new savvy

I'm noticing that being new definitely has its advantages.

On the one hand, it's terribly frustrating to be new in town.  For one thing, it's hard to get good advice, or to recognize it when you get it.  For instance, I was concerned about drinking my tap water, what with living so close to the ocean.  Most everyone I asked was like, "oh, no!  I only ever drink bottled water."  Then again, it was sometimes difficult to gauge whether the person I was asking was more like me, or more the kind of person who would drink only bottled water whether they lived in Calcutta or in British Columbia.   

It takes time and energy to ask questions and gauge answers in getting to know your new town. A lot of times you spend more money, time and gas than is strictly necessary, just because you don't know how else to do things.   It's an exhausting, frustrating and at times downright depressing endeavor.  But I've made a startling discovery: you don't have to get to know your community.  No matter where you live, it's surprisingly easy to float from big box to big box, never once setting foot in a local business.  Sure, I could walk to the grocery store on the corner, but it'd be so much cheaper to drive out to the Super-Target where I know my way around the coupon flyer and where I'm sure they'll have all the items I need.  That restaurant two blocks away looks great, but when I'm feeling tired of everything being new and unfamiliar, I'd rather just pick something up at Panera: I know how much the food will cost, how it will taste, and how many minutes until I get to put it in my mouth.  It's so much easier, most of the time, to coast over the surface of things.  I have to admit, now that I have a grown-up job and grown-up responsibilities in unfamiliar territory, I'm beginning to understand the appeal such a franchise-to-franchise existence has, at least as a short-term antidote to the insecurity and uncertainty of setting up shop far from any place that feels like home.  Nonetheless, it alarms me how easy and seductive it is to stay in franchise-land forever, and how many people seem content to do so.  As a lifestyle, it's frankly horrifying.

On the other hand, being new exempts you from the local dogma.  For instance, every fifteen minutes on public radio, the traffic report broadcasts loud and clear: "No traffic on the Monitor Merrimac bridge-tunnel.  Highway 664 is, as usual, wide open." Yet, when I tell people that I work north of the tunnel, they are horrified.  How do you stand the traffic?!  They all want to know.  Because while the greatest traffic danger on the Monitor-Merrimac continues to be the overwhelming din of cricket-song, its sister, Highway 64, is bumper-to-bumper for miles in either direction.  When I asked a colleague of mine how she accounted for this, she mentioned that 664 hasn't been open for nearly as long as 64, and that perhaps it hasn't caught on with commuters yet.  How long has it been open?  I asked.  Oh, she said, only about ten or fifteen years.

Another example: the frilly Virginia coastline makes for an exceptional amount of beach-front.  The neighbs and I were looking forward to living so close to the ocean, so we were dismayed when our new friends and neighbors told us that, if we wanted to go to the beach, we should drive the twenty minutes to Virginia Beach.  It's much nicer there, they all said.  So we went, and found the predictable strip of souvenir and ice cream shops, as well as a boardwalk and beach teeming with people.  The next time, we broke with popular opinion and went to Ocean View in Norfolk.  It was fine: lacking in fine white sands and bikinis, perhaps, and certainly in tie-dyed goods available for purchase.  It was also conspicuously lacking in people, who were presumably stuck in traffic on the way to (or looking for parking at) Virginia Beach.  So we had our beach, and we had it mostly to ourselves.

In sum, I'd say that, although being new makes it harder to get things done in the short term, with just a bit of curiosity you can ride your unfamiliarity beyond the preconceived local notions.  In short, as the neighbs keeps reminding me, it's an adventure.