California’s been good to me
Hope it don’t fall into the sea
Sometimes you got to trust yourself
It ain’t like anywhere else –Tom Petty, 1950-2017
For the past couple of weeks, the Business Now website and newsletter has been operating out of northern California, specifically Dublin, a fast-growing city at the end of the BART rail transit system.
Petty had it right. California is different, even Dublin, a clean, affluent city with amenities like a multi-million dollar aquatics center.
More than three-dozen wineries are a short drive away. Tech-based enterprises have set up shop here and in neighboring Pleasanton.
Days are quiet around the aquatics center. After all, it is not cheap to live to live in Dublin. A good job and some moonlighting is a necessity. A three-bedroom condo can fetch three-quarters of a million dollars.
It is no coincidence that the side hustle ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft got their start at the other end of the BART line in San Francisco.
Many fall days are breathtakingly beautiful.
But the brown hills that surround the city are evidence of the risks that come from living in this area where the rain mainly comes during the winter.
An hour’s drive to the north, fires continued to rage out of control in the Napa-Sonoma wine country.
The Napa winery of Delawareans Tatiana and Gerret Copeland in Napa was closed for a time and at one point had no power. No damage was reported and the winery is expected to be open today.
The death toll continues to rise, with the blame being placed everything from a wet winter (the grass grew rapidly and dries out quickly) to a lack of controlled burning, poorly maintained electric lines that went down in high winds, and homes built in areas prone to cataclysmic blazes.
On most days, the smoke stayed to the north, but depending on the wind direction drifted south toward Dublin, producing the worst pollution in decades.
But the lure of the state remains strong. As Petty’s song noted:
Sundown, red skies
Nobody’s been around
The words came to mind at a quiet beach on Monterrey Bay as we watched the sun go down. (See photo above.)
We’ll be back in Delaware later this week. Your thoughts, tips and ideas are always appreciated. If this newsletter was passed along, click here to subscribe at no charge. – Doug Rainey and Sharon Rainey
