Why I miss Silicon Valley
I’ve twice followed my wife’s career east, first from Silicon Valley to Chicago and then from Chicago to Stamford, CT. After nearly a decade away from the Valley, we both still miss it, but for different reasons. My wife’s biggest (and frequent) lament is Silicon Valley’s miraculous climate-free weather. No matter the month, it always seems to be in the 60s or 70s. (I just looked it up, and it’s true.) Also, it never rains… except for that 45-day stretch in January-February 1998 that I’ll never forget because it never stopped raining. (I just looked that up too: 37 inches of rain in January and February and “119 [consecutive] days when measurable rainfall was recorded”!)
While I too appreciate the absence of snow (especially when I’m shoveling it), I adore spring and fall (which sadly seem to have shrunk to just a few weeks in recent years), so I’m not dying to return for the weather.
Strangely, I was reminded of my love of Silicon Valley while reading the recently deceased Tony Judt’s article on his love of New York, which captures the essence of my love for Silicon Valley:
Today I drop my cleaning off with Joseph the tailor and we exchange Yiddishisms and reminiscences (his) of Jewish Russia. Two blocks south I lunch at a place whose Florentine owner disdains credit cards and prepares the best Tuscan food in New York. In a hurry, I can opt instead for a falafel from the Israelis on the next block; I might do even better with the sizzling lamb from the Arab at the corner.
Fifty yards away are my barbers: Giuseppe, Franco and Salvatore, all from Sicily — their “English” echoing Chico Marx. They have been in Greenwich Village forever but never really settled: how should they? They shout at one another all day in Sicilian dialect, drowning out their main source of entertainment and information: a 24-hour Italian-language radio station. On my way home, I enjoy a mille-feuille from a surly Breton pâtissier who has put his daughter through the London School of Economics, one exquisite éclair at a time.
All this within two square blocks of my apartment — and I am neglecting the Sikh newsstand, the Hungarian bakery and the Greek diner (actually Albanian but we pretend otherwise). Three streets east and I have Little Hapsburgia: Ukrainian restaurant, Uniate church, Polish grocery and, of course, the long-established Jewish deli serving Eastern European staples under kosher labels. All that is missing is a Viennese cafe — for this, symptomatically, you must go uptown to the wealthy quarters of the city.
A timeless joke in the Valley — actually, it merely feels timeless; the Valley was orchards till a few decades ago — is that “IC” stands not for “integrated circuit” but “Indian and Chinese.” There’s a ton of Indian and Chinese culture in the Valley. And so much more. Whenever I wandered off Stanford’s campus for a day, I would hear Spanish and four or five other languages I could only guess at. “What is that? Urdu?” We had friends from all over the world. I’ll never forget the moment I realized during a party my grad school housemates — from Turkey and Switzerland — and I threw that I was the only American at our party.
Fairfield County is generally a wonderful place to raise kids, but I sure miss the Valley’s cultural riches. We’ve exhausted ourselves trying — in vain — to find a bilingual immersion school for our kids. Despite widespread appreciation of the value of learning Mandarin and Spanish, bilingual immersion schools basically don’t exist in Fairfield County (except in districts with very low test scores and very large concentrations of ESL learners). Conversely, type “san francisco bilingual schools” into Google, and you’ll quickly find bilingual French-English, Russian-English, Spanish-English, Chinese-English, German-English, and Japanese-English schools. And bilingual — even tri-lingual — schools are the norm in Europe and, increasingly, Asia.
I feel sorry for Americans who seldom meet, and feel threatened by, foreigners. Foreigners (most especially my wife, of course) have enriched my life beyond imagination.
Posted by James on Friday, November 12, 2010