, and then, later, how their garden grows. I can take note of whose open garage door reveals chaos (lots of people), and whose garage is in scrupulous order (fewer); how many for sale signs there are on really nice houses, and what's the price tag on those sheets printed by the real estate people (a bundle). Depending on the time of day and day of the week, I get to hear how music trickles (or sometimes pours) out onto the street from people's houses. Sometimes it's live music: the most-practiced instrument is still the piano, though I occasionally hear something from the brass or string families. Every once in a while I catch the distinctive sound of a garage band ... still a long way from a paying audience.

Walking, I hear babies, or shriek-y children playing various games in the twilight. I hear LOTS of different languages, since this is a wonderfully polyglot suburb. And as I cover the blocks, I am amazed by the (often tantalizing) scents of food. Sometimes when I am hungry I can’t help but invite myself, in fantasy, for the lovely Indian meal I caught a whiff of down on Kearney, or was it on Waldo? Or maybe it was Liberty Street.