I live in Marin.

 

Marin is a county across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It is a very pretty county, home to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach and Mt Tamalpais. Because it is pretty and close to San Francisco, there are many very expensive homes. There are some less expensive homes. There are also some very very not expensive homes.

 

Although there is an incredibly diverse [in all senses of the word] community near where I live and, uh, also lots of shopping carts in neighbors’ yards, many people think of Marin as nothing other than a community of snobby, rich, white stay-at-home mothers.

 

Yes, I’ve met those women here. I’ve also met those women in the suburbs of Chicago and the towns of Kentucky and the gated communities of Morocco. Pretty much all the people I’ve met anywhere could be from anywhere.

 

Yet people keep suggesting that somehow Marin is worse than other places, that the people and the community are fundamentally snobbier. Which is dumb and disingenuous. It suggests somehow that whatever problems you have with a particular place will go away when you find a better place.

 

That’s stupid.

 

Because it doesn’t really matter. People are people. Personality traits, sure, are a product and circumstances of situation as much as of an individual person, but there are jackasses everywhere.

 

On that note, I met this girl today that I know I met before. I don’t know where or at what or anything about her, except I know that I didn’t like her. So, I’m pretty much a terrible person. Or, she is.