I first lived in a small town in the San Joaquin Valley in California (one square mile surrounded by miles and miles of alfalfa and produce), then my father rented a small farm and a century-old two-story farmhouse with a pasture and orchards near the Sierra foothills, then we moved to a a new ranch-style home in a sprawling suburban environment on the Florida coast.
I’ve spent most of my adult life either in a beach town, in rolling hills near small towns, or in interesting cities, but always near a large body of water. I don’t like suburbs and new homes at all and I’ve purposely avoided living in them. They seem sterile to me.
I prefer either an old, small town with a centre to it (no sprawl, please) preferably on a beach, or in the county. But I can also live happily in a city like San Francisco or Paris with good mass-transit, museums, libraries, history, interesting graveyards, a theatre district and a nice little café on the street level below my apartment. I like the idea of being able to step out onto the sidewalk and into a cab, or bus, or subway, onto a plane, onto a commuter train at the other end, and onto a sidewalk and into another café in another country and another language without any effort at all.
But the older I get, I tend toward that little farm with rolling hills and farmhouse—like the one my father rented, I guess, near a small town with a town center to it (like the film set in To Kill a Mockingbird—complete with town square with a statue of an old general on horseback in the centre, and an old courthouse with cupola), near a large body of water, an hour or two from an interesting city. That would be almost impossible to find these days. But Bolinas, California meets most of that criteria.